Situating the Canadian Party System in the 21st Century

• In Event: Electoral Democracy in Canada

Abstract

Superficially, the Canadian system resembles its 20th century predecessor. The Liberals are back in power and their main competitor is a lineal descendent of the old rival. On the left flank, the NDP continues to be a policy goad and a strategic problem for the Liberals. And yet the Liberals are closer to the edge than ever, and a Conservative century may be waiting to be born. The system continues to be volatile but in different ways than before. Movement between parties is increasingly within ideological “blocks” (Bartolini and Mair 1990) rather than a reflection of performance judgments on incumbents. This is is true within electoral cycles, including campaigns, as well as between consecutive elections. This reflects widened policy gaps between the left and right, on one hand, and convergence between the Liberals and NDP, on the other. The key dynamic for polarization is in cultural policy. Alongside all this has been a profound transformation in Quebec. The province is no longer the pivot for government that it was in the 19th and 20th centuries (Johnston 2017). The Quebec electorate is more volatile than before but less consolidated, and seat-vote relationships in the province have become quite chaotic. The province remains important, but now it acts rather as a random element.

This is an exercise in descriptive inference, part of a larger book project. The point is not to supply definitive explanations but to identify the explananda. To this end, it extracts various indices from electoral and survey data as well as from MARPOR data on party manifestos.

Author

• Richard Johnston, University of British Columbia