This article uses the case of toxic substance regulation to examine the process of governmental agenda-setting. Two kinds of comparisons are employed: across-national comparison of Canada and the United States, and a comparison of two toxic substance controversies. In the case of dioxins from pulp mills, the issue emerged on the two Countries' agendas at approximately the same time. In contrast, the issue of indoor air pollution from radon reached the US regulatory agenda in 1986, but as of mid-1990 had yet to emerge as a significant regulatory issue in Canada. The comparative case analysis yields four major conclusions: (1) changes in science and technology can be important driving forces behind the emergence of an issue, but as necessary, not sufficient conditions for agenda-setting; (2) the interdependence of the two countries produces an interdependence of their regulatory agendas; (3) policy entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in forcing issues onto the governmental agenda; and (4) the incentives and influence of policy entrepreneurs is shaped by the institutional structures and political cultures of the two countries.

This article compares the lexical performances of Canadian political leaders in the French-language leaders' debate broadcast during the federal election of 1988, in order to test some hypotheses concerning the relations between the communication strategies adopted by the leaders and their respective role in the party system. The author shows that the political discourse of the leader of the government party does not follow the same line of argumentation as those developed by the leaders of the opposing parties. To do so, the study employs indicators like tenses clauses, name-dropping, frequency of numbers, self-presentation and criticism of the adversaries. The author also identifies the most significant words and compares the issues developed by each leader to test the relevance of the political mimesis thesis and to estimate the importance granted to the critiques of the respective adversaries and specific propositions for the future.

Students of political debating in both Canada and the United States have generally concluded that national debates do little more than reinforce viewers' prior preferences. This article considers the Canadian leadership debates of 1984, and asks two major questions. First, would the presence of relatively unknown party leaders make these debates more influential than expected? Second, would the French-language debate have special effects on francophone Canadians? The author finds that the debates, unlike their 1979 counterpart, had a significant effect on voting behaviour. Moreover, that effect was especially strong among people for whom French was the first language, and worked in favour of the candidate most fluent in that language. The author concludes by considering the importance of these findings.

The speakers in Thucydides who give voice to the sophistic thesis that might is right do not generally think that what they are releasing upon the world is a war of all against all. On the contrary, they are hopeful, like the modern utilitarians they anticipate, that their realistic assessment of human motives can serve as the foundation of an inter-state order based not on justice but on clear and certain power relations. The most perceptive of these speakers is Diodotus, who addresses his theory of imperial management to the difficult problem of the rise and fall of states. But the psychology upon which this theory rests points toward confederation in place of empire and toward constitutional government in place of democracy, run by demagogues. It also implies a reasoner, perhaps Diodotus himself, who is master of his own desires. In the end Diodotus seems somewhat at odds with the sophistic rationalism he so ably espouses.

The article defends the classical version of ministerial responsibility against recent initiatives to implement a form of direct accountability for administrators. Constitutional convention and ministerial resignations from active cabinets in the Canadian federal government and in Britain are described: in neither country do ministers resign for maladministration by their officials, nor does doctrine suggest they should. Rather, the pattern of resignations indicates the importance of collective responsibility, as well as the relative unimportance of ministerial misbehaviour. The conclusion sets out the negative implications for democratic government of substituting a kind of direct “accountability” of officials, extracted in political forums, for the responsibility of ministers.

Paul Kellogg has called on Canadian political economists to break decisively with dependency theory, arguing that Nikolai Bukharin's insights can provide the key to retheorizing Canada as an unqualifiedly advanced capitalist economy. This comment first questions Kellogg's assumption that left-nationalist dependency theorists were ascribing nationalist motivations to capital investment and then goes on to illustrate that the case for Carroll's internationalist thesis is not as strong as Kellogg supposes. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of Bukharin's emphasis on state capitalism and the nationalization of capitalist interests in the light of Canada's current strategy of market-led continentalism. Finally, the argument is made that capitalist laws of motion can provide only a starting point for understanding the political economy of Canada.

Through a critique of the “internationalist” arguments outlined and defended by Paul Kellogg, Elisabeth Gidengil has mounted a defence of dependency theory as it has been applied to Canadian political economy. She argues that dependency theory, far from being discarded as Kellogg has suggested, must be part of any new synthesis that is developed in Canadian political economy. She argues that Bukharin's Marxism, defended by Kellogg, is too abstract to be of any real guide in this new synthesis. This reply first situates where a “Bukharinist” approach is in agreement with dependency theory. Both recognize the existence of a rigid hierarchy of nations that impedes development in the Third World. But in Canada, it is argued, this insight has been stood on its head, Canada being theorized as “dependent” and suffering dependency-induced “structural weaknesses.” A selection of empirical examples is introduced to indicate the weak factual ground on which this claim is based. If there are aspects of the dependency paradigm to be retained, in the Canadian case this requires inverting the way in which this paradigm has usually been applied and insisting on Canada's entrenched position, alongside the other G7 powers, at the top of the hierarchy of nations in the world system.