This article examines changes in individuals' identification with Canadian federal political parties in the period 1977 to 1981. The analysis suggests that differences in class and ideology have a significant, if not very large effect on shifts in partisan identity. There was a slight bias toward more upper-class identification with the Progressive Conservative party and more lower-class identification with the Liberal party. Unstable partisans were at least as ideologically constrained as stable partisans, and partisan instability was more pronounced amongst the more left-wing individuals. Changes in partisanship were more likely among younger respondents, particularly lower-class and more left-wing youth. The largest bloc of unstable partisans was closest ideologically to the more left-wing stable New Democratic party partisans, and shifted only between the New Democratic and Liberal parties. A smaller bloc moved to the Progressive Conservative party and was ideologically closest to its more right-wing stable partisans.

This article argues that the three volumes of the Macdonald Commission research output devoted to international political economy (vols. 28 to 30) demonstrate a bias toward what might be labeled “neo-realist” analysis. As a result, they nearly all are steeped in a degree of pessimism regarding Canada's place in the evolving international political economy—a pessimism that extends not only to future prospects for the. multilateral trading system, but for the bilateral Canada-US one as well. While this sense of limited options might indeed be justified, this article argues that a serious omission from the set of studies was the relative lack of attention accorded to the security arrangements underpinning the postwar trade and monetary order. That being said, the author finds that the volumes will likely have a lasting significance for scholars, even though their relevance for public policy may not be so great or lasting.

With a theoretical framework based on Duverger and Epstein we examine the mass party and compare it to the cadre party. The Parti Québécois fits its criteria. In 1977 it imposed its fund-raising methodology on other Quebec parties by barring donations from moral persons. Only Quebec electors may now donate anything. Only the Quebec Liberal party has adapted. The hypothesis is that a loss in popularity leads to a loss of membership and a financial crisis. This may lead to a crise de conscience and a split in membership, leading to disintegration and defeat. Such a crisis shook the PQ from 1981 to 1985 and the defeat of December 2, 1985, was an inevitable consequence.

Philip Resnick argues that Montesquieu is seminal for an understanding of Canadian institutions. We find in nineteenth-century Canada, he says, not Montesquieu's separation of powers doctrine, so influential in the United States, but his teaching about the mixed constitution, that is, government by a combination of monarchic, aristocratic and democratic institutions. He argues that this influence shows in such typical features of our political culture as acceptance of hierarchical patterns, deference to authority and so on; these are reflections of the “disdain for democratic excesses” inherent in the mixed constitution. He then goes on to suggest that we have grown out of the mixed constitution in the twentieth century, but that as a result of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms relations between the political and judicial powers in Canada have so come to resemble the American that we are justified in saying that Canada in this one respect is now characterized by the separation of powers. We have moved from the Montesquieu of the mixed constitution to the Montesquieu of the separation of powers.

This study assesses the contribution of five of the research studies done for the Macdonald Royal Commission and of the opening chapter of the Commission Report to our understanding of the state. It examines the use of the term state, the economic and social functions that the latter is seen to perform, and the light that these studies may shed on such thorny topics as authority, legitimacy and citizenship in the late twentieth century. It concludes that, despite individual contributions of note, there are real limitations to what this Commission and its research associates tell us about the state.

This note addresses questions relating to the level of women's political activity and specific obstacles that restrict it. The work of Black and McGlen, showing a decrease in the traditional participation differences between Canadian men and women, is replicated over an expanded series of six national election studies. The results challenge the suggestion that there has been a decline in difference over time, and there is an attempt to account for this lingering distinction between the genders. Data are presented which indicate that the presence of children in the home has a much more constraining impact upon women's political activity than upon that of men.

It is the merit of Professor Resnick's essay that it will stimulate intellectual discussion of the underlying principles of the Canadian polity at a deeper level than heretofore. What distinguishes Professor Resnick's article from much previous work on Canada's philosophical heritage is that it is based on a profound knowledge and detailed analysis of the European tradition which Canada inherited.

The Social Sciences Citation Index was canvassed for citations of all articles, notes, review articles, comments and replies published in volumes 1–10 of the Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique. The data show that nearly three-quarters of the 335 items published between 1968 and 1977 were cited at least once, with a greater likelihood of the citation appearing in non-Canadian than in Canadian publications. English-language items were cited four times as frequently as French-language ones, on the average, and those with at least some Canadian content were cited nearly twice as frequently, on the average, as those with no Canadian content.

Both Janet Ajzenstat's and Rod Preece's comments on my article are welcome, not least in allowing me to further develop, by way of reply, some of the implications of the type of theorizing I have been engaged in. For quite aside from the particulars of my interpretation of Montesquieu's doctrines, of Professor Preece's reading of the wisdom of the Canadian founding fathers, or of Professor Ajzenstat's “Blackstonean” reading of the British North America Act, there is the larger question of the uses of classical political theory in the understanding of Canadian politics and the state that we need to address.

This article investigates the motives behind policy-making at the municipal level. More specifically, it argues that local governments are guided in the formulation of their policies by a need to reconcile fiscal and electoral considerations. On the one hand, by focussing on urban renewal initiatives it shows that an important proportion of municipal policies are primarily devoted to the maintenance or the bolstering of the taxation base. On the other hand, a description of the different guises taken by urban renewal over a 20-year period highlights the influence electoral circumstances have on the configuration of renewal strategies. Urban renewal efforts undertaken by Québec City's municipal administration provides the case study for this article. It identifies the impetus for launching these efforts and identifies the economic and electoral factors that produced a transition from a form of urban renewal involving a redevelopment of the core area, to one assuring the preservation of the built environment of central neighbourhoods.

This study explores two conceptions of justice and their radically different implications for mandatory retirement. The author argues that the case against mandatory retirement rests on a conception of justice which ignores the fact that a society is composed of different generations. Yet the neglect of this seemingly trivial fact leads to serious problems of intergenerational justice; and the note considers both how these problems can be accommodated within a theory of liberal justice, and the implications of that theory for mandatory retirement. The note then considers which of these two conceptions of justice is embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It argues that to ignore considerations of intergenerational justice in mandatory retirement cases amounts to a denial of the equal protection and the equal benefit of the law guaranteed by the Charter.