A07 - Party Ideology, Manifestos, and Election Promises
Date: Jun 2 | Time: 03:15pm to 04:45pm | Location:
Chair/Président/Présidente : Elizabeth Baisley (University of Toronto)
Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Elizabeth Baisley (University of Toronto)
Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Daniel Westlake (Queen's University)
Do Candidate Backgrounds Reveal Party Ideology?: A Case Study of the 2019 Canadian Federal Election: Adam Harmes (University of Western Ontario)
Abstract: Do candidate backgrounds reveal party ideology? To investigate this question, this paper obtained the online biographies for all candidates from the five main national parties in the 2019 Canadian federal election. Each biography was then manually coded based on the candidate’s education, employment, volunteer, and recreational backgrounds. The first aim was to identify any direct links - through employment or volunteer work - with ideologically-oriented interest groups and to determine if any patterns emerged across the candidates for each party. The second aim was to determine if any patterns existed between the candidate’s educational area of study, sector and type of employment, volunteering activities, recreational activities, and the party for which they chose to run. This paper’s findings contribute to the growing literature on an ‘ideological model’ of Canadian political parties. Specifically, while this literature has found evidence of party ideology in the opinions of party members, content analyses of party manifestos, and expert evaluations of party policies, it has yet to examine the interest group links and backgrounds of party candidates.
Far-right in Canada: Evidence from 2019 Federal Election: Simeon Mitropolitski (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: In times of increase in support for far-right parties in many economically advanced democracies much of the scholarship has indicated so far that this trend remains rather marginal as far as Canada is concerned. Reviews of the literature on this topic have so far concluded that this marginality is attributed to distinctly Canadian features such as the country’s unique geographic circumstances, its history of institutionalized multiculturalism, or the electoral system it shares only with other Westminster parliamentary democracies.
This paper wants to test this optimistic opinion. It offers two Guttman-type scales for measuring Canadian federal parties, and for searching far-right elements within party ideology based on content analysis of their political programs and 2019 electoral manifesto. Guttman scale is a tool designed to empirically test the unidimensionality of a set of items. This instrument was first applied to far-right parties in Europe. In this paper, the first of these scales measures the right wing extremism with the concept of national identity that far-right leaning parties use in order to restrict political and social rights and freedoms of people they consider not part of the national community. The second scale measures far-right extremism with the policies suggested to protect national community and to discriminate against “others”.
Unwilling Partisans? Political Ideology, Party Evaluations, and Candidate Emergence in Canada: Angelia Wagner (University of Alberta)
Abstract: Political parties play a crucial role in the candidate emergence process in Western liberal democracies such as Canada. Because one of their functions is to recruit individuals to run for elected office, parties can create barriers to political candidacy that contribute to the under-representation of women, racialized folks, and sexual minorities in legislatures. Party recruitment practices are one barrier. Women, for example, often need to be approached several times before they are willing to run for office. Yet research has found that women are less likely to be asked to run if party recruiters are male and if recruiters rely on male-dominated social networks to identify potential candidates. A scholarly focus on recruitment practices, however, overlooks other party-related issues such as ideological (mis)alignment. Strong party discipline in Canada requires candidates to publicly support the party platform, but changes over time in the party’s leadership, ideology, and priorities can make that difficult. This paper explores Canadians’ perceptions of party-individual ideological alignment and its impact on candidacy. Specifically, what role does party ideology, platform, and/or leader play in an individual’s decision to run, or not run, for elected office? Preliminary findings from interviews with 101 Canadians from diverse social and political backgrounds indicate individuals will not run for federal or provincial office unless they can support about three-quarters of a party’s platform. By exploring potential candidates’ perceptions of parties, this study broadens our understanding of how parties shape the candidate emergence process.
How Important are Electoral Promises in Canada? Assessing the Impact of Electoral Platforms on the Government’s Legislative Agenda: Lisa Birch (Université Laval), Dominic Duval (Université du Québec à Montréal), Steve Jacob (Université Laval), Antoine Baby-Bouchard (Université Laval)
Abstract: There remain unsettled disagreements as to what constitutes a mandate and how it should be defined (Mansbridge, 2003). On the one hand, some scholars suggest that elections are a gage of confidence and that the elected officials should then rule according to their vision (see e.g. Birch, 1971). On the other hand, others propose that the government’s actions should be coherent with the electoral campaign they led, and more specifically, with the manifesto (platform) they presented during that electoral campaign (see e.g. Hofferbert and Budge, 1992). Other questions flowing from this initial one concern the importance of election promise-to-policy linkages (see Birch, Jacob & Baby-Bouchard, 2019; Conley, 2011; Fagan, 2018; Flynn, 2011; Panova, 2017; Sulkin 2009). In order to clarify the impact of electoral platforms on the government’s legislative agenda, we compare the policy proposals (the election promises) contained in the electoral platform to the policy output (the government bills) passed by the federal government. Each bill was manually classified according to the presence or absence of a link to election promises, the policy domains, and the main raison d’être of the bill (i.e., pledge fulfillment, policy modernization, miscellaneous policy initiatives, court decisions, and treaty implementation). Our research spans from 2001 to 2019.
Portrait de l’impact de la mobilisation LGBTQ+ dans l’arène partisane canadienne : une exploration des programmes électoraux des partis politiques de 1960 à 2015: Valérie Lapointe (Université d'Ottawa)
Abstract: Dans quelle mesure est-ce que le mouvement des lesbiennes, gais, bi-sexuel/les, trans et Queer (LGBTQ+) a intégré la politique partisane au Canada et comment les partis politiques canadiens ont-ils répondu à cette forme de mobilisation? Ces deux questions sont au cœur de la présente communication. En nous inspirant de la littérature sur l’impact des mouvements sociaux dans l’arène partisane (Piccio, 2015), nous explorons dans quelle mesure les partis politiques ont répondu aux tentatives d’intégration du mouvement LGBTQ+ dans l’histoire récente de la politique canadienne. Alors que le Nouveau Parti Démocratique (NPD) s’est doté d’un caucus lesbiens, gais et bisexuels et que le parti Conservateur du Canada (PCC) a lui aussi son LGBtories, aucune étude n’a été faite sur la genèse de ses organisations internes aux partis politiques et sur leurs impacts. Alors que le mouvement LGBTQ+ a été analysé comme étant essentiellement issu de la société civile par le biais d’organisations autonomes, un des éléments occultés par la littérature jusqu’à présent concerne la militance LGBTQ+ à l’intérieur des partis politiques et l’impact de cette présence sur ces véhicules politiques. En proposant une technique d’analyse de données descriptive et comparative appuyée par le logiciel NVivo, nous serons en mesure de dresser un portrait de l’évolution des positions des partis politiques au regard des sexualités au Canada de 1960 à 2015. Si l’électorat LGBTQ+ est désormais une frange convoitée par l’ensemble des partis politiques (Everitt, 2015), il importe de comprendre cette