Political Ideologies In Canada

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.

Political Ideologies in Canada is a multi-authored introduction to the history, evolution, and current reality of Canadian political ideology and is especially relevant to those familiar with Parties, Leaders and Ideologies in Canada (McGraw-Hill, 1996) or Politica Parties, Leaders and Ideologies in Canada (1974, 1983, 1990) by Colin Campbell and William Christian. Thoroughly updated and expanded, Political Ideologies in Canada reconceptualizes and modernizes the foundational knowledge of these earlier texts for anew generation. Divided into two sections: section one demonstrates the relevance of ideology in multiple contexts and introduces students to core traditional ideologies including forms of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and social democracy. Section two explores ideological currents such as feminism, nationalism, populism, fascism, and environmentalism, as well as Indigenous perspectives on political ideologies. Focused on the Canadian context, this volume includes multiple perspectives layered with Canadian history, thinkers, ideas, politics, and ideologies. Political Ideologies in Canada features a robust and explanatory introduction, a glossary, and supplementary essay questions for instructors and is ideal for introductory political science courses.

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, grade: 1,7, Free University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: Canada and the United States of America have equally developed a form of structural federalism, both use a single-member plurality election system and have similar social and economic class structures. In contrast to the two-party tradition of the US in a presidential system, Canada has developed a multiparty parliamentary system in which the legislative parties are cohesive and disciplined due to the historical influence of British Westminster System. In general party identification has been defined as “an attachment to a party that helps the citizen locate him/herself and others on the political landscape.” The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility of shifts in ideological party identification with respect to the significantly different party systems in Canada and the United States, with special focus on the time span between 1984 and 2000. The central question discussed in this paper is whether or not there has been a significant change in partisan ideology in Canada compared to the United States between 1984 and 2000, and whether Canadian Partisans are more volatile compared to their southern counterparts in terms of ideological party identification.

In Ideological Perspectives on Canada, Patricia Marchak builds on her earlier descriptions of Canadian reality - its liberalism and socialism - to argue that today's corporatism differs from its forerunners in both its values and its definition of society. 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.

Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal provides the reader with a sense of the history, structure, supporting arguments, and internal complexities of the major modern "isms"–liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and fascism–and other recently emerging ideologies, such as environmentalism.