Politics and Ideology in Canada

Politics and Ideology in Canada
Author: Michael Ornstein
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2003-02-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780773525948

Winner of the Harold Adams Innis Prize, Politics and Ideology in Canada examines a period of crucial historical change in Canada, beginning in the mid-1970s when the crisis of the Keynesian welfare state precipitated a transition to a new political order based on the progressive "downsizing" of state involvement in the economy and society. Using class and ideology as key concepts, Michael Ornstein and Michael Stevenson examine this transition in terms of the nature of hegemony and hegemonic crisis and the conditions of political order and instability. These concepts guide the interpretation of three large surveys of representative samples of the Canadian public and two unique elite surveys, conducted between 1975 and 1981. The surveys cover an exceptionally broad spectrum of political issues, including social programs, civil and economic rights, economic policy, foreign ownership, labour relations, and language issues and sovereignty. A wide-ranging analysis of public and elite attitudes reveals a hegemonic order through the early 1980s, built around public support for the institutions of the Canadian welfare state. But there was also widespread public alienation from politics. Public opinion was quite strongly linked to class but not to party politics. Regional variation in political ideology on a broad range of issues was less pronounced than differences between Quebec and English Canada. Much deeper ideological divisions separated the elites, with a dramatic polarization between corporate and labour respondents. State elites fell between these two, though generally more favourable to capital. The responses of the business elites reveal the ideological roots of the Mulroney years in support for cuts in social programs, free trade, privatization, and deregulation.

Conservatism in Canada

Conservatism in Canada
Author: James Farney
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442614560

Conservatism in Canada explores the ideological character of contemporary Canadian conservatism, its support in the electorate, its impact on public policies such as immigration and foreign policy, and its articulation at both federal and provincial levels.

Left and Right

Left and Right
Author: Christopher Cochrane
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2015-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 077359745X

The words "left" and "right" often signal a political divide in debates about topics as diverse as abortion, capital punishment, gun control, social welfare, taxation, immigration, and the environment. Despite claims that political polarization is in decline, its persistence suggests that it is inherent to our society. At the same time, variations in the perception of each side indicate that these labels do not fully capture the reality of ideological disagreement. In Left and Right, Christopher Cochrane traces the origins of this political language to the very nature of ideology. What is ideology, what does it look like, and how does it manifest itself in patterns of political disagreement in Western democracies? Drawing on five decades of evidence from political scientists, including public opinion surveys, elite surveys, and content analysis of political party election platforms, Cochrane employs a new method to analyze the structure and evolution of the left/right divide in twenty-one Western countries since 1945. He then delves into the central argument of the book - that the language of left and right describes a meaningful, perceptible, and quantifiable pattern of political disagreement that has persisted over time and around the world. Calling for an adjustment to the way we view Canadian politics, Left and Right opens a window into the world of political ideologies - a world we see every day, but rarely analyze, define, or agree on.

Political Ideology in Parties, Policy, and Civil Society

Political Ideology in Parties, Policy, and Civil Society
Author: David Laycock
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774861347

Liberalism, conservatism, populism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, agrarianism, labour pragmatism, socialism, and myriad other isms. Ideology is a ubiquitous, continuously innovating dimension of human experience, but its character and impact are notoriously difficult to pinpoint within political and social life. Political Ideology in Parties, Policy, and Civil Society demonstrates that the reach and significance of political ideology is best understood through a multidisciplinary approach. Contributors to this volume explore a broad territory from multiple perspectives: the influence of English country party ideology on late-eighteenth-century American political thought; multiculturalism, populism, and environmentalism in Canada; the ideological underpinnings of Canadian development assistance policy; contemporary efforts to shape working-class and farmer ideologies in western Canada; and the interweaving of academic theory and ideology in game theory. This stimulating volume offers empirical interpretations that break new ground, and demonstrates the strength of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of political ideology.

Big Tent Politics

Big Tent Politics
Author: R. Kenneth Carty
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774830026

The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the most successful parties in the democratic world. It dominated Canadian politics for a century, practising an inclusive style of “big tent” politics that allowed it to fend off opponents on both the left and right. How did it do this? What kind of party organization did it build over the decades to manage its remarkable string of election victories? This book traces the record of the party over the twentieth century, revealing the cyclical character of its success and charting its capacity to respond to change. It also unwraps Liberal practices and organization to reveal the party’s distinctive “brokerage” approach to politics as well as a franchise-style structure that tied local grassroots supporters to the national leadership. R. Kenneth Carty provides a masterful analysis of how one party came to lead the nation’s public life. In a country riven by difference, the Liberals’ enduring political success was an extraordinary feat. But as Carty reflects, given the party’s not-so-distant travails, even with an election win, will it be able to reinvent itself for the twenty-first century?

In Search of Canadian Political Culture

In Search of Canadian Political Culture
Author: Nelson Wiseman
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774840617

What do we really mean by phrases such as "western Canadian political culture," "the centrist political culture of Ontario," "Red Toryism in the Maritimes," or "Prairie socialism"? What historical, geographical, and sociological factors came into play as these cultures were forged? In this book, Nelson Wiseman addresses many such questions, offering new ways of conceiving Canadian political culture. The most thorough review of the national political ethos written in a generation, In Search of Canadian Political Culture offers a bottom-up, regional analysis that challenges how we think and write about Canada.

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

Ideological Perspectives on Canada
Author: M. Patricia Marchak
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2011-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0773590919

Marchak argues that liberalism and socialism have many commonalities, such as the goals of equality and freedom for citizens. Corporatism, however, is opposed to equality and promotes an authoritarian hierarchy, resembling the older conservative ideology. To support her argument, Marchak provides a general overview of the study of ideologies, analyzes liberalism and socialism in the context of Canada, and uses Marxist theory to explain past and present class structure and the emergence of a corporatist social structure. A valuable contribution to the debate about the society we live in, Ideological Perspectives on Canada attempts to look at ideologies from an objective standpoint, while admitting that analysts can never fully remove themselves from the web of their own society, which in the Canadian case is steeped in liberalism, socialism, and corporatism.

Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada

Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada
Author: Miriam Smith
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442606959

Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada, Second Edition updates and expands its exploration of a wide range of organized group and social movement activity in Canadian politics. Particularly distinctive is the inclusion of Quebec nationalism and Aboriginal politics. Many other areas of collective activity are also included: the Occupy movement and anti-poverty organizing, ethnocultural political mobilization, disability, lesbian and gay politics, feminism, farmers and organized interests in agriculture, Christian evangelical groups, environment, and health movements. Contributors to the collection employ a number of theoretical perspectives from political science and sociology to describe the evolution of organized groups and movements and to evaluate successes in exercising influence on Canadian politics. Each chapter provides an overview of the group or movement along with an account of its main networks and organizations, strategies, goals, successes, and failures.

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics
Author: Manon Tremblay
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 539
Release: 2020-11-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030492400

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics offers the first and only handbook in the field of Canadian politics that uses 'gender' (which it interprets broadly, as inclusive of sex, sexualities, and other intersecting identities) as its category of analysis. Its premise is that political actors’ identities frame how Canadian politics is thought, told, and done; in turn, Canadian politics, as a set of ideas, state institutions and decision-making processes, and civil society mobilizations, does and redoes gender. Following the standard structure of mainstream introductory Canadian politics textbooks, this handbook is divided into four sections (ideologies, institutions, civil society, and public policy) each of which contains several chapters on topics commonly taught in Canadian politics classes. The originality of the handbook lies in its approach: each chapter reviews the basics of a given topic from the perspective of gendered/sexualized and other intersectional identities. Such an approach makes the handbook the only one of its kind in Canadian Politics.

Code Politics

Code Politics
Author: Jared J. Wesley
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774820772

Politics on the Canadian Prairies are puzzling. The provinces share a common landscape and history, but they have nurtured three distinct political cultures – Alberta is Canada’s bastion of conservatism, Saskatchewan its cradle of social democracy, and Manitoba its progressive centre. The roots of these cultures run deep, yet their persistence over a century has yet to be explained. Drawing on over eight hundred pieces of campaign literature, Jared Wesley reveals that dominant political parties have used one key device – rhetoric – to foster and carry forward their province’s cultural values or political code. Social Credit and Progressive Conservative leaders in Alberta emphasized freedom, whereas New Democrats in Saskatchewan stressed security. Successful politicians in Manitoba, by contrast, underscored the importance of moderation. Although the content of their campaigns differed, leaders from William Aberhart to Tommy Douglas to Gary Doer have employed distinct codes to ensure their parties’ success and shape their provinces’ political landscapes.