Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics

Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics
Author: R. Kenneth Carty
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774859962

Canadian party politics collapsed in the early 1990s. This book is about that collapse, about the end of a party system, with a unique pattern of party organization and competition, that had governed Canada’s national politics for several decades, and about the ongoing struggle to build its successor. Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics discusses the breakdown of the old party system, the emergence of the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois, and the fate of the Conservative and New Democratic Parties. It focuses on the internal workings of parties in this new era, examining the role of professionals, new technologies, and local activists. To understand the ambiguities of our current party system, the authors attended local and national party meetings, nomination and leadership meetings, and campaign kick-off rallies. They visited local campaign offices to observe the parties’ grassroots operations and conducted interviews with senior party officials, pollsters, media and advertising specialists, and leader-tour directors. Written in a lively and accessible style, this book will interest students of party politics and Canadian political history, as well as general readers eager to make sense of the changes reshaping national politics today.

Party Politics in Canada

Party Politics in Canada
Author: Hugh G. Thorburn
Publisher:
Total Pages: 542
Release: 2001
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes at the university level, this collection of 33 essays provides a broad range of perspectives on Canada's diverse and dynamic political climate. It is a classic political studies reader that combines the strengths of tradition and innovation; papers by distinguished political experts are combined with the perspectives of modern scholars to create a thoroughly updated text.

The Canadian Party System

The Canadian Party System
Author: Richard Johnston
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774836105

The Canadian party system is a deviant case among the Anglo-American democracies. It has too many parties, it is susceptible to staggering swings from election to election, and its provincial and federal branches often seem unrelated. Unruly and inscrutable, it is a system that defies logic and classification – until now. In this political science tour de force, Richard Johnston makes sense of the Canadian party system. With a keen eye for history and deft use of recently developed analytic tools, he articulates a series of propositions underpinning the system. Chief among them was domination by the centrist Liberals, stemming from their grip on Quebec, which blocked both the Conservatives and the NDP. He also takes a close look at other peculiarities of the Canadian party system, including the stunning discontinuity between federal and provincial arenas. For its combination of historical breadth and data-intensive rigour, The Canadian Party System is a rare achievement. Its findings shed light on the main puzzles of the Canadian case, while contesting the received wisdom of the comparative study of parties, elections, and electoral systems elsewhere.

Canadian Parties in Transition, Fourth Edition

Canadian Parties in Transition, Fourth Edition
Author: Alain-G. Gagnon
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442634707

Canadian Parties in Transition examines the transformation of party politics in Canada and the possible shape the party system might take in the near future. With chapters written by an outstanding team of political scientists, the book presents a multi-faceted image of party dynamics, electoral behaviour, political marketing, and representative democracy. The fourth edition has been thoroughly updated and includes fifteen new chapters and several new contributors. The new material covers topics such as the return to power of the Liberal Party, voting politics in Quebec, women in Canadian political parties, political campaigning, digital party politics, and municipal party politics.

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?

Canadian Parties in Transition

Canadian Parties in Transition
Author: Alain Gagnon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2017
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781442634732

New material in the fourth edition covers topics such as the return to power of the Liberal Party, voting politics in Quebec, women in Canadian political parties, political campaigning, digital party politics, and municipal party politics.

Rebuilding Leviathan

Rebuilding Leviathan
Author: Anna Grzymala-Busse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 5
Release: 2007-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139464922

Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of state resources when faced with strong political competition.

Parties, Elections, and the Future of Canadian Politics

Parties, Elections, and the Future of Canadian Politics
Author: Amanda Bittner
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774824107

On May 2, 2011, as Canadians watched the federal election results roll in and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives achieve a majority, it appeared that we were witnessing a major shift in the political landscape. In reality, Canadian politics had been changing for quite some time. This volume provides the first account of the political upheavals of the past two decades and speculates on the future of the country’s national party system. By documenting how parties and voters responded to new challenges between 1993 and 2011, this book sheds light on one of the most tumultuous periods in Canadian political history.

Political Parties

Political Parties
Author: William Cross
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774841117

Political parties are at the centre of Canadian democracy. They choose our prime ministers, premiers, and candidates for public office; they decide which policy issues are considered in the provincial and federal legislatures; they dominate our election campaigns. As a result, a democracy that is participatory, responsive, and inclusive can only be achieved if Canadian political parties share these values and operate in a manner respecting them. In a concise and accessible manner, this book delves into the history, structure, mechanisms, and roles of Canada's political parties, and assesses the degree to which Canadians today can rely on political parties as vehicles for grassroots participation.