Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Useful studies of Canadian political parties are available, and doubtless others will be soon. I am not trying to add another specifically Canadian study nor even to contribute new information helpful in understanding Canada. Instead I want to use what is known about Canadian parties in order to change the comparative perspective in which we ordinarily view American parties. More particularly I am attempting to put in a new light the well-worn view of the uncohesive and nonresponsible character of American parties in contrast to British parties. The Canadian party system, itself so often described as an Anglo-American hybrid, may help explain why American parties differ from Britain's.
1 A useful collection is edited by Thorburn, Hugh G., Party Politics in Canada (Toronto: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1963)Google Scholar. Also useful, in a more general context, is the reader edited by Fox, Paul W., Politics: Canada (Toronto: Mc-Graw-Hill of Canada, 1962)Google Scholar.
2 For a general discussion of Canadian society as well as for particular attention to the French Canadians, see Blishen, Bernard R., Jones, Frank E., Naegele, Kaspar D., Porter, John (eds.), Canadian Society: Sociological Perspectives (New York, 1961)Google Scholar. Specifically on Quebec, among other important works, see Hughes, Everett C., French Canada in Transition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943)Google Scholar; Wade, Mason (ed.), Canadian Dualism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Wade, Mason, The French Canadians (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; and Oliver, Michael, “Political Problems of Poly-Ethnic Countries—Canada,” mimeographed paper presented to the Fifth World Congress of the International Political Science Association (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar.
3 Scarrow, Howard, “Pattern of Voter Turnout in Canada,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 5 (November 1961), pp. 351–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his Canada Votes (New Orleans: Hauser Press, 1962)Google Scholar, for a full and useful presentation of election data.
4 Wade, Mason, The French-Canadian Outlook (New York, 1946), p. 95Google Scholar.
5 Dawson, R. Macgregor, The Government of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), p. 211Google Scholar.
6 The ten Canadian provinces resemble in their number the six Australian states, the ten West German laender, and the 16 Indian states, but not the 22 Swiss cantons.
7 Porter, John, “The Economic Elite and the Social Structure in Canada,” in Canadian Society: Sociological Perspectives (cited in note 2), p. 493Google Scholar.
8 The evidence is contained in a broader comparative study by Alford, Robert, Party and Society (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963)Google Scholar, chs. 5 and 9. On class and non-class voting in Quebec, see Groupe de Recherches Sociales, Les Électeurs Québécois (Montreal, 1960)Google Scholar.
9 Writing after the Conservative victory of 1958, which reflected two-party politics more clearly than elections just before or since, Peter Regenstreif convincingly described two hard voting cores, each about 30 per cent of the electorate, for the Liberals and the. Conservatives, with about 10 per cent CCP and the remainder uncommitted and moving between parties. If this description remains accurate over time, the basis for two-party politics is clear despite the large uncommitted portion of the electorate. “The Canadian General Election of 1958,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 18 (June 1960), pp. 349–73Google Scholar.
10 Underhill, Frank H., In Search of Canadian Liberalism (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1960), pp. 21–42Google Scholar.
11 Macpherson, C. B., Democracy in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Mallory, J. R., Social Credit and the Federal Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954)Google Scholar; and Lipset, S. M., Agrarian Socialism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1950)Google Scholar.
12 Historical comparison of Anglo-American prairie protest movements of the 1920s is made by Sharp, Paul F., The Agrarian Revolt in Western Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1948)Google Scholar.
13 Dawson (cited in note 5), p. 529.
14 Ibid.
15 Canadian provincial parties may derive added strength from the maintenance of more patronage positions at the provincial than at the national level of government. Ibid., pp. 662–63.
16 These descriptions may be even more appropriate for Canada since the Liberals are not now distinguished from the Conservatives, in the way Democrats are from Republicans, as less of a businessmen's party. Perhaps the Liberals have become the party of modern Canadian business.
17 Clokie, H. McD., Canadian Government and Politics (Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1944), pp. 90–94Google Scholar.
18 Williams, John R., The Conservative Party of Canada (Durham: Duke University Press, 1956), p. 104Google Scholar.
19 Meisel, John, The Canadian General Election of 1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962)Google Scholar, ch. 2.
20 Regenstrief, Peter, “Some Aspects of National Party Support in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science, Vol. 29 (February 1963), pp. 59–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. at p. 66. See also Lipset (cited in note 11), p. 199; McHenry, Dean E., The Third Force in Canada (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960)Google Scholar, ch. 2; and Zakuta, Leo, “The C.C.F.-N.D.P.: Membership in a Becalmed Protest Movement,” reprinted in Thorburn (cited in note 1), pp. 96–108Google Scholar.
21 According to the well-known thesis of Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.
22 The selection procedure is described by Meisel (cited in note 19), pp. 120–24. “No case is known, in the 1957 election, of a provincial executive vetoing the candidature of a person selected by a recognized constituency association” (p. 121).
23 Dawson (cited in note 5), pp. 243–44.
24 Two provincial governments are discussed in detail by Thorburn, Hugh G., Politics in New Brunswick (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961)Google Scholar, and by MacKinnon, Frank, The Government of Prince Edward Island (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951)Google Scholar.
25 The one tabulation of roll-calls that I have been able to find is by Williams (cited in note 18), pp. 200–04, but it involves only one division in each of 28 years. It shows no consistently perfect cohesion for either party, but the governing party seems highly cohesive most of the time.
26 An inside account of the Liberal party caucus under Prime Minister Mackenzie King stresses King's use of the caucus as the place “where he explained the whys and wherefores of Government action and policy and suggested the lines on which the Government could be supported most effectively.” Pickersgill, J. W., The Mackenzie King Record (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), p. 9Google Scholar.
27 Dawson, R. Macgregor, The Principle of Official Independence (London: P. S. King, 1922), p. 229Google Scholar.
28 Clokie (cited in note 17), p. 135.
29 Clokie, , “The Machinery of Government,” Canada, ed. by Brown, George W. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950), p. 307Google Scholar.
30 Dawson, W. F., Procedure in the Canadian House of Commons (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), p. 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 But there have been only 14 different Canadian prime ministers. Five of the 19 prime ministerships involved men who came back for another turn as head of the government.
32 Pickersgill (cited in note 26), pp. 351–403.
33 Dawson, R. Macgregor, The Conscription Crisis of 1944 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), pp. 101–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Canada, House of Commons Debates, First Sess., Twenty-fifth Parliament, Vol. III 1962, pp. 3461–63 (5 February 1963)Google Scholar.
35 These factors, along with the parliamentary system, are noted in my “Cohesion of British Parliamentary Parties,” this Review, Vol. 50 (June 1956), pp. 360–77Google Scholar.
36 Truman, David, “Federalism and the Party System,” Federalism Mature and Emergent, ed. by Macmahon, Arthur (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), pp. 115–36Google Scholar, reprinted by Polsby, Nelson, Dentler, Robert, and Smith, Paul, Politics and Social Life (Boston, 1963), pp. 513–27Google Scholar, with quotation at p. 522.
37 Lipset, S. M., “Democracy in Alberta,” The Canadian Forum, Vol. 34 (November 1954), pp. 175–77Google Scholar, and (December 1954) pp. 196–98, at p. 197. For a criticism of Lipset's view, see Wrong, Dennis H., “Parties and Voting in Canada,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 73 (September 1958), pp. 397–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lipset's own two-part article was in the form of a review of Macpherson's Democracy in Alberta (cited in note 11). Macpherson responded to the view in the same journal, Vol. 34 (January 1955), pp. 223–25.
38 Attempts to explain the third-party turn in Canada are made by Morton, W. L., The Progressive Party in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950), pp. 8–9Google Scholar, and by Macpherson (cited in note 11).
39 Lipson, Leslie, “Party Systems in the United Kingdom and the Older Commonwealth: Causes, Resemblances, and Variations,” Political Studies, Vol. 7 (February 1959), pp. 12–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 20.
40 Grumm, John G., “Theories of Electoral Systems,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2 (November 1958), pp. 357–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Mallory, J. R., “The Structure of Canadian Politics,” in Party Politics in Canada (cited in note 1), p. 26Google Scholar. Quebec's third-party movements have intervened less in the national arena than have those of the prairie provinces. This may well be the consequence of Quebec's relative size—large enough to be an effective bargainer within a major national party.
42 One conventional assumption, that the British system makes for less effective minority pressure on legislative policy output, has been most convincingly challenged by Pennock, J. Roland, “Agricultural Subsidies in England and the United States,” this Review, Vol. 56 (September 1962), pp. 621–33Google Scholar.
43 Reid, E. M., “The Rise of National Parties in Canada,” in Party Politics in Canada (cited in note 1), p. 20Google Scholar; and Quinn, Herbert F., “The Role of the Liberal Party in Recent Canadian Politics,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 68 (September 1953), pp. 396–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Dawson, R. MacGregor, William Lyon Mackenzie King (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), p. 319Google Scholar.
Comments
No Comments have been published for this article.