This paper examines judicial reasoning in the area of Aboriginal title, paying particular attention to the Supreme Court of Canada's Tsilhqot'in Nation (2014) decision. While the decision has been heralded as a ‘game-changer’ within media circles and legal commentaries for its recognition of a claim to title under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, the authors argue that the decision does not depart substantially from prior judicial logics predicated upon the production of Crown sovereignty and the denial of Indigenous legal orders. In fact, the authors argue that the decision displays a clear judicial orientation towards the present jurisdictional divisions of Canadian federalism which not only serves to eliminate Indigenous legal orders and territorial responsibilities, but also provides federal and provincial governments with enhanced powers of ‘incursion’ into Aboriginal title lands.

Proponents of both ward and at-large systems agree that these systems of election play a role in shaping the representational foci (that is, who representatives seek to represent) of city councillors and, in so doing, affect the quality of local democracy. Canadian cities employ both ward and at-large systems of election, and therefore provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between elective systems and focus of representation. We draw on data derived from both 52 interviews with and a survey of councillors in Canadian cities to test the proposition that cities' systems of election influence the representational foci of councillors. We find strong evidence that ward systems are related to a representational focus on geographically defined neighbourhoods, whereas councillors in at-large systems report prioritizing representation of their cities as wholes.

This paper proposes the analysis of policies as the result of hegemonic phenomena. This perspective understands the diffusion of frames of reference as a phenomenon that is intrinsically conflictual. In so doing, our aim is to work around one of the main problems in the existing literature focused on the role of ideas and discourses: it tends to neglect the cognitive and symbolic struggles in which agents, who possess unequal resources, are engaged. We suggest analyzing the organization of a hegemonic phenomenon by focusing on the debates related to agri-environmental policies in England, France and Hungary. Generally, this article contributes an original outlook on the production of political order.

This paper draws upon data collected from an online voting experiment to test the implications of “going negative” in a multiparty election campaign. Specifically, we investigate two sets of questions: First, does the attention and vote share that candidates receive vary according to the tone (positive/negative) of their election campaign? Second, does the attention and vote share that candidates receive vary according to whether or not all candidates engage in similar (positive/negative) campaigns? While studies of “negative campaigning” have been prominent in the American context, our work builds upon this literature by using an experimental design to test for their effects in a multiparty setting.

Past studies have shown that religion plays an important role in voting behaviour in Canada. Yet, little is known about the changes this religious vote has undergone over the past few decades. Using Canadian Election Studies data, we analyze the evolving impact of religious affiliation and level of religiosity on vote choice in federal elections between 1965 and 2011. We find that, as the marginal impact of Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions has declined, the effect of level of religiosity has gained in importance. In 2011, religious citizens were overall more likely to vote Conservative and secular individuals were more likely to vote NDP both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. Some distinct voting patterns also remain for non-mainline Protestant groups in the ROC and religious nones in Quebec.

The Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act (2015) targets immigrants suspected of engaging in polygamy. While polygamy is already illegal in Canada and non-immigrant polygamous arrangements exist within Canadian borders, the framing of polygamy as a foreign practice portrays this familial arrangement as a threat to Canadian national values. Effects on women and children have traditionally provided a convincing argument for state regulation of polygamy; however, the combination of state under—and over—enforcement suggests that relying solely on a harm framework inadequately captures the complexities of state treatment. In this paper, I argue that the state's primary motivations for defending monogamy are not necessarily rooted in the avoidance of harm but in the preservation of a particular type of citizenship.

While the negative campaigning literature has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years, the precise targets of campaign negativity have not been fully explored, as candidates and their parties are largely treated as the same target. Likewise, although scholars are increasingly writing about the personalization of politics, this literature has not considered whether parties can “personalize” their opponents by focusing their messaging and attacks more on individual leaders than the parties they lead. In an attempt to bridge the gap between these two literatures, we develop the concept of negative personalization. Negative personalization, as we define it, is an emphasis on opposing party leaders in campaign communication more so than on the parties that they lead. Exploring recent election campaigns in Canada's largest province, we document the extent to which parties engage in negative personalization and suggest hypotheses for the factors leading to increased negative personalization.

Phillip Hansen's book, Reconsidering C.B. Macpherson: From Possessive Individualism to Democratic Theory and Beyond (2015) arrives when revival of the thought of one of Canada's most original and influential political theorists is to be welcomed. Macpherson's critiques of market-dominated society and culture are even more apt in an era of free trade and neo-liberalism than in his own times. More than a summary of Macpherson's views, Hansen's book offers an original reading of him as a philosopher. This review raises questions about the accuracy and usefulness of such a reading.

I have a high regard for Frank Cunningham and his work, on socialism, on democratic theory—and on C.B. Macpherson. To take one example, his new introductions to the recent reissues of Macpherson's books from Oxford University Press, including The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism and Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, are excellent. Lucid and informative, they highlight the value Macpherson's ideas hold for contemporary political thought. So I am grateful that he has offered so fulsome a critical response to my book—even though he finds my approach, based on the idea that there is a suppressed philosophical dimension in Macpherson's work, though (dubiously) audacious, to be of limited accuracy or usefulness—indeed ultimately misguided. It results, he claims, in an analysis that “detracts from Macpherson's political-theoretical and political strengths.”

As I use the term, philosophy is critical thinking about fundamental matters, where “critical” includes identifying and evaluating justifications for beliefs about fundamental matters or proposing and defending such justifications. Like the notion of philosophy itself, what counts as fundamental is also contestable, but Phillip Hansen's characterization of its being “about how humans ought to live, about what is good for them” is an apt example. Macpherson certainly does attend to this and similar topics and he castigates his contemporary political scientists for neglecting them.