Canada is on the threshold of a major transformation in its ethnic and racial profile. Relative rates of immigration from European and non-European countries have reversed during the past 40 years. What impact has this had on the attitudes of the dominant white majority? This article provides a partial answer to this question by examining the attitudes and voting behaviour of this majority when faced with increasing concentrations of visible-minority neighbours. Attitudinal data from the 1997 and 2000 Canadian Election Studies were combined with data from the 1996 census to measure socio-economic status and the visible-minority population of the neighbourhoods occupied by survey respondents. Regression analysis reveals two different contextual effects involving the attitudes of the majority toward visible minorities. Positive attitudes towards visible minorities increase with neighbourhood socio-economic status, a finding consistent with "social identity" theory. However, positive attitudes toward racial minorities decline when the visible-minority population increases, a finding consistent with "realistic conflict" theory. Both contextual effects have implications for voting. Independent of individual characteristics, white voters are more likely to support Reform/Alliance if they live in less-educated environments or among higher numbers of visible-minority neighbours.

This article examines the conditions under which policy discourses can serve as contributing factors to policy change, even in the absence of changes in institutions and interests. It begins with a discussion of the role of ideas in policy analysis and how they can play a "constitutive role" as frames for policy. Drawing on a distinction between "augmentative" discourses that serve to reinforce an existing policy framework and "transformative discourses" that seek to persuade various publics of the need for significant policy change, four types of policy discourse are defined and a methodology is suggested for identifying these types. Two of these types, "challenging" and "truth-seeking," are hypothesized to be more conducive to the occurrence of significant policy change. Drawing then on case studies of policy change in Canada and Germany respectively, the article shows that a "challenging" discourse emerges in both countries, but leads to significant policy change only in Germany. Based on the comparison of the two cases, it is argued that three factors are relevant to whether a challenging discourse is successful or not: a broad consensus among core policy actors on the nature and gravity of the policy problem; the consistency of the discourse with broadly held normative values; and the persuasiveness of the "social facts" brought to bear in favour of proposed new solutions.

The idea that Canada is experiencing a "post-constitutional" era is misleading because it is based only on lack of changes to the formal codified constitution. Through an examination of international economic agreements, considered as untraditional mechanisms having a constitutional effect, a case is made that Canada's constitution has undergone significant, but little noticed, change over the last decade. Using Stephen Krasner's typology of sovereignty, it is shown that several aspects of Canada's sovereignty have been diminished. The effect is that the balance between liberalism and democracy in Canada's liberal democratic polity has been altered, to the detriment of the democratic component.

This article examines the contemporary basis of legitimate governance in Canada by identifying and documenting four different bases of political authority: state-centred, market-based, expert and popular authority. The co-existence of these competing bases of authority, traced to cultural shifts and developments associated with globalization, creates conflicting domestic and international norms of procedural and substantive legitimacy. The article argues that effective and legitimate governing in Canada requires greater incorporation of elements of popular authority, and reform, not abandonment, of state-centred authority.

According to several authors, the politics of recognition are at an impasse. The politicization of identity, they claim, relies on a hermetic and essentialist conception of culture. Although this critique hits the target in some specific circumstances, nevertheless it misrepresents the more general process of intercultural mediation triggered by the politics of recognition. That said, the emphasis on the end-state of substantive recognition does seem to lead to an impasse. The struggles for recognition, and the identities that underlie these struggles, are too plural, convoluted and fluid to be theorized as quests for definitive recognition. Thus, identity politics ought also to be seen as agonic games of mutual disclosure which participate in the ongoing reconfiguration of the norms of public recognition inherent in democratic politics.

The article identifies two schools of thought on why Quebeckers choose to support or oppose sovereignty - the rational choice approach that has focused on individuals' assessments of the collective costs and benefits of sovereignty for the Quebec economy and the French language, and the socio-psychological approach that has focused on variables such as resentment, feelings of status denial, ethnic grievances and self-confidence. It has been difficult to resolve disputes between the two approaches due to weakness in available data and a lack of a comparative approach amongst scholars. Using a data set explicitly designed to compare the two schools, this article examines whether previous researchers' conclusions hold even when concepts are operationalized in different ways and when models are specified using different variables. The author examines five general dimensions: the state of the economy, the state of the French language, the state of federalism, respect and recognition, and the perceived quality of relations between English and French speakers. The major substantive conclusion is that the previous scholarship on the motivations for vote choice have significantly overestimated the importance of assessments of the French language, significantly underestimated the importance of assessments of whether Quebeckers are respected and recognized within Canada, and have also underestimated the importance of assessments of federalism and the quality of relations between linguistic groups. These conclusions hold for even the most ambivalent voters.

Drawing on the proliferating literature on multiculturalism, this article provides a theoretical and critical argument in support of public funding for minority cultural schools, as well as a critique of the Ontario Conservative government's proposal in 2001 to extend tax credits to parents who enroll their children in private schools in Ontario. It argues that governments in Canada committed to the idea of multiculturalism have an obligation to promote the maintenance and flourishing of minority cultures through education and financial support. The article first outlines and refutes neutralist liberal arguments against public funding for minority religious and culturally education, and demonstrates what is meant by a right to culture and the attendant duties such rights impose on the state. It then raises and responds to concerns about such cultural pluralist policies and suggests ways to balance group demands for public funding with other values the state wishes to support. It argues that the Ontario government's proposal to provide tax credits for private education without regulation does not respond to concerns about balancing the right to culture and teaching liberal citizenship values, and offers alternative policy recommendations in the conclusion.

This article critically analyzes Carole Pateman's novel and provocative reading of social contract theory in her now-classic work, The Sexual Contract. Pateman posits the existence of a sexual contract prior to the social contract which she argues has been suppressed in the tradition of Western political thought. The article indicates some of the potential weaknesses with constructing a gendered critique of contract theory through the lens of a sexual contract. The author specifically focuses on Pateman's re-interpretation of the patriarchalism of Hobbes and Locke to make this case.

This article shows that the timing and nature of policies hostile to foreign direct investment stem both from the transaction costs of negotiating with different host country agencies, and from changes to domestic and international coalitions. Divided agency jurisdiction is modeled as a partial property right to the use of a resource. Host industries lacking political cohesion allow foreign firms economic opportunities and a stronger political voice. Qualitative and quantitative evidence from five fisheries in the United States and Canada confirm that the costs of negotiating with a fractured government and the opportunity to form transnational coalitions lead host countries to adopt policies that will facilitate forced divestment. These policies vary in respect to their timing and format.

Federalism has remained a contested concept. The constitutional certainties of the modern federal state are under attack from confederal practices of negotiated agreement. Such practices have their traditional roots in the political theories of Althusius and Montesquieu. The central argument of this article is that the American Federalists broke with that older tradition and deliberately misinterpreted Montesquieu along the way. Consequently, the predominant reading of federalism emphasizes federal supremacy over the idea of a social compact among equal partners, territorial representation dominates over the recognition of social community, and the allocation of divided powers is guided by national prerogatives rather than regionally differentiated policy needs. Recent trends towards a more collaborative form of federalism indicate that the old model of constitutional federalism may be replaced by new practices of treaty federalism.

This article follows Hobbes's distinction between man as the artificer of a commonwealth and man as the material of the commonwealth, by exploring the meaning of natural right and consent from the perspective of an artificer or potential sovereign. From this perspective, natural rights are transformed from alleged attributes of humans into decisions by a victor in war to treat the defeated as if they had natural rights. Similarly, consent is transformed from actions of subjects or citizens into a decision by a victor to recognize the defeated as if they had a right to consent and to treat them as if they had consented. Moreover, Hobbes's concept of a commonwealth by institution is understood as a definitional standard for the creation of commonwealths by force or acquisition, rather than as a possible historical event. Hobbes sought to explain and substantiate this view of natural right and consent by comparing the emergence of political authority from victory in war to the emergence of authority of a mother over her infant in a state of nature. According to Hobbes, just as maternal authority rests on a mother's recognition of the right of her infant to consent, political authority rests on the victor's recognition of the right of the defeated to consent. The practical policy thrust of Hobbes's thought emerges from his comparison of the authority of mothers and conquerors.

William Livingston's idea of "federal society" is one of the leading sociological approaches to federalism. This article applies Livingston's approach in the opposite direction. It is argued that the unitary German societal structure, or the "non-federal" German society, has exerted centralist pressures on the federal system. In particular, the article examines the changes within the policy area of education. Despite explicit constitutional clauses that place education under the exclusive jurisdiction of the German Länder, an all-German educational policy has emerged. A process that started with harmonization and standardization has eventually led to the "nationalization" of education. This has largely come about through public demands for a Germany-wide public policy. Empirical research shows that political actors have differed over the contents of educational policy but have shared an all-German frame of reference.

In recent years, many governments have embraced new modes of economic governance that rely on public-private partnerships. These forms of governance effectively devolve authority and responsibility from the state, and instead rely on the policy networks found in civil society.This article argues that despite the general enthusiasm for such decentralized collaboration, there is significant variation in its meaning and practice. Comparing the public-private partnership strategies of two governments in Ontario in the 1990s, the article analyzes the origins and progress of two distinctive governance paradigms, looking for signs of economic innovation.The case studies demonstrate that each of the social democratic and neoliberal paradigms contains its own specific representational logic, organizational design, and policy purpose. The article underscores the analytical importance of linking the study of decentralized policy networks at the meso or local scale to macro-level political and economic factors that condition their operation and effects. It concludes with a discussion of the obstacles to institutional innovation in Ontario, and the conditions that facilitate successful public-private partnerships in economic governance.

Issue ownership refers to political parties' recognized capacity or reputation to deal competently with a number of issues and problems. Canadian perceptions of party competence in five issue areas are examined: unemployment, inflation, national unity, public finance management and international affairs. Using aggregate-level Gallup poll data from a 50-year period, the study shows not only that Canadians distinguish between federal parties based on their issue-handling capabilities, but also that party images are not impervious to change. Two particular moments of realignment in party images are identified: the beginning of the 1960s, and the early 1990s. The image of the federal Liberal party clearly benefited from both periods. Beyond the expected projection effect of party popularity, two factors are shown to account at least partially for these variations over time in issue ownership. The parties' performance while in office and the arrival of new competitors within the party system in the 1993 election are both found to significantly affect perceptions of party competence in Canada.

This study uses a game-theoretic analysis to suggest that governments can minimize the political risks associated with significant liberalization of trade by employing a multistep process in the reduction of state-supplied rents. The model argues that when governments precede significant reductions in state-supplied rents with a smaller reduction, or with a reduction that can be portrayed credibly as externally imposed, they may be in a position to evaluate, and hence mitigate, costs associated with significant trade liberalization. Substantive implications are explored in the context of United States trade policy and the still-curious ability of the Franklin Roosevelt administration to engage in strategic rent reductions without suffering meaningful political backlash.

This article attempts to clarify the controversies Charles Taylor's thoughts on group rights and identity politics have generated by exploring the constitutional and normative dimensions of Taylor's approach to the problem of political fragmentation, what he calls "deep diversity." In doing so, it makes a qualified defence of Taylor against his critics while also sketching an alternative route to deep diversity. The latter responds to the critics' concerns about the actual forms of accommodation or recognition that Taylor's thought sanctifies while preserving the normative core of his model.

This article evaluates whether municipal amalgamations in the Canadian province of Ontario met the provincial government's objectives of employing fewer politicians while maintaining councillors' accessibility to citizens. On the basis of a survey of residents and interviews with community leaders and councillors, the article concludes that in the amalgamations studied, the provincial government achieved its objectives.

Policing, a subject little studied by North American political scientists, has considerable relevance to newly democratizing countries, particularly those emerging from communist rule. Taking the case of Ukraine, the article examines what measures have been adopted to transform that country's Soviet pattern of authoritarian policing into something resembling that of established European liberal democracies. The balance sheet shows few signs of positive change. Instead, thanks to President Leonid Kuchma's leadership, the politicization and corruption of the police is now more blatant than ever. A new form of police state, not seen in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, threatens the rule of law and democracy along with it.

Theorists of contentious politics have been divided over the influence on agency behaviour of ideational or cultural factors on the one hand, and rational strategic calculations of opportunities on the other. Based on an Israeli nonparliamentary opposition movement to the peace process, this study presents an integrative approach in which ideational variables are elevated to the level of independent motivating forces in which the objectives of the movement are embedded. Argumentation at the strategic level provides the movement with opportunities for increasing its support basis beyond the natural constituency with which it shares ideology and, ultimately, for mobilizing protest. The case illustrates how a political context that limits activity actually mobilizes contention, while a context of more open opportunity can demobilize protest activity.

This article explores the implications for female politicians of the gendered nature of news coverage. An analysis of the language used in television news coverage of the English-language leaders' debates in the Canadian federal elections of 1993, 1997 and 2000 confirms that the debates are framed in stereotypically masculine ways as battles, sporting events or back street brawls. When the news coverage is compared with the leaders' actual behaviour in the debates, it is clear that the coverage focuses disproportionately on combative displays of behaviour by female party leaders, but tends to ignore the women when they adopt a more low-key style, especially when the novelty of a female leader has worn off.