How has English-speaking Canadian political science conceived of the relationship between Quebec and Canada? Why has an issue that has been considered central for more than three decades become less attractive, if not marginal, within the discipline? The aim is to examine, from this example, the overlapping relationship between science and politics. The intent is also to show that Canadian political science has examined the Quebec/Canada relationship from four different angles: 1) its interest in Quebec politics was part of the urgency of the moment, based on a crisis that challenged the foundations of the political system; 2) it questioned the legitimacy of the sources of the dispute, namely the compatibility between the new expressions of Quebec nationalism with the presumed principles on which the Canadian political community had been founded; 3) Quebec nationalism also encouraged a reflection on the existence (or not) of “English Canada” as a sociological and political reality; 4) the combination of the first three factors caused the prescriptions for getting out of, or resolving, the crisis to evolve over time, to the point of rendering research on this issue obsolete.

Cet article vise à brosser un portrait de l’évolution des politiques et des relations commerciales canado-américaines en replaçant au cœur de l'analyse la variable du « nationalisme économique ». Il s'appuie sur l'approche « nationaliste » en économie politique internationale, qui permet de comprendre tant le protectionnisme que la libéralisation et surtout, le passage de l'un à l'autre ou la combinaison des deux. Le nationalisme économique constitue une tendance lourde des relations commerciales canado-américaines, qui auront été caractérisées depuis 1867 et au-delà par une tension continuelle entre protectionnisme et libéralisation.

Within the broader literature on political representation, studies exploring Indigenous forms of representation are rather limited. Where they exist, they tend to explore how Western models of political representation include Indigenous peoples, conflating Indigenous groups with ethnic minorities. This article asks whether and how Indigenous political representation might be distinguished from the representation of ethnic minorities. Our argument is that Indigenous groups’ identities tend to be based on different claims and relationships to the state than ethnic groups, which leads to political mobilization seeking a means to respond to the colonial nation-state project. We develop a theoretical framework that identifies three principles that ought to inform an effective and legitimate model of Indigenous political representation: recognition, protection and decolonization. We then apply this theoretical framework to assess the extent to which existing models of Indigenous representation in Bolivia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway correspond with these three principles.

La Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada (CVRC) réitérait en 2015 la volonté des Peuples Autochtones de renouveler leur relation avec l’État canadien. Cet article présente une réflexion théorique sur les possibilités offertes par le fédéralisme afin de renouveler cette relation entre les Autochtones et l’État. L'article confronte les arguments des tenants du fédéralisme comme cadre des relations entre les Autochtones et l’État et ceux des critiques de l’établissement d'un rapport fédéral de nation à nation entre les Peuples Autochtones et le Canada. L'article présente donc une proposition pour le renouvellement de la relation entre les Autochtones et l’État à travers un modèle de fédéralisme basé autour de régions autochtones autonomes.

Around the world, Indigenous peoples seek increased control of traditional lands. In northern Canada, such control may be afforded by claims-based co-management regimes. Such regimes are a common, and sometimes celebrated, component of treaty federalism. In Norway, Europe's only Indigenous people, the Sami, now participate in a land-management regime: the Finnmark Estate (FeFo). We explore whether FeFo is, in effect, claims-based co-management and whether Sami thus enjoy the sort of guaranteed shared rule envisioned in treaty federalism. We compare FeFo to Canadian co-management in three dimensions: novelty, independence and Indigenous influence. We conclude FeFo is indeed claims-based co-management. But FeFo falls short of the treaty-federal ideal, for reasons possibly including bureaucratic capture, fragile legitimacy, conflicting interpretations of the Sami interest and conflicting views on the merits of shared rule.

The article seeks to understand what is specifically modern about populists, why we have difficulty in agreeing on who and what they are, and—importantly—how we can address the formidable challenge they present to contemporary democratic politics. It does so by detailing the classical conception of the demagogue and by showing how modernity, in its liberal and counter-liberal aspects, sought to solve conclusively the problem of the demagogue. It argues that modern populists face significant obstacles to their ambitions in the form of modern constitutionalism, yet are also armed with new weapons, including new concepts or “ideologies” for manipulation (such as “the people,” nation, race and class) and new rhetorical techniques (such as propaganda that exploits modern technology and mass media).

What drives individuals toward a career in politics? Prior research on political ambition has often focused on socio-demographic variables while generally ignoring the importance of individual personality differences. Yet personality consistently predicts political knowledge, interest and participation, suggesting that individual differences may matter in addition to resources and the social environment. To this end, we assess the impact of both the HEXACO and Dark Triad models of personality in predicting nascent political ambition (that is, the initial desire to run for elected office) while controlling for well-established socio-demographic variables (for example, gender, income). Overall, we find considerable support for the predictive power of personality, especially the traits of honesty-humility, extraversion and narcissism. These results have important implications for understanding the kinds of people who are interested in a political career.

Cet article vise à identifier et analyser les idées qui ont accompagné l’émergence et la victoire de Donald Trump. Nous nous intéressons tout particulièrement au paléoconservatisme, un courant idéologique jusque-là méconnu, qui a néanmoins su articuler les frustrations et aspirations d'une partie importante de l’électorat américain. Critique des élites économiques et politiques associées aux deux grands partis, le paléoconservatisme prône un nationalisme identitaire qui menace de bouleverser l’équilibre déjà fragile entre les variantes libertarienne et socialement conservatrice qui dominent au Parti républicain depuis quelques décennies.

This article examines candidate emails from the 2016–17 Conservative Party of Canada leadership race to explore how candidates communicated with party supporters on issues of moral traditionalism (for example, abortion and sexuality diversity) and minority religious accommodation. We find that the level of public support for a given policy position shaped how overtly candidates signalled their views, with those supporting moral traditionalism or restrictions on religious minorities tending to express their views covertly and vice versa. Message overtness also changed following the deadline for new members to join the party before the vote. This article marks the first systematic study of how party leadership candidates attempt to solicit support from particular party factions and how candidates’ appeals evolve throughout a campaign. The results also show that the high-profile debate around minority religious accommodation during the leadership race did not displace contestation between candidates over issues such as sexual or reproductive rights.

Governments in advanced industrial democracies generally regulate foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows with two types of policy measures: entry barriers and post-establishment restrictions. This article provides an integrated account for the two types of FDI restrictions, which is largely absent in the existing literature. We argue that the government's choice of FDI policies is shaped by a compound effect of the incumbent's ideological orientation and the political influence of unionized labour. Although inward FDI broadly benefits domestic workers, the entrance of multinational corporations (MNCs) adversely impacts the unionized interests of labour by transforming the labour market in ways detrimental to unions’ wage-bargaining leverage. Leftist governments, driven by the preferences of their labour constituency, tend to lift entry barriers to FDI in order to promote capital inflows. At the same time, leftist governments may also need to address unions’ concerns about inbound MNCs by tightening post-establishment restrictions on FDI, which impose constraints on the globalized business and operational model of MNCs. We argue that leftist incumbents generally liberalize entry barriers but tighten post-establishment restrictions when the level of labour unionization is high. We found evidence consistent with our argument from country-level and sector-level analysis of FDI restrictions, using a sample from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s of Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

This article investigates how Canadian voters react to a perceived lack of quality provided by their most preferred parties and how the anticipated election outcome conditions the reactions. The central argument is that a lack of quality motivates voters to signal their discontent by voting insincerely—that is, they cast a protest vote. The effect is expected to be moderated by the anticipated constituency result. The arguments are tested with two-wave panel survey data from the 2015 Canadian federal election, collected by the Making Electoral Democracy Work (MEDW) project. The results support the central argument but remain inconclusive about the expected moderating effects.

With a decisive Liberal party electoral victory in 2015, observers are now wondering if religious conservatism's role in the Canadian political landscape is waning. Using data from the Canadian Election Study (CES) from the years 2004 to 2015, we find that respondents’ attitudes toward same-sex marriage and women working outside the home have moved left on the spectrum among both the general population and more religious voters. However, this does not go hand in hand with a decline in the effect strength of religiosity on the Conservative vote, which remains significant across the five federal elections examined in this study. Conservative religious voters now make up a smaller share of the adult population, but their issue positions on sexual morals and gender roles, along with the wider conservative value orientation these issues represent, remain important in their vote choice.

We argue that economic inequality between ethnic groups increases state repression. We contend that a high level of ethnic inequality fuels distributional conflicts between poor and rich ethnic groups. It also increases the salience of ethnic identity and promotes ethnic mobilization to challenge the status quo. This between-group tension creates collective grievances for ethnic groups, mounts challenges to incumbent governments and increases perceived threats to governments. The greater the perceived threats, the more likely that governments will employ coercive measures. We further argue that the impact of ethnic inequality on state repression is moderated by the level of democracy. Various institutional mechanisms in democracies increase the costs of repression, reducing leaders’ incentives to employ coercive measures, even when facing high levels of ethnic inequality. Evidence from 152 countries between 1992 and 2011 supports our arguments.

The push to implement Open Access (OA) as the new standard for academic research dissemination is creating very real pressures on academic journals. In Canada, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently adopted a policy requiring that journals applying for its Aid to Scholarly Journals (ASJ) grant make their scholarly content freely accessible after no more than a 12-month delay. For journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) that not only publish high-quality, peer-reviewed articles to a specialized audience but also support the work of scholarly associations through the revenues they generate, the push to move to OA comes with a number of challenges. The Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) and the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP) established a committee to chart the best course of action for the CJPS in light of this changing landscape. This article summarizes the key findings of the committee and underscores some of the challenges of OA for journals with a profile similar to the CJPS, as well as for the broader research ecosystem that they support.

This research note examines the correlates of turnout in Canadian school board elections. Using individual-level data from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, we find that gender, education, left-wing ideology, Conservative partisanship and parental status were associated with participation in Calgary's 2017 public school board elections. Some of these patterns relate to the specific details of Calgary's 2017 election; others, we suggest, may be characteristic of school board elections more generally. We relate our findings to the literature on ballot roll-off and low-turnout elections.