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The Canadian Political Cultures: Towards a Redefinition of the Nature of the Canadian Political System*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

John Wilson
John Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 438 - 483
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Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1974

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References

1 McRae, Kenneth D., “The Structure of Canadian History,” chap. 7 of Hartz, Louis, The Founding of New Societies (New York, 1964), 219.Google Scholar

2 Modern Democracies (London, 1921), I, 545.

3 Not everyone assumes this, of course. In their recent analysis of the nature and operation of the Canadian political system Van Loon and Whittington suggest that there is only one political culture in the country and that it may be described as “participant.” The Canadian Political System: Environment, Structure and Process (Toronto, 1971), 93.

4 See, for example, Almond, Gabriel A., “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, 18, no. 3 (Aug., 1956), 391–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an intriguing examination of the view that political cultural differences between distinct cultural groups may be more significant than differences between individual political systems, see Bertsch, Gary K. and Zaninovich, M. George, “A Factor-Analytic Method of Identifying Different Political Cultures: The Multinational Yugoslav Case,” Comparative Politics, 6, no. 2 (Jan. 1974), 219–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Thus, when it is said that the Anglo-American systems, for example, share a common political culture, what is really meant is that there are a number of political cultures which are so much alike we cannot distinguish between them. I leave unexamined the question of whether there may be distinctive political cultures within particular systems while conceding the possible existence of important political subcultures. It seems to me likely, however, that the differences in orientation to the political system which a more detailed analysis might reveal in the Canadian case between, let us say, northern and southern Ontario, will not be as important as the differences between, for example, Ontario as a whole and Newfoundland. It is a fact that residents of one part of an independent political system must obey the same laws as residents of another part of it and have not on that account the same freedom to express their differences as do the people of a different system. Moreover, in a number of important respects for example, the field of education – the experience of everyone within a particular system is the same, while potentially radically different from one system to another. In the Canadian case this is particularly true if the provinces are regarded as independent political communities. This suggests that there may be an underlying uniformity to the beliefs and values expressed within individual provinces which in the nature of the case is less likely to occur between several provinces let alone from one end of the country to the other.

6 This is the case not only with Pierre Trudeau's often-quoted essay on the origin of the political values of French Canadians, “Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 24, no. 3 (Aug. 1958), 297–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but also in comparative works such as Lipset, Seymour M., “Revolution and Counter-Revolution – the United States and Canada,” in The Revolutionary Theme in Contemporary America, ed. Ford, Thomas R. (Lexington, Ky., 1967), 21–64.Google Scholar Indeed, many studies based on national survey data make a distinction between French-speaking Canadians resident in Quebec and those living elsewhere in Canada, and often find differences between their perceptions which suggest that people are more likely to accept the dominant values of their territory than their race. See, for example, Johnstone, John C., Young People's Images of Canadian Society (Ottawa, 1969)Google Scholar, a study prepared for the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

7 See, for example, Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems (Quebec, 1956), II, 142.

8 For a recent analysis which takes this view of the operation of the modern Canadian federal system see Simeon, Richard, Federal-Provincial Diplomacy: The Making of Recent Policy in Canada (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 13. There is some evidence that this has always been the relationship between the provinces, that is to say, that each has had a degree of independence since the beginning analogous to the position of a nation within the international political system. See Kear, A.R., “The Canadian Confederation as a Quasi-International System of Constitutional Government,” paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Winnipeg, 1970.Google Scholar

9 A recent example of exactly this kind of refusal by Ottawa to use its constitutional powers is the decision of the Liberal government (despite strong and authoritative appeals from members of the parliamentary caucus) not to seek a declaration under the provisions of section 92, head 10(c), of the British North America Act to deal with Alberta's policy on the price of oil.

There are other ways in which the provinces may be held to be so legally tied to the federal government that they cannot be said to be independent entities. A particularly interesting illustration of such an argument can be found in the history of the Manitoba government's attempt to introduce the initiative and referendum in 1916. The legislation was struck down ultimately by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the curious ground that it was beyond the power of the Manitoba legislature to pass laws which would have the effect of overriding the reserve power of the lieutenant governor since the British North America Act expressly reserved treatment of his position to the federal government. The case can be found in Annex 3 to the O'Connor, Report (Ottawa, 1939), 86–9.Google Scholar

10 The data in Table i are taken from the 1968 national election survey. I am grateful to John Meisel for permission to use this and other material from that study in this analysis. Prince Edward Island is excluded from the table because the number of cases there is too small, although it exhibits the same pattern as other provinces. Comparative data from the 1965 survey may be found in Schwartz, Mildred A., Politics and Territory: The Sociology of Regional Persistence in Canada (Montreal, 1974), 217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is still the case, of course, that people are much more inclined, when asked, to say that the federal government handles “the most important problems facing Canada.” In a recent study carried out in Manitoba, the details of which are given in note 56, only 24 per cent of the sample answered the question on which Table i is based in favour of the federal government, while 53 per cent named the provincial government.

11 See Johnstone, Young People's Images of Canadian Society, 19. Young people in this study were rather more oriented to their provincial governments than appears to be the case with the population as a whole.

12 Perhaps the most important contribution to the discussion in recent years, and one to which the present analysis owes a great deal, is the perceptive essay by Black, Edwin R. and Cairns, Alan C., “A Different Perspective on Canadian Federalism,” Canadian Public Administration, 9, no. 1 (March 1966), 27–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 In an intriguing way Alan Cairns’ observation that the ability of national political parties to acquire an adequate understanding of Canada is affected by their failure to elect members from certain areas of the country may also be seen as evidence of these circumstances. His argument implies that regional differences are so sharp they can only be interpreted to others by people from the area in question. See “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada, 1921–1965,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1, no. 1 (March 1968), 69–70.

14 “Cabinet Government in the Provinces of Canada,” McGill Law Journal, 3, no. 2 (Spring 1957), 200–1.

15 In the regulations governing the redistribution of electoral districts and the control of election expenses, for example, and generally in the degree of freedom which the government party has to serve its own interest, there are important differences between the provinces. For the details see Qualter, T.H., The Election Process in Canada (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar, passim.

16 I have deliberately used the words “less advanced” and “more advanced” to avoid any implication that movement along the scale necessarily involves some kind of qualitative improvement. Nor do I accept the view that political development is either directed towards or ends at the achievement of a liberal democratic society. I take it for granted that political development will go on forever.

17 Even this formulation is not without its critics. See, for example, Moul, William B., “On Getting Nothing for Something: A Note on Causal Models of Political Development,” Comparative Political Studies, 7, no. 2 (July 1974), 139–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 It may be argued, of course, that economic relationships are not as fundamental as I am suggesting, and are in particular not likely to be even the principal cause of political attitudes and values. My experience is that this question, that is to say, whether or not one is an economic determinist, cannot be finally settled by argument alone. Those who wish to say that economic relationships are not as important as other relationships are therefore free to do so, and to seek ways of combatting the very considerable historical evidence to the contrary.

19 See the fascinating analysis of data from the 1965 and 1968 national surveys by Richard Simeon and David J. Elkins, above. Although both studies contained a number of questions dealing with attitudes and orientations to the political system neither focused on the provincial context in the way which seems to me necessary to pursue the question of regional political cultures.

20 See Epstein, Leon D., “A Comparative Study of Canadian Parties,” American Political Science Review, 58, no. 1 (March 1964), 46–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Parties such as Social Credit with generally very small percentage shares of the national vote have been excluded from Figure i although their addition would not materially alter the picture presented. All figures referring to Canada (i, iv, v, vi, vii, viii, ix, and x) are based on the sources given in Table iii. Figures referring to Great Britain and the United States (ii, iii, and iv) are based on the sources given in Table ii.

22 Although the provinces are usually employed as subdivisions of the national system out of convenience there is some evidence that they have become the most significant unit of variation in federal elections since the end of the Second World War. See Jackman, Robert W., “Political Parties, Voting, and National Integration: The Canadian Case,” Comparative Politics, 4, no. 4 (July 1972), 511–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 See Meisel, John, “Recent Changes in Canadian Parties,” in Party Politics in Canada, 2nd ed., ed. Thorburn, Hugh G. (Scarborough, Ontario, 1967), 34.Google Scholar

24 For an example of this kind of analysis in the Canadian case see Rasmussen, Jorgen, “A Research Note on Canadian Party Systems,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 33, no. 1 (Feb. 1967), 98–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A much more useful treatment of the question may be found in Elkins, David J., “The Measurement of Party Competition,” APSR, 68, no. 2 (June 1974), 682–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See, for example, the discussion of the question in Blondel, J., “Party Systems and Patterns of Government in Western Democracies,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1, no. 2 (June 1968), 184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Angus Campbell says that the presidential elections of the 1930s involved “the most dramatic reversal of party alignments in this century.” See “A Classification of the Presidential Elections,” in Campbell, Angus et al., Elections and the Political Order (New York, 1966), 74.Google Scholar

27 In the case of Great Britain the early stages of the adjustment I am describing are easily recognized in Disraeli's attempt to “dish the Whigs” by extending the franchise and legislating for the protection of the trade unions in the 1870s, and in T.H. Green's doctrine of “positive liberalism” which began to find widespread support around the turn of the century.

28 Since the question has often been debated in Canada it should, perhaps, be noticed that the account I have given of the development of the Type 2 two-party system does not necessarily predict that the liberal party will be the one to be eliminated. Apart from any confusion which may exist between party names and the characterization I have made of the ideologies of the older parties, all that I am claiming occurs is that the least adjustable of the older parties disappears in these circumstances. It is arguable, of course, that the party of the master manufacturers (which broadly corresponds to the nineteenth-century British Liberal party) is more likely to be eliminated because its philosophy, being associated with interests which are directly opposed to the “emancipation” of the working class, is less easily adjustable than that of the party of the landed gentry. The latter had, as has been suggested, an early association with the developing working class which was founded on a much more principled position than was the essentially expedient link which the Liberals had with labour in Britain towards the end of the nineteenth century. The fact that in almost every instance of elimination it has been the liberal centre party which has disappeared suggests that something of this kind is the case.

22 In the United States, of course, the institutional system – and in particular the comparative freedom of action which individual members of Congress have to speak their own minds rather than toe the party line – works against the likely success of third parties. Still, there is no reason on the face of things why parties in parliamentary systems should not be able to adjust to new circumstances. In this connection it may be worth noticing that some observers have ascribed the greater apparent capacity of the American system for accommodation to the fact that “the major parties are controlled by shrewd and flexible politicians.” See Herring, Pendleton, The Politics of Democracy (New York, 1940), 180.Google Scholar

30 Blondel concluded from his analysis of several Western systems that three-party systems were essentially transitional in character. “Party Systems and Patterns of Government in Western Democracies,” 185.

31 In this connection it is useful to make a distinction between a legislative and an electoral three-party system, particularly in a parliamentary democracy. See the discussion of the question and some of its consequences in Wilson, John and Hoffman, David, “Ontario: A Three-Party System in Transition,” in Canadian Provincial Politics: The Party Systems of the Ten Provinces, ed. Robin, Martin (Scarborough, Ont., 1972), 236–8.Google Scholar The fact that the British Liberal party has lately recovered a good deal of the ground it lost in the 1930s does not seriously alter the impact of this analysis. Where such changes occur it may be presumed that one or the other or both of the currently dominant parties has ceased to perform its function adequately. Commentary on recent British politics suggests that this is exactly what is happening.

32 Although I do not propose to test the proposition here, given what I understand to be the dominant features of preindustrial or beginning industrial society it might be expected that the stage of development represented by the existence of a Type 1 two-party system would exhibit – at the level of the political culture – much less inclination to political involvement, much less feeling for the ordinary citizen's ability to influence the decisions of the system, and greater willingness to defer to the political elites of the system. In this respect, although I find the ethnocentricity of their argument quite objectionable, it seems to me probable that what Almond and Powell call a “subject” political culture corresponds to this stage in the process. It would then follow that what they term a “participant” political culture would roughly correspond to the conditions I have in mind when I speak of the advanced stage of economic development. The transitional stage, it may therefore be presumed, would be marked by traces of both a “subject” and a “participant” political culture. See their discussion of these concepts in Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston, 1966), 50–72.

There is, of course, another kind of possible ethnocentricity in the view of things I have been elaborating. It may be said to be much too obviously tied to the experience of Great Britain to be generally applicable. But there is nothing in what I have said that requires that the process will have exactly the features I have given it. All that is really being claimed is that the development of industrial society is inevitable and that when that comes there will be new pressures on the system's institutions which will force a change. In the case of a polity without any prior history of representative government it is quite possible that industrialization will be administered in the only way known to it – namely autocratically – and that a quite different set of consequences will follow. The pattern I have been describing is, of course, for the development of industrial society in a political system which does have a prior history of representative government. The charge of ethnocentricity – on account of advancing an argument which specifically links industrial development to Western capitalism and liberal democracy – can thus be dismissed.

33 It has been argued that both the United States and Great Britain may be viewed as aggregations of several different systems. See Ranney, Austin and Kendall, Willmoore, Democracy and the American Party System (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 7 and 8; and Rose, Richard, The United Kingdom as a Multi-National State (Glasgow, 1970)Google Scholar, Occasional Paper No. 6, University of Strathclyde Survey Research Centre.

34 In the 1971 provincial election in Saskatchewan the ndp and the Liberals together won 98 percent of all votes cast.

35 The political consequence of different views of their economic independence being entertained by individuals in the same occupation is nicely illustrated in the Canadian case by a comparison of the voting behaviour of fishermen on the east and west coasts. Analysis of election returns at both the federal and provincial levels in British Columbia shows that fishing communities tend to vote overwhelmingly for the ndp. In the Atlantic provinces, on the other hand, there is no evidence at all of this kind of behaviour, presumably because the organization of the fishing industry on the east coast has left most fishermen still believing that they control their own livelihood. In British Columbia, of course, the canneries have effectively employed most fishermen for some years. See the discussion in Copes, Parzival, “The Fishermen's Vote in Newfoundland,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 3, no. 4 (December 1970), 579–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 The same argument is effectively the thesis of Lipset's, SeymourAgrarian Socialism: The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (Berkeley, 1950).Google Scholar See also the valuable later studies of the province which are published in the Anchor edition of Lipset's work (New York, 1968), especially Sanford Silverstein, “Occupational Class and Voting Behavior: Electoral Support of a Left-Wing Protest Movement in a Period of Prosperity,” 435–79.

37 I hesitate to use the word “participant” to describe the kind of political culture which further investigation might be expected to show exists in Saskatchewan, but if it is interpreted with the caution suggested in note 32 it will do.

38 The data for Newfoundland prior to Confederation and to the suspension of responsible government in 1934 show much the same kind of pattern as the modern period except for the brief success just before the First World War of Coaker's Fishermen's Protective Union. On this see Noel, S.J.R., Politics in Newfoundland (Toronto, 1971)Google Scholar, chap. 8.

39 See J. Murray Beck, “The Party System in Nova Scotia: Tradition and Conservatism,” in Robin, Canadian Provincial Politics, 178–9. For a description of the conflict between the ufo and the Independent Labor Party in Ontario see Hoffman, David, “Intra-Party Democracy: A Case Study,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 27, no. 2 (May 1961), 223–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It may be observed that the history of the four Atlantic provinces since that time exhibits no serious attempt by the older parties to accommodate even these interests in the fashion which was followed in the United States.

40 In other words, to employ the language of Almond and Powell again without necessarily accepting their account of its meaning, it is possible that the Atlantic provinces are examples of societies with “subject” political cultures.

41 See Neary, Peter, “Democracy in Newfoundland: A Comment,” Journal of Canadian Studies, 4, no. 1 (Feb. 1969), 37–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Quinn, Herbert F., The Union Nationale: A Study in Quebec Nationalism (Toronto, 1963), 9–14.Google Scholar

43 Pinard, Maurice, “Working Class Politics: An Interpretation of the Quebec Case,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7, no. 2 (May 1970), 107.Google Scholar

44 Although the strength of the Parti Québécois in 1973 was concentrated in dominantly urban or industrial constituencies (as is the case with the ndp in Ontario) survey data indicate that its supporters are still just as likely to be equally divided between the middle class and the working class as they were in 1970, according to Hamilton, Richard, “The Recent Quebec Elections: An Analysis of the Electorate,” paper presented at a faculty-student seminar, University of Waterloo, February, 1974.Google Scholar See also Table 3.8 in Lemieux, Vincentet al., Une élection de réalignement: l'élection générate du 29 avril au Québec (Montreal, 1970), pp. 64–65Google Scholar; and Jenson, Jane and Regenstreif, Peter, “Some Dimensions of Partisan Choice in Quebec, 1969,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 3, no. 2 (June 1970), 308–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 The special scheme of alternative voting which was enacted by the coalition government for the 1952 provincial election – to enable the older parties to protect themselves while each ran its own candidates – must have added to this sense of the urgency of the need to keep the ccf from office.

46 See Quo, F. Quei, “Split Ticket Voting in Alberta: ‘Amphibious Voting’ and its Implications,” paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Calgary, 1968.Google Scholar

47 It may be worth noticing that similar treatment of the federal Social Credit vote in Quebec would establish that province as quite clearly a case of a Type 1 two-party system.

48 It is arguable, although this analysis appears to demonstrate that it is not likely to be the case, that Alberta is just entering the stage of transition and that the Social Credit party – having been defeated after so long in office – will disappear to be replaced by the ndp in opposition to the Conservatives. The suggestion is made by J.A. Long and F.Q. Quo in “Alberta: One Party Dominance,” in Robin, Canadian Provincial Politics, 2. It should be recognized, however, that the initial success in 1935 of Social Credit, while no doubt due to a reaction against a discredited left, was by no means welcomed by the urban middle class. This suggests that in the early period the party's domination of Alberta politics should be seen as left-wing pressure on the system which was later absorbed by the accommodation of conflicting interests which the post-1945 transformation of Social Credit policy in the province represents. For a good overview of the whole period see Thomas Flanagan, “Electoral Cleavages in Alberta during the Social Credit Reign, 1935–1971,” unpublished manuscript.

49 See Mills, Donald L., “The Occupational Composition of the Prairie Provinces: A Regional-National Comparison,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 6, series 4, section 2 (June 1968), 229–43.Google Scholar

50 If there are only two the division should probably be made at the Ottawa River, on the ground that Quebec is not yet sufficiently into the transitional period to be regarded as a developed political system. Employing the language of Almond and Powell once more it is arguable that Newfoundland has what they term a “parochial” political culture; that the three Maritime provinces have “subject” political cultures; that Quebec is still more “subject” than “participant” but nonetheless quite different from the Atlantic provinces; that Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia are more “participant” than “subject”; and that Alberta and Saskatchewan are entirely “participant.”

51 It is worth recording that a variable sampling ratio was employed in the design of the 1974 federal election study, with the result that for the first time an adequate number of cases for a detailed analysis will be available in the smaller provinces.

52 The data in Table v are taken from the 1968 national survey.

53 The occupation data collected for respondents in the 1968 survey are difficult to collapse into a suitable measurement of objective social class.

54 A discussion of the nature of the measurements shown in Tables vi and ix may be found in Coleman, James S., Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (New York, 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 6. The values associated with each variable in the tables are estimates of the effect of each upon support for the party in question. These are calculated in each case by averaging the percentage differences in each pair of controlled comparisons shown in Tables v, vii, and viii. The summary measurement for each province for each independent variable is simply the sum of individual effects for each party divided by the number of parties.

55 The effect of social class in Saskatchewan is, however, rather greater than in the Atlantic provinces or Quebec, which is what the theory predicts. Another kind of study altogether assigns the greatest degree of class voting of any province to Saskatchewan. By devising a measure based on respondents’ perceptions of the class character of each of the parties Richard Ogmundson arrived at a comparative rate of class voting for the provinces, using the 1965 data, which fits the requirements of the developmental theory perfectly. See his “Social Class and Canadian Politics: A Reinterpretation,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1972, chap. 6.

56 The Ontario survey was carried out on behalf of the Ontario ndp early in 1967 and is reported in greater detail in Wilson and Hoffman, “Ontario: A Three-Party System in Transition.” The Manitoba study was based on a stratified area probability sample of 858 residents of the province (except for the far north) eligible to vote in the 1973 provincial election and was carried out in March 1973 under the direction of the author and Joachim Surich. The sample was weighted to 1109 cases to compensate for Winnipeg having been undersampled in relation to the rest of the province.

57 The data for Ontario in Table x are taken from a complete survey of candidates for the three parties in the 1967 provincial election carried out by the author and David Hoffman. The occupation data for New Brunswick and Saskatchewan are taken from the relevant reports of their chief electoral officers (the data have not been so reported for Saskatchewan since 1964) and the religious affiliation data are from the Canadian Parliamentary Guide.

58 See Porter, John, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto, 1965), 374CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Horowitz, Gad, “Toward the Democratic Class Struggle,” Journal of Canadian Studies, 1, no. 3 (Nov. 1966), 3–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 John Meisel, “Recent Changes in Canadian Parties,” 34.

60 Careless, J.M.S., “ ‘Limited Identities’ in Canada,” Canadian Historical Review, 50, no. 1 (March 1969), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar