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Region, Class and Political Culture in Canada*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Michael D. Ornstein ,
H. Michael Stevenson  and
A. Paul Williams
Michael D. Ornstein
Affiliation:
York University
H. Michael Stevenson
Affiliation:
York University
A. Paul Williams
Affiliation:
York University
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 227 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1980

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References

1 Simeon, Richard and Elkins, David J., “Regional Political Cultures in Canada,” this JOURNAL 7 (1974), 397–437Google Scholar.

2 Ibid. The scale of political participation used by these authors includes three items referring directly to federal election campaigns, and one general item relating to interest in “what is going on in politics.”

3 Schwartz, Mildred, Politics and Territory: The Sociology of Regional Persistence in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Simeon and Elkins clearly acknowledge that both class and region have important effects on efficacy, trust and participation when the other is controlled; that arguments to the effect that either one or the other factor is uniquely important are shortsighted, and that “class may explain some dependent variables better than regionalism does and vice-versa” (416–17). Their analysis is, nevertheless, restricted substantively by the limited scope of their dependent variables, and methodologically by their use of analysis of variance. They confine their attention, in the latter context, to a table of F tests for the significance of the main and interaction effects on their dependent variables of region and a measure of education or subjective class identification in two-way analysis of variance (429–31). They argue that the limitation to two-way analysis of variance and the inability to report the relative magnitude of the effects in terms of variance explained is due to small and in some cases zero cell sizes. There are, however, procedures for dealing with such problems in analysis of variance, and the computation of the F statistics they report is based necessarily on analysis that would generate estimates of the variance explained. Finally, their interpretations and conclusions are weighted in favour of the significance of region, with the peculiar caveat, following the observation of very few significant interaction effects, that “class does affect basic orientations, and… its effect seems to be different in different regions” (431).

5 See Elkins, David J. and Blake, Donald E, “Voting Research in Canada: Problems and Prospects,” this JOURNAL 8 (1975), 313–25Google Scholar, especially 321–22.

6 For discussion of this issue see Ellen, and Wood, Neil, “Canada and the American Science of Politics,” in Lumsden, Ian (ed.), Close the 49th Parallel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Butler, Michael and Shugarman, David,“ Canadian Nationalism, Americanization and Scholarly Values,” Journal of Canadian Studies 5 (1970), 12–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smiley, Donald V., “Must Canadian Political Science be a Miniature Replica?” Journal of Canadian Studies 9 (1974), 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cairns, Alan C., “Political Science in Canada and the Americanization Issue,” this JOURNAL 8 (1975), 191–234Google Scholar.

7 Porter, John, The Vertical Mosaic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Ibid., 25–27.

9 See Horowitz, Gad, Canadian Labour in Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968)Google Scholar, chap. 1, and his “Towards a Democratic Class Struggle,” in Lloyd, Trevor and McLeod, Jack (eds.), Agenda 1970: Prospects for a Creative Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 241–55Google Scholar.

10 Smiley, Donald V., Canada in Question: Federalism in the Seventies (2nd ed.; Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976), 101Google Scholar.

11 Simeon, Richard, “Regionalism and Canadian Political Institutions,” Queens Quarterly 82 (1975), 509Google Scholar.

12 Cairns, Alan C., “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada, 1921–1965,” this JOURNAL 1 (1968), 55–80Google Scholar.

13 Executive federalism has had the consequence, according to Smiley, of “diluting the accountability of governments to their respective legislatures and electorates,” and of decreasing the importance of political parties which are to a significant degree “locked out” of the decision-making forums of executive federalism. See Smiley, Canada in Question, 34 and 107. Simeon (“Regionalism and Canadian Political Institutions”) has argued that the norm of cabinet solidarity limits the ability of ministers in the federal government to act, at least publicly, as regional spokesmen with the result that provincial governments are given a particular advantage in the promotion of local or regional interests.

14 The clearest statement of the independence of class and culture, and of the autonomy of government, is contained in the work of Cairns. “Individuals can relate to the party system in several ways, but the two most fundamental are class and sectionalism. The two are antithetical, for one emphasizes the geography of residence, while the other stresses stratification distinctions, for which residence is irrelevant” (“The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada”). And in an article attacking the reduction of politics to sociological and economic determinants, he writes: “If socialism is about equality, contemporary Canadian federalism is about governments, governments that are possessed of massive human and financial resources, that are driven by purposes fashioned by elites, and that accord high priority to their long term institutional self-interests” (“The Governments and Societies of Canadian Federalism,” this JOURNAL 10 [1977], 695–726)Google Scholar.

15 For Marx, the exclusive conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, expected in mature capitalist society, is modified by pre-capitalist social forces in the transition to a mature capitalist economy. The hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the solidarity of the proletariat are checked by the survival of precapitalist classes and institutions. The development of capitalism accentuates regional inequality—between town and country and between central and peripheral areas of development. Conflict arises out of the contradictory interests of the expanding and increasingly dominant capitalist society as opposed to the surviving but incorporated precapitalist society. Aristocratic survivals in the institutions of government remain rooted in peripheral geographical areas—for example, the English aristocracy in Ireland and the Junkers in East Germany. In the absence of effective alliances between aristocracy and bourgeoisie in such situations, or in the absence of rapid expansion of the capitalist economy leading to the dominance of the bourgeoisie, the development of liberal class democracy is restrained, and the class character of the state and national politics is complicated. Class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is contained, for example, in the Bonapartist state, which vacillates between policies favouring its popular base—the peasantry—and its political/financial overseer—the bourgeoisie; and in the Bismarkean state, which pursues national unity and state economic initiatives as a counter to both aristocratic and working class interests. For a useful introduction to the development of Marx's thought on the “national question” see Lichtheim, George, Marxism (London: Praeger, 1961)Google Scholar, part 3. See also Davis, Horace B., Nationalism and Socialism: Marxist and Labour Theories of Nationalism to 1917 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

16 Innis, Harold, The Fur Trade in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Political Economy in the Modern State (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1946)Google Scholar; and Empire and Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

17 A good summary of this argument is in Clement, Wallace, The Canadian Corporate Elite: An Analysis of Economic Power (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975)Google Scholar, chaps. 2 and 3. See also Naylor, R. T., The History of Canadian Business, 1867–1914, 2 vols. (Toronto: Lorimer, 1975)Google Scholar; and several of the essays in Laxer, Robert M. (ed.), (Canada) Ltd. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973)Google Scholar.

18 As Stevenson has argued, “The specialized nature of many provincial economies and the concentration of industries in particular provinces is highly conducive to this kind of conflict…. The provincial state [spoke] on behalf of the narrow and parochial interest of one segment of the bourgeoisie, while Ottawa [spoke] on behalf of the more general and long-term interests of the ruling class as a whole.” Garth Stevenson, “Federalism and the Political Economy of the Canadian State,” in Panitch, Leo (ed.), The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 90–91Google Scholar.

19 The basic logic of the argument was laid out in Macpherson's analysis of the power of the Social Credit party in Alberta (Macpherson, C. B., Democracy in Alberta: The Theory and Practice of a Quasi-Party System [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953])Google Scholar. A similar logic is evident in explanations of the rise to power more recently of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta and of the Parti Quebecois. See Henry Milner, “The Decline and Fall of the Quebec Liberal Regime: Contradictions in the Modern Quebec State,” and Larry Pratt, “The State and Province Building: Alberta's Development Strategy,” chapters 4 and 5 in Leo Panitch (ed.), The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power.

20 See Wilson, John, “The Canadian Political Cultures: Towards a Redefinition of the Nature of the Canadian Political System,” this JOURNAL 7 (1974), 438–83Google Scholar.

21 Stimulating new contributions to the analysis of local or individual level expressions of class and regional interests are contained in Wallace Clement, “A Political Economy of Regionalism in Canada,” and Carl J. Cuneo, “A Class Perspective on Regionalism,” chapters 7 and 9 in Glenday, Daniel, Guindon, Hubert, AND Turowetz, Allan(eds.), Modernization and lite Canadian Slate (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978)Google Scholar.

22 Alford, Robert R., Party and Society: The Anglo-American Democracies (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963)Google Scholar.

23 Pammett has shown the bias toward regional consciousness and identification with provincial politics in Canada, and its resilience in the face of economic and demographic change. He shows that respondents who lived in larger communities, who had lived in another province, who were younger, or who had larger family incomes were more rather than less likely to exhibit regional consciousness than other respondents. See Pammett, Jon H., “Public Orientation to Regions and Provinces,” in Bellamy, David J., Pammett, Jon H. and Rowat, Donald C. (eds.), The Provincial Political Systems: Comparative Essays (Toronto: Methuen, 1976), 86–99Google Scholar.

24 Cairns, “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada.”

25 Schwartz, Mildred, “Canadian Voting Behavior,” in Rose, Richard (ed.), Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook (New York: Free Press, 1974), 589Google Scholar. Maurice Pinard makes a similar argument in explaining electoral support of right-wing parties of protest by Quebec workers in “Working Class Politics: An Interpretation of the Quebec Case,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 7 (1970), 87–109Google Scholar.

26 Blake, Donald E., “The Measurement of Regionalism in Canadian Voting Patterns,” this JOURNAL 5 (1972), 55–81Google Scholar.

27 See Schwartz, “Canadian Voting Behavior,” 588–89.

28 See Loon, Richard Van and Whittington, Michael, The Canadian Political System (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 248–54Google Scholar.

29 See Alford, Party and Society; Wilson, John, “Politics and Social Class in Canada: The Case of Waterloo South,” this JOURNAL 1 (1968), 288–309Google Scholar: Chi, N. H., “Class Cleavage,” in Winn, Conrad and McMenemy, John (eds.), Political Parties in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976)Google Scholar.

30 For discussions of these matters, see Meszaros, I., Marx's Theory of Alienation (London: Merlin, 1970)Google Scholar; Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969)Google Scholar; Habermas, Jurgen, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1976)Google Scholar; and Feuer, Lewis, “What is Alienation? The Career of a Concept,” in Stein, Maurice and Vidich, Arthur (eds.), Sociology on Trial (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963)Google Scholar.

31 Loon, Richard Van, “Political Participation in Canada: The 1965 Election,” this JOURNAL 3 (1970), 396Google Scholar.

32 See the argument in Presthus, Robert, Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Macmillan, 1973)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

33 See Podoluk, Jenny R., Incomes of Canadians (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1968)Google Scholar, chaps. 10 and 11. Raw data are available in the continuing series, initiated in 1965, Income Distribution by Size in Ċanada (Ottawa: Statistics Canada). Statistics on the distribution of wealth are available in Incomes, Assets and Indebtedness of Families in Canada, 1969 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1973)Google Scholar. Evidence supporting the long-term stability of factor shares of the Canadian G.N.P. is in Marion, Gerald, Répartition fonctionelle des revenus; analyse de la part du travail an Canada (Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1965)Google Scholar. Annual data on factor shares is in the annual Economic Review (Ottawa: Federal Government, Department of Finance).

34 For Britain, see Webb, Adrian L. and Sieve, Jack E. B., Income Distribution and the Welfare State, Occasional Papers on Social Administration No. 41 (London: Bell, 1971)Google Scholar; for the United States, see Jencks, Christopher et al. , Inequality (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)Google Scholar, chap. 7.

35 Fora summary of the Canadian research see Turrittin, Anton H., “Social Mobility in Canada: A Comparison of Three Provincial Studies,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 11 (1974), 163–86Google Scholar.

36 Braverman, Harry, Labour and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

37 In the United States, Richard F. Hamilton demonstrates large class differences in support for social welfare measures, with manual workers distinctly to the left on these issues (Class and Politics in the United States [New York: Wiley. 1972], chap. 5)Google Scholar. See also Mann, Michael, “The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy,” American Sociological Review 33 (1970), 423–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Centers, Richard, The Psychology of Social Classes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949)Google Scholar; Form, William H. and Rytina, Joan, “Ideological Beliefs on the Distribution of Power in the United States.” American Sociological Review 34 (1969), 19–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Komhauser, Arthur, The Mental Health of the Industrial Worker (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar; Hamilton, Richard F., Affluence and the French Worker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benney, Mark and Geiss, Phyllis, “Social-Class and Politics in Greenwich,” British Journal of Sociology 1 (1950), 310–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Rinehart, James W. and Okraku, Ishmael O., “A Study of Class Consciousness,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 11 (1974), 197–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Paul Stevenson, “Class and Left-Wing Radicalism,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 14 (1977), 269–84.

40 It is worth noting that status rather than class differences may be important to the explanation of attitudes that are less ideologically defined. See Vanneman, Reeve and Pampel, Fred C., “The American Perception of Class and Status,” American Sociological Review 42 (1977), 422–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “The relevance of bounded class and continuous status models varies according to the issues involved. Thus, some interpersonal behaviors and individual satisfactions are patterned according to continuous prestige rankings while opinions on societal issues reflect dichotomous class differences.”

41 The significance of region as either a surrogate for class or in interaction with class derives from the political and economic inequalities typical of the colonial expansion of capitalism. See Hechter, Michael, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar, and Bourque, Gilles, L'Etat capitaliste et la question nationale (Montreal: Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1977)Google Scholar.

42 For an indication that “regions” within provinces may have substantial influence on political behaviour across Canada, see R. P. Woolstencroft, “Spatio-Temporal Variations in Canadian Voting,” paper presented to the International Political Science Assocation Congress at Edinburgh, August 1976; and Blake, Donald E., “Constituency Contexts and Canadian Elections, An Exploratory Study,” this JOURNAL 11 (1978), 279–305Google Scholar.

43 See Carchedi, G., “On the Economic Identification of the New Middle Class,” Economy and Society 4 (1975), 1–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Reproduction of Social Classes at the Level of Production Relations,” Economy and Society 4 (1975), 361–417CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “The Economic Identification of the State Employees,” Social Praxis 3 (1975), 93–120Google Scholar; Poulantzas, Nicos, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1975)Google Scholar; Wright, Erik Olin, “Class Boundaries in Advanced Capitalist Societies,” New Left Review 98 (1976), 3–41Google Scholar.

44 See Vanneman, Reeve and Pampel, Fred C., “The American Perception of Class and Status,” American Sociological Review 42 (1977), 422–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 See Blishen, Bernard R. and McRoberts, Hugh A., “A Revised Socio-Economic Index for Occupations in Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 13 (1976), 71–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this analysis for the entire sample, unemployed and retired workers are given their previous occupations; married individuals who are outside the labour force or work for less than 20 hours per week are given the scores of their spouses' occupations; and all other individuals who do not work and do not live with employed spouses are scored at the mean.

46 Wright, “Class Boundaries,” 26–31.

47 Ibid., 31–36.

48 Very detailed information on the work situation is required to classify individuals into the class locations in Wright's typology. Information concerning the relative autonomy of workers in the labour process, the extent of control over investment, and the exercise of supervision are only approximated by any standard occupational classification. Without this detailed information, we have made crude estimates of the situation of a number of occupational groups. Following Wright, the bourgeoisie is restricted to the highest-level management; other senior managerial and technocrat occupations are grouped together; low-level managers and foremen are grouped together; the petty bourgeois group comprises small employers and the petty bourgeoisie proper; and the group of semi-autonomous workers includes all occupations that one would expect to exhibit some degree of control over the labour process while not exercising control or supervision of other employees. Our distribution of employed workers among the six categories is as follows: bourgeoisie 1.1 percent, managers and technocrats 6.4 per cent, petty bourgeoisie 13.8 per cent, foremen 11.0 per cent, semi-autonomous workers 14.6 per cent, and working class 53.2 percent.

Ourgroup of semi-autonomous workers is considerably largerthan Wright's, and the analysis of the political attitudes of this class should be treated with particular caution. Our groups of managers and technocrats and of foremen and supervisors are proportionately smaller than Wright's—reflecting the absence of crucial information for the accurate assignment to these class categories. Finally, the category of the petty bourgeoisie is probably inflated by the inclusion of a small number of casual workers who define themselves as self-employed. We wish to thank Mr. William Johnston for carrying out the ope rationalization of Wright's class categories from our survey data.

49 A complete description of the sample is in Greer-Wootten, Bryn and Patel, Bharat, Sampling the Quality of Life in Canada: A Design Report for the National and Panel Studies (Toronto: Institute for Behavioural Research, York University, 1978)Google Scholar. The survey was administered by the Survey Research Centre of the Institute for Behavioural Research at York University in cooperation with the Centre de Sondage at the Universite de Montreal.

50 Federal partisanship was measured as a set of dichotomous variables based on responses to a questionnaire item which asks, “Thinking of federal politics, do you usually think of yourself as Liberal, Progressive Conservative, NDP, Social Credit or what?”

51 Regional means not controlled for the influence of the socioeconomic variables are in most cases only slightly different from those presented in Table I.

52 Engelmann, Compare Frederick and Schwartz, Mildred, Canadian Political Parties: Origin, Character, Impact (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1975)Google Scholar; and Meisel, John, “Cleavages Parties and Values in Canada,” Sage Professional Papers in Contemporary Political Sociology, 1, 06–003, 1974Google Scholar.

53 This latter result is of special interest since it is usually assumed that the Conservative party does worst among French Quebeckers as a result of its historic insensitivity to the political demands of the French-speaking community. Non-French Quebeckers, however, are even less likely than French Quebeckers to identify themselves with the Conservative party. Correspondingly, Liberal party support is much higher amongst English Quebeckers (58.1 per cent identify with the party) than amongst French Quebeckers(42.6 per cent identify with the party).

54 An important factor accounting forthis difference may have been the Parti Quebecois' advice to its followers against casting ballots for any federal party in the 1974 general election, on the grounds that federal politics were counterproductive to the essential needs of Quebeckers.

55 The question wordings and response categories for the first five “Response to Government” items are as follows: (a) Identification with Canada: Some people say they are (name residents of province)—(e.g., Ontarians) first, and Canadians second, while others say they are Canadians first and (e.g., Ontarians) second. How would you describe yourself?

(b) and (c) Satisfaction with federal/provincial government: We would like to know how you feel about the actions and programs of different levels of government. How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with: (a) the federal government in Ottawa; (b) the government of this province? Responses were given as scores on an ll-point scale ranging from “very satisfied” (11) to “very dissatisfied” (1). (d) Ottawa treats province fairly:

Do you think that this province is treated fairly by the government in Ottawa

(e) More power to federal government: In the future should

56 The political efficacy item was taken from the 1974 election study conducted by Harold Clarke, Jane Jenson, Lawrence Leduc, and John Pammett, and our political participation measure is a scale of involvement in political campaigns in community work, and of the frequency of communication with elected representatives.

57 Of substantive interest are the relatively low levels of satisfaction recorded in all regions with both strata of governments. Similar 11-point scales designed to measure other aspects of the quality of life in Canada consistently produce much higher mean scores. For example, a mean score of 8.05 was recorded for satisfaction with life in Canada; 8.79 for satisfaction with last regular job: 7.20 for satisfaction with financial situation; and 8.17 for satisfaction with progress to most important personal goal.

58 The interaction terms have significant effects on identification with Canada, satisfaction with the provincial government, and support for more federal powers.

59 “Support for more effort to help minorities” indicates support for policies to protect the rights of native people and women; “Support for more effort against crime” measures support for more government effort to prevent crime and eliminate pornography; “Prejudice against immigrants” measures antagonistic attitudes toward immigrants to Canada; “Restrict foreign economic control” measures support for policies designed to reduce foreign economic and cultural influence in Canada; “Support for labour” indicates approval of measures which would strengthen the rights of labour at the expense of management; “Support for political protest” measures whether respondents feel that protest activities like strikes, boycotts and demonstrations are legitimate means of political expression; “Support for redistribution of income” indicates support for policies designed to reduce the difference between rich and poor in Canada; “Support for more social welfare” measures support for additional government efforts to help the poor, the unemployed, retired people and others.

60 For the sake of conceptual simplicity, occupation, measured using the Blishen scale of occupational status, was eliminated from this section of the analysis when preliminary regression results indicated its influence on the dependent variables to be uniformly insignificant.

61 These findings are further reinforced by an investigation of the form of the relationships between occupation, education, income, age, region and political attitudes using log-linear analysis. This procedure for the multivariate analysis of categoric data allows for the investigation of possible distortions in the multiple regression analysis due to a failure to specify adequately the interactions between variables, or the transformation of measures otherwise assumed to be continuous, that a more appropriate theoretical model might require. Log-linear analysis revealed no significant deviation from the findings based upon multiple regression. The pattern of interaction between region and the sociodemographic variables closely matched that observed from the regression analysis.