Political Government

"Canada's prime minister is a dictator." "The Sun King of Canadian government." "More powerful than any other chief executive of any other democratic country." These kinds of claims are frequently made about Canada's leader – especially when the prime minister's party holds a majority government in Parliament. But is there any truth to these arguments? At the Centre of Government not only presents a comprehensively researched work on the structure of political power in Canada but also offers a first-hand view of the inner workings of the Canadian federal government. Ian Brodie – former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former executive director of the Conservative Party of Canada – argues that the various workings of the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office, the cabinet, parliamentary committees, and the role of backbench members of Parliament undermine propositions that the prime minister has evolved into the role of an autocrat, with unchecked control over the levers of political power. He corrects the dominant thinking that Canadian prime ministers hold power without limits over their party, caucus, cabinet, Parliament, the public service, and the policy agenda. Citing examples from his time in government and from Canadian political history he argues that in Canada's evolving political system, with its roots in the pre-Confederation era, there are effective checks on executive power, and that the golden age of Parliament and the backbencher is likely now. Drawing on a vast body of work on governance and the role of the executive branch of government, At the Centre of Government is a fact-based primer on the workings of Canadian government and sobering second thoughts about many proposals for reform.

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.

What does it really take to govern effectively? Michael Wernick, a career public servant with experience working at the highest levels of Canadian government, shares tips, insider knowledge, and essential advice in this first-ever practical governance handbook. From choosing a Cabinet and getting the most out of it, to delivering on the prime minister’s mandate letter, readers will get a close-up look at how day-to-day political work actually happens. Wernick’s three decades "in the room" with prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and other members of government make this a must-read not only for politicians, but for anyone who aspires to understand them.

This book examines the causes of effective climate policies in the US, through statistical analysis and three longitudinal case studies.

Completely revised and enlarged edition (1951) of a book which has become a standard work on comparative government. This edition brings up to date the material on institutions and practices of government in Britain, the United States, and Canada, and analyses more fully the relationship of democratic institutions and practices to the essentials of the democratic creed.

Was Canada’s Dominion experiment of 1867 an experiment in political domination? Looking to taxes provides the answer: they are a privileged measure of both political agency and political domination. To pay one’s taxes was the sine qua non of entry into political life, but taxes are also the point of politics, which is always about the control of wealth. Modern states have everywhere been born of tax revolts, and Canada was no exception. Heaman shows that the competing claims of the propertied versus the people are hardwired constituents of Canadian political history. Tax debates in early Canada were philosophically charged, politically consequential dialogues about the relationship between wealth and poverty. Extensive archival research, from private papers, commissions, the press, and all levels of government, serves to identify a rising popular challenge to the patrician politics that were entrenched in the Constitutional Act of 1867 under the credo “Peace, Order, and good Government.” Canadians wrote themselves a new constitution in 1867 because they needed a new tax deal, one that reflected the changing balance of regional, racial, and religious political accommodations. In the fifty years that followed, politics became social politics and a liberal state became a modern administrative one. But emerging conceptions of fiscal fairness met with intense resistance from conservative statesmen, culminating in 1917 in a progressive income tax and the bitterest election in Canadian history. Tax, Order, and Good Government tells the story of Confederation without exceptionalism or misplaced sentimentality and, in so doing, reads Canadian history as a lesson in how the state works. Tax, Order, and Good Government follows the money and returns taxation to where it belongs: at the heart of Canada’s political, economic, and social history.

Political Management lays out the core tools to manage government, campaigns and parties. The first book to combine management concepts with politics and government, it provides core theories for what Political Planning, Political HR, Political Organising, Political Leadership and Political Reviewing involve, illustrated with high level political practitioner interviews, examples and political documents. The text presents the 4 Ds of Political Management - Deliberating, Designing, Doing and Dancing - to convey that Political Management is more of a dance than a march. Even presidents and prime ministers do not have enough formal authority to control the myriad of practitioners, players, processes and policies involved in 21st century governance. In this book, the author demonstrates why political practitioners in campaign teams, parties, government departments and political offices need political management tools to utilise the resources they have available and overcome multiple obstacles that practical politics presents. By offering a clear sense of what political management involves and providing the theoretical frameworks to be used in empirical research, this book will stimulate significant future study. It will be invaluable to practitioners, scholars and students in politics, government, policy, leadership, management, public administration, and political management.