What is a colony? In this article, I reconsider the meaning of colony in light of the existence of domestic colonies in Canada around the turn of the twentieth century. The two case studies examined are farm colonies for the mentally disabled and ill in Ontario and British Columbia and utopian colonies for Doukhobors in Saskatchewan. I show how both kinds of colonies are characterized by the same three principles found in Lockean settler colonialism: segregation, agrarian labour on uncultivated soil and improvement/cultivation of people and land. Defining “colony” in this way is theoretically interesting as it is different from the definition found in most dictionaries and post-colonial scholarship. There is also an inherent contradiction within domestic colonies as they both support state power over indigenous peoples, Doukhobors and the mentally ill and disabled but also challenge the principles of domination, individualism, private property and sovereignty upon which the Canadian settler state was founded.

The effects of Canadian mining companies on local communities abroad is an increasingly contentious topic as activists and academics, citing case studies, have drawn attention to alleged problems. Despite the policy relevance of this issue, there have been no generalizable analyses of whether mining companies headquartered in Canada behave differently from mining firms headquartered in other countries. This paper conducts the first rigorous statistical analysis of the effect of country of origin, or more specifically, “being Canadian,” on the occurrence of known social conflicts in Latin America. We use an original database of 634 mining properties in five Latin American countries, which allows us to differentiate between a country-of-origin effect and other probable determinants of social conflict in communities near mining properties. We find that Canadian mining firms perform slightly better than other foreign firms, but worse than locally owned firms.

Previous research has argued that while economic voting is quite consistently found to be an important mechanism in the rest of Canada, it is rather weak in Quebec. Guérin and Nadeau (1998) have demonstrated that whether or not citizens in Quebec vote economically depends on the party system. Following their lead, we expect that the presence of a dominant regionalist party in Quebec after 1993 (the Bloc Québécois) inhibited Quebeckers from voting economically. However, our results do not offer evidence for this hypothesis. Furthermore, we find only weak evidence of economic voting being moderated by voters’ attitudes towards Quebec independence. Our study hence suggests that the impact of economic accountability in Canada is not hindered by a strong regional party or by the salience of the issue of Quebec independence. The economic vote, it seems, is more stable and general than it is regularly argued to be.

La doctrine Gérin-Lajoie, qui fonde l'action internationale du Québec depuis les années 1960, s'exprime conventionnellement comme le prolongement externe des compétences internes du Québec. Comment alors expliquer que les élus québécois prennent régulièrement position sur certains conflits internationaux, qui relèvent pourtant clairement de la compétence du gouvernement fédéral ? Cet article offre un premier éclairage sur les motivations des élus québécois à se positionner sur des enjeux militaires ainsi qu'aux dynamiques qui les entourent. Trois hypothèses sont avancées et confrontées tour à tour à l'ensemble des prises de position des élus québécois depuis le 11 septembre 2001 en matière d'intervention militaire. Premièrement, la paradiplomatie québécoise pourrait être marquée par un nationalisme identitaire, agissant comme outil d'affirmation et de différenciation nationales par-delà les compétences provinciales. Deuxièmement, plutôt que de représenter une tendance à connotation identitaire, l'affirmation québécoise sur des enjeux de compétence fédérale pourrait être la manifestation d'une protodiplomatie. Troisièmement, les élus québécois pourraient s'aventurer sur le terrain de la sécurité internationale en raison de calculs électoraux. En somme, l'article cherche à évaluer si l'affirmation québécoise en matière de sécurité internationale est le fruit de motivations identitaires, souverainistes ou électorales.

Existing literature assumes a link between voting and individuals’ political socialization, but no study has explored how political upbringing affects the most important attitudinal predictor of turnout: the duty to vote. Following previous research about the formation of attitudes related to the electoral process and social norms, this study focuses on the socialization agencies and dynamics that might first instill the belief during childhood that voting is a duty. The study also intends to contribute to political socialization theory by adopting a longitudinal perspective, by building upon developmental psychology theory and by simultaneously considering the two main childhood socialization agencies: family and school. A series of multivariate models confirms the role of family's socioeconomic status, parental engagement with children's education and non-authoritarian parenting styles, a positive effect that appears stronger than the effects on duty observed for Catholic schools and schools with democratic governance.

In light of the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) self-reflexive “50th Anniversary” issue on the state of Canadian political science (CPS), this article maps the discipline's engagement with intersectional anti-oppression scholarship. Analyzing abstracts in CJPS and the Canadian Political Science Review, we argue while these journals—and mainstream CPS more generally—tackle questions of diversity, there remains a gap between conversations recognized in these particular forums and the incorporation of what we term an intersectional anti-oppression lens. In its deconstruction of systems of power and privilege, we explore analytic and pedagogical possibilities this lens presents for mainstream CPS.

The 2015 Canadian federal election campaign put into focus relations between Muslim communities in Canada and wider Canadian society, featuring debates around banning the niqab, and a “barbaric cultural practices” hotline. At the same time, challenges in relations between Muslims and majority-group Canadians were not a new development in 2015: they had in the past faced periodic strains due to terrorism-related events, and attacks targeting Muslims in Canada. The Canadian case is in fact reflective of a challenge in intergroup relations facing several Western democracies. In light of this, what accounts for majority-group Canadians’ attitudes toward Muslims in Canada? Drawing on data from the 2011 and 2015 Canadian Election Studies and theories linking outgroup perceptions to intergroup contact (friends), local demographic context at both the micro-level (neighbours) and meso-level (townspeople), and political factors (parties), this article seeks to explain why majority-group Canadians hold alternately positive or negative views of Muslims.

In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of party switchers in the Canadian House of Commons. With the most extensive dataset on party-switching MPs (1867–2015), we answer the following questions: What are the electoral trajectories of party switchers? Have their prospects changed over time? We assess whether the historical dynamics of the Canadian party system explain changes in the incidence and fate of party switchers since 1867, hypothesizing that both the rate of party switching and the electoral fortunes of floor crossers decline over time. The evidence accords with our second hypothesis more strongly than our first. Party switching has become slightly less common, but the electoral consequence has become much more severe.