This paper examines how Canadian constituency campaigns perceive and use data in elections. We apply a conceptual framework for data-driven campaigning, developed from existing literature, to participant observations and interview responses from the Conservative, Liberal and NDP campaigns in a single riding during the general election of 2015. The rhetoric of “big data” notwithstanding, we find significant variation in the extent and nature of the use of data at the constituency level, and that the increasing use of data in electioneering may have a centralizing effect on traditionally stratarchical political party organization.

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.

In Quebec, the setback of the Parti Québécois (PQ) in the last 2014 provincial election testifies of a continuous decline of the party since the 1995 referendum defeat. With now only 25 per cent of vote shares, the question arises: Is the PQ bound to disappear? This article examines the support for the PQ across different generations, and tests explanations for these varying levels of support. The results show that the attitudinal profile of millennials is particularly distinct from that of baby boomers on several dimensions, but that generation X is not so different from the boomers. We demonstrate that the decline of the PQ in 2014 was mostly concentrated among millennials, who were less inclined to see the project of sovereignty as a priority and less likely to support the incumbent PQ government's controversial proposal to adopt a Charter of Quebec Values. We conclude by examining how the results of the study can shed light on the PQ's future prospects.

This article examines how the government framed its communications during the so-called "Printemps érable" (Maple Spring), a historic student protest movement that took place in Quebec in 2012. Six years after the end of the conflict, and despite the production of a significant volume of analysis and reflections on this social crisis, no empirical work had been dedicated yet to the study of the government’s communication strategy. Following a quantitative content analysis of 424 public interventions from cabinet members, this study raises the argumentative frameworks at the heart of the government’s communication strategy. Drawing on Entman's cascading activation model (2004), the analysis shows how the government tried to define the problems, solutions and protagonists involved in this societal conflict. Our study highlights the government's failure to maintain the framing initiative of the crisis, and the change in communication strategy that resulted.

Disaffection of youth from politics is a well-documented phenomenon in many countries. In this article, we consider whether the social networks of young people have the same influence on political engagement as they have been found to have for older adults. We use a single dataset to test the effects of discussion and disagreement on the political engagement of young people (30 and under) and older adults. We find that social network discussion has a stronger effect on the engagement of young people but that disagreement has no clear differential effect.

We examine (1) how trust in foreigners and trust in political institutions affect attitudes toward immigration and (2) the moderating effect of economic development on those impacts, analyzing data from the fifth wave of the World Values Survey. We find that natives who trust foreigners are more tolerant toward immigration and that economic development positively moderates the impact of trust in foreigners on the attitudes. Meanwhile, we find only mixed evidence for the impact of trust in political institutions and the moderating role of economic development in the impact. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings.

The Canadian government and military struggled to control its media framing of the war in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2009. This content analysis (n = 900) critically investigates the mediated dynamic of framing Canada's military mission in Afghanistan. This study found that while journalists overwhelmingly indexed their stories to elite sources, they frequently impeached the frames sponsored by government and military leaders. Journalists used elite criteria to fact check the frames of military and government leaders. Most of the coverage was episodic and event-oriented rather than thematic and contextual. While Canadian journalists challenged official claims of improving security, for instance, their coverage lacked context and critical appraisal of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan, raising questions about journalism's normative role in Canadian democracy.

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.

Minority nations within multinational States often evolve within a context of great uncertainty when it comes to the protection of their distinctive political and cultural characteristics. While their minority condition in no way limits their existence as nations, it can nevertheless come with a certain feeling of national fragility and even a fear of disappearing. These minority nations, when the State to which they belong refuses to recognize their particularism and to allow them the necessary tools to defend it, can then quickly become fragile nations. In this article, we discuss, define and specify the meaning of the concept of fragile nations, putting the emphasis on its theoretical and normative dimensions.

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.

The majority of Canada's women premiers were selected to that office while their parties held government. This is uncommon, both in the comparative literature and among premiers who are men. What explains this gendered selection pattern to Canada's provincial premiers’ offices? This paper explores the most common explanation found in the comparative literature for women's emergence as leaders of electorally competitive parties and as chief political executives: women are more likely to be selected when that party is in crisis or decline. Using the population of women provincial premiers in Canada as case studies, evidence suggests three of eight women premiers were selected to lead parties in government that were in crisis or decline; a fourth was selected to lead a small, left-leaning party as predicted by the literature. However, for half of the women premiers, evidence of their party's decline is partial or inconclusive. As a result of this exploration, more research is required to draw generalizations about the gendered opportunity structures that shape how women enter (and exit) the premier's office in Canada.

The determinants of fulfilling campaign promises in Canada over the period 1994–2015 are analyzed in a comparative perspective. All other factors being equal, we find that promises to reduce government spending are more likely to be fulfilled by the Conservatives than by the Liberals. Majority and re-elected governments facing a budget surplus are more likely to fulfill their election promises than minority and newly elected governments facing a budget deficit. Promises are more likely to be fulfilled at the start than at the end of a mandate. We also find a small but noticeable increase in the rate of fulfilling campaign promises over time.

Given the renewed interest in C. B. Macpherson's political theory in a time of late neo-liberalism, the aim of this article is to complement existing scholarship with a detailed account of his early thought on the transition into socialism. Against the prevailing view, I suggest that the young Macpherson outlined a theory of transition, on which the actualization of his democratic vision depended. I trace how he investigated the nature of the state in the 1930s and early 1940s and asked whether a socialist movement could gain control of state institutions and shape their policies to establish an economic democracy that could serve as a defence against fascism. As a democratic socialist, he agonized over the idea that a forcible revolution and unconstitutional measures were likely required to establish socialism. To paint my intellectual portrait, I make use of archival material from the time that has yet to be commented on.

This article addresses the overlooked subject of party switching in the Canadian House of Commons for the period 1945–2011. We estimate a model that explores how and why MPs engage in the otherwise risky behaviour of abandoning their party labels in a system characterized by a low personal vote. Our findings suggest that the electoral consequences for MPs who switch parties for policy reasons are indistinguishable from MPs who do not switch at all. By contrast, MPs who switch parties for office-related reasons, such as to accept a seat in cabinet or vote-related reasons, experience large electoral penalties. We also find that MPs who are expelled from caucus face the strongest electoral penalties of all party switchers, indicating it matters whether an MP jumps or is pushed. Our findings suggest that voters recognize opportunistic behaviour among their legislators and punish them accordingly and that under some circumstances, party switching may be both strategic and rational.

This article analyzes an important discretionary power of the Supreme Court of Canada, the ability to award costs. With the use of an original data set, we explore trends in costs awarding in public interest litigation at the Supreme Court from 1970 to 2012. Our findings suggest that, over time, the Court has tended to favour nongovernment parties over government parties where the former are less likely to pay costs when they lose and more likely to receive costs when they win. In these cases, costs orders were more likely to benefit public interest litigants, such as nongovernmental organizations, than individual litigants and businesses. Together, these findings suggest a sensitivity to access to justice concerns when making costs orders, though some may argue that this sensitivity by the Court does not extend far enough.