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Third Parties in Canadian Provincial Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

André Blais
André Blais
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 422 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1973

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References

1 We have in mind several of the books in the University of Toronto Press's Canadian government series and Canadian Provincial Politics, ed. Robin, Martin (Scarborough, Ont., 1972Google Scholar).

2 See Pateman, Carole, “Political Culture, Political Structure and Political Change,” British Journal of Political Science (July 1971), 291–307.Google Scholar

3 For a similar argument, see Irvine's, W. P. review of the book in this Journal, V, no. 2 (June 1972), 313–15.Google Scholar

4 Note in passing that Pinard's hypothesis implies a negative relationship between the previous strength of the main opposition party and the rise of a third party; a negative relationship constitutes a positive test of the hypothesis and vice versa.

5 Pinard, Rise of a Third Party, 38.

6 Ibid., 31.

7 Ibid., 39.

8 Ibid., 37.

9 These comments are based on the assumption that the emergence of a third party implies that it obtains a fair amount of votes (let us say more than 10 per cent). Otherwise, most of the elections left out by Pinard witnessed the rise of some minor third party.

10 Table II incorporates a few other corrections. For instance, the Saskatchewan election of 1944 is described by Pinard as a case of a third-party emergence (the CCF came to power). In the preceding paragraph however (p. 45) Pinard had stated that in 1934 the CCF became the main opposition party. According to us the CCF was not a third party in 1944. This points out the importance of a precise definition of a third party which Pinard does not provide. We suggest that a third party is a non-traditional party that has not managed to obtain a minimum of 10 per cent of the votes in each of the previous two elections. Table III also includes elections (1970–1) that have occurred since Pinard's study. This adds six cases, three of which support the theory.

11 Pinard acknowledges this possibility. See Rise of a Third Party, 24, n. 12.

12 Cairns, Alan C., “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada, 1921–1965”, this Journal, I (March 1968), 58–80.Google Scholar

13 Rise of a Third Party, 63, n. 2.

14 At first sight party distances seem to be the most valid measure of party dominance (see for instance Pfeiffer, David G., “The Measurement of Interparty Competition and Systematic Stability” in American Political Science Review (1967), 457–68Google Scholar). We now believe, however, that Pinard is right: strength in previous election(s) is a better indicator (though we have doubts about the exclusion of seats and the number of elections included). The advantage of Pinard's operationalization is that when an opposition party has more than 33 per cent of the votes it is likely not to be too far away from the party in power and to have a strong lead over any third party. Party distances do not include this second element. According to us however Pinard's measure is only a little more valid than party distances.

15 This leaves out two other measures of one-party dominance – the main opposition party's share of seats in previous elections and party distances – that had already been proved not to support the theory.

16 See Blalock, Hubert M., Theory Construction (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969), 152.Google Scholar

17 This contrast is well described in Regenstreif, Peter, The Diefenbaker Interlude (Toronto, 1965), 144.Google Scholar Of course Regenstreif is dealing with federal elections, but as he seems to consider it as an aspect of the Western farmer's personality, his comment should apply to provincial elections as well. The difference also appears very clearly in Martin Robin's Canadian Provincial Politics. The articles on Maritimes’ politics stress the role of a deepseated tradition of party identification (cf. for instance J. Murray Beck, “The Party System in Nova Scotia: Tradition and Conservatism”). On the other hand, it is noted that partisan loyalties are relatively weak in British Columbia (cf. Martin Robin, “The Politics of Class Conflict,” 40). Likewise, the frequency of federal-provincial vote switching in Alberta and Saskatchewan is underlined. See Robin, Canadian Provincial Politics.

18 Rise of a Third Party, 26.

19 “Political Behaviour and Ethnic Origin” in Papers on the 1962 Election, ed. Meisel, John (Toronto, 1968), 270.Google Scholar

20 “Les études locales et régionales” in Quatre élections provinciates au Québec, éd. Lemieux, Vincent (Quebec, 1969), 129.Google Scholar

21 See Meisel, John, Working Papers on Canadian Politics (Montreal, 1972), 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Jacek, Henryet al. “The Congruence of Federal-Provincial Campaign Activity in Party Organizations: The Influence of Recruitment Patterns in Three Hamilton Ridings” this Journal, V (June 1972), 204.Google Scholar

23 For an elaboration of this view, see Blalock, Theory Construction, esp. pp. 1–9.

24 This view is put forward by Webb, E.et al., Unobtrusive Measures (Chicago, 1966Google Scholar).

25 In Ontario, two third parties, the United Farmers of Ontario and the Independent Labor Party, had formed a coalition government in 1919. In 1923, however, the Conservatives had come back to power. For some background on the matter see Hoffman, David, “Intra-Party Democracy: A Case Study,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 1961, 223–36Google Scholar; and Oliver, Peter, “W.E. Raney and the Politics of Uplift,” Journal of Canadian Studies (1971), 3–19.Google Scholar

26 Another third party, however, the Bloc Populaire, obtained 14.4 per cent of the votes.

27 This includes two cases that do not support the theory if other indicators of one-party dominance (instead of the average strength of the main opposition party) are used.

28 Pinard, Rise of a Third Party, 37.

29 “Les dimensions sociologiques du vote créditiste,” Recherches sociographiques (1965), 181–95.

30 We left the Montreal ridings out because Pinard has done so himself and we wanted to replicate his method. On the other hand, the median support for third parties in the three weak Liberal ridings (where the Liberals got less than 35 per cent of the votes in 1966) was even lower (26.9 per cent). One should note that the 1970 figures refer to the proportion of registered electors and not of actual voters. The data were taken from Lemieux, Vincent, Gilbert, Marcel, and Blais, André, Une élection de réalignement (Montréal, 1970Google Scholar) and Quatre élections provinciates au Québec, éd. Lemieux, Vincent (Quebec, 1969Google Scholar).

31 Cf. Graham White, above, pp. 399–421. White calls for a revidon instead of a rejection of Pinard's hypothesis. My position is different mainly because I have a different interpretation of Pinard's special model, the “class cleavage” one. I can hardly see how one can talk of a revision when the special model's predictions are exactly the opposite of the general model's. Moreover this new interpretation cannot explain why a strong opposition party does not contest a substantial number of seats (see White, n. 32). We would thus conclude that, in so far as Pinard's theory deals with élite behaviour as well as with mass behaviour – which is our interpretation – it is clearly falsified.

32 See Fisher, Stephen L., “The Wasted Vote Thesis,” Comparative Politics (January 1973), 293–301.Google Scholar

33 See S.E. Chemick, Interregional Disparities in Income, staff study, no. 14, Economic Council of Canada, table 1, p. 7. See also chart 9, p. 51, where it can be seen that the growth of real personal income is much less linear in the Prairie provinces.

34 See Latouche, Daniel, “Violence politique et crise dans la société québécoise,” Essays on the Left, éd. Lapierre, Laurieret al. (Toronto, 1971), 184Google Scholar, table III. This, at the same time, supports Pinard's theory about the role of strains in the rise of third parties. According to him, what is important is not so much the state of the economy itself as the existence of short-term change, for the worse or even for the better. It is our opinion that Pinard's analysis of economic strains and of the response of the poor is the most convincing part of his theory.

35 Rise of a Third Party, 246.

36 See “Some Additional Thoughts on Collective Behavior,” Sociological Inquiry (1972), 97–102.

37 For an elaboration of this view, see Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, Ill., 1967Google Scholar).

38 See Mintz, Eric, “An Analysis of Canadian Electoral Outcomes,” unpublished paper, York University, March 1972.Google Scholar That changes in the leadership of the opposition party did not yield significant results is also interesting. It supports Smelser's view that social control is more important that mobilization.