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Inside the Local Campaign reveals what goes on in constituency campaigns during a Canadian election. For decades, the media has focused primarily on the national campaign and party leaders, and the practice of canvassing for votes by candidates and their supporters has been seen as more tradition than science. But things have evolved with digital media. Local-level campaigning is more fashionable – and critical for gathering data that can be used post-election. Using the 2021 federal campaign as an anchor, an impressive collection of authors and practitioners discusses local-level campaigning in electoral districts across the country, highlights local trends and on-the-ground roles, and discloses hidden details about how local campaigns are run.
Canadians often see politicians as little more than trained seals who vote on command and repeat robotic talking points. Politicians are torn by dilemmas of loyalty to party versus loyalty to voters. Whipped examines the hidden ways that political parties exert control over elected members of Canadian legislatures. Drawing on extensive interviews with politicians and staffers across the country, award-winning author Alex Marland explains why Members of Parliament and provincial legislators toe the party line, and shows how party discipline has expanded into message discipline. He recounts stories from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s drive for caucus cohesion in the 1980s through to the turmoil that the SNC-Lavalin crisis wrought on Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party in 2019. From caucus meetings to vote instructions, this book exposes how democracy works in our age of instant communication and political polarization. Filled with political tips, Whipped is a must-read for anyone interested in the real world of Canadian politics.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of populism on the European democratic polity. In the last two decades, European democracies have come under strain amid growing populism. By asserting the superiority of the majority over the law, of direct democracy over representation, and claiming the necessity to defend national sovereignty against foreign interferences, the populist conception of democracy is in stark contrast with the longstanding Western notion of liberal democracy. This volume investigates populist attempts to radically change what Bobbio called the “rules of the game” of democracy from an eminently legal perspective. Weaving together normative and empiri...
Political parties exist at the centre of democratic politics, but where does power lie within them, and how is it exercised? The Political Party in Canada explores the inner workings of these complex organizations through an examination of the composition and roles of key party actors (members and activists, candidates, local associations, donors, central officials, and members of Parliament), as well as the interactions between them. Contemporary parties play a key role in recruiting and selecting candidates and leaders, waging election campaigns, and organizing legislatures. Drawing on a rich trove of data from the 2015 and 2019 federal elections, this book offers a comprehensive examinati...
Ontario is the most populous province in Canada and perhaps the most complex. It encompasses a range of regions, cities, and local cultures, while also claiming a long-standing pre-eminence in Canadian federalism. The second edition of The Politics of Ontario aims to understand this unique and ever-changing province. The new edition captures the growing diversity of Ontario, with new chapters on race and Ontario politics, Black Ontarians, and the relationship of Indigenous Peoples and Ontario. With contributors from across the province, the book analyses the political institutions of Ontario, key areas such as gender, Northern Ontario, the intricate Ontario political economy, and public policy challenges with the environment, labour relations, governing the GTA, and health care. Completely refreshed from the earlier edition, it emphasizes the evolution of Ontario and key public policy challenges facing the province. In doing so, The Politics of Ontario provides readers with a thorough understanding of this complicated province.
Absent Mandate develops the crucial concept of policy mandates, distinguished from other interpretations of election outcomes, and addresses the disconnect between election issues and government actions. Emphasizing Canadian federal elections between 1993 and 2015, the book examines the Chretien/Martin, Harper and Trudeau governments and the campaigns that brought them to power. Using data from the Canadian Election Studies and other major surveys, Absent Mandate documents the longstanding volatility in Canadian voting behaviour. This volatility reflects the flexibility of voters' partisan attachments, the salience of party leader images, and campaigns dominated by discussion of broad national problems and leaders rather than by coherent sets of policy proposals. The failure of elections to provide genuine policy mandates stimulates public discontent with the political process and widens the gap between the promise and the performance of Canadian democracy.
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.
Open Federalism Revisited provides a systematic, encompassing assessment of Canadian federalism in the "Harper era," offering a fresh perspective in federalism scholarship.
The New NDP is the definitive account of the evolution of the New Democratic Party’s political marketing strategy in the early twenty-first century. In 2011, the federal NDP achieved its greatest electoral success – becoming the official opposition under Jack Layton’s leadership. David McGrane argues that the key to the party’s electoral success of 2011 lies in the moderation of its ideology and modernization of its campaign structures. Those changes brought the party closer to governing than ever before but ultimately not into power. McGrane then poses a difficult question: Was remaking the NDP message and revitalizing its campaign model the right choice after all, considering it fell to its perennial third-party spot in 2015? The New NDP examines Canada’s NDP at a pivotal time in its history and provides lessons for progressive parties on how to win elections in the age of the internet, big data, and social media.
Canada's representative democracy is confronting important challenges. At the top of the list is the growing inability of the national government to perform its most important roles: namely mapping out collective actions that resonate in all regions as well as enforcing these measures. Others include Parliament's failure to carry out important responsibilities, an activist judiciary, incessant calls for greater transparency, the media's rapidly changing role, and a federal government bureaucracy that has lost both its way and its standing. Arguing that Canadians must reconsider the origins of their country in order to understand why change is difficult and why they continue to embrace region...