Province Building and the Federalization of Immigration in Canada Mireille Paquet, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019, trans. Howard Scott, pp. 246 (originally published in French in 2016 by Presses de l'Université de Montréal). - Volume 53 Issue 4

ABSTRACTThis article outlines how the advent of digital-communications technology, particularly social media, has contributed to an increased wariness by political elites to grant interviews to researchers. Errant remarks, misquotes, and comments taken out of context can exact a heavy price. Thus, politicians and their gatekeepers are far more cautious and risk averse than in decades past, which puts qualitative research methods—and the rich data they produce—in peril. Insights drawn from 32 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with social scientists, political journalists, and political staffers in six countries revealed that academics who submit interview requests should expect to be subjected to online scrutiny—a vetting—by gatekeepers before any access is granted. Digital screening aims to assess the authenticity and objectivity of the researcher. Our findings suggest that scholars who want to pursue qualitative research with politicians must practice online reputation management and perhaps even delve into personal marketing.

This article tackles the puzzle of the best practices to acquire an interview with a politician. It seeks to assist researchers who must persuade gatekeepers in busy political offices to present an elected representative with an interview request. Our research is based on a copious review of the literature and is punctuated by fresh insights collected via interviews with 32 academics, journalists and political staff in six countries. We argue that researchers must tailor their approach when placing interview requests to elected officials and make careful use of email, websites, social media and online reputation management. For ease of reference three summary tables are presented. This synopsis about securing interviews with election candidates and legislators can inform qualitative research recruitment with other types of political elites in a rapidly evolving digital environment.

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In this work we offer results drawn from a dataset of a post-provincial election survey in eight Canadian provinces to assess the impact of party system congruency on partisanship. We postulate that partisanship will be more likely and stronger in provinces that share a similar political party system to the federal level. We extend this preliminary analysis to test the underlying mechanism by examining the impact holding partisan ties at the provincial level has on the likelihood and strength of federal identification, according to party system similarity. Our results show very limited support for the party system congruency factor, raising further questions of its applicability in the Canadian context.Resume Dans cet article, nous presentons les resultats provenant d'un ensemble de donnees tirees d'un sondage post-electoral provincial realise dans huit provinces canadiennes pour evaluer l'impact de la coherence du systeme des partis sur la partisannerie. Nous partons de l'hypothese que la partisannerie serait plus previsible et plus importante dans les provinces qui ont le meme systeme de partis politiques qu'au niveau federal. Nous allons plus loin dans cette analyse preliminaire, afin de tester le mecanisme sous-jacent, en examinant l'impact qu'a le fait d'entretenir des liens partisans, au niveau provincial, sur la probabilite d'une identification federale et sur son intensite, en fonction de la ressemblance du systeme des partis. Nos resultats montrent que l'influence du facteur de coherence du systeme de partis est tres limitee, soulevant de nouvelles questions quant a son applicabilite dans le contexte canadien.

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The Global Promise of Federalism is an excellent edited volume on federalism celebrating the life and work of Canadian scholar Richard Simeon. In thirteen chapters (including one solely dedicated to listing Simeon’s many books, chapters, and journal articles), it brings together senior and junior scholars who contribute thoughtful essays on key aspects affecting countries with federal arrangements, each exploring the notion of federalism’s “promise” to countries throughout the world. Some chapters raise newer issues and questions about federalism (such as the role of trust in both choosing and maintaining federalism in postconflict countries, and the capacity of a federal system to manage and contain the rise of religiosity in numerous countries throughout the world), while others offer fresh thoughts about classical federalism arguments (such as the role of the party system as a factor determining the relative centralization or decentralization of a federation). Themes of negotiation, compromise, flexibility, and the recognition of diversity weave throughout each of the chapters, highlighting the promise of this political system as emphasized by the book’s title. Although the editors are Canadian, the volume is not exclusively centered on Canada; as such, an important benefit of the book is its comparative nature. The strong comparative component reminds us of Simeon’s long-held position that students of federalism, especially Canadians, should recognize the advantage of being less insular in our scholarship; we must look beyond our own borders to study and understand the characteristics and functioning of federal systems elsewhere in the world. The volume captures this sentiment and should be required reading for federalism scholars and students alike.

Political advisors to heads of government occupy such a privileged sphere of influence that their role is a source of consternation among democratic idealists. Interviews with advisors to prime ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK inform a small body of comparative literature about political advising in the Commonwealth. The authors find that first ministers consider input from many advisors and therefore the counsel of any one advisor is of limited impact. Further research is needed to understand the extent to which these agents project the power of the executive office and make decisions on the principal's behalf.

This article takes a new approach to the study of federal-provincial relations by arguing that in the conduct of intergovernmental relations in Canada, whether on major constitutional issues or the mundane, ordinary intergovernmental negotiations, partisanship has an effect. An examination of the Meech Lake Accord constitutional negotiations (1987-1990) and the Child Care Agreements (2004-2005) reveals that where traditional factors fail to provide a reason for conflict or cooperation between governments, the partisan variable offers valuable explanatory power. The impact is found in the process of federal-state bargaining and not in the substance of agreements themselves-in other words, partisanship can influence how an agreement is reached and whether it is kept.

The question posed in this article focuses on whether partisanship affects government transitions. The way governments assume power in Canada is an intriguing part of politics, but we have only a limited knowledge of transition mechanics. There has been no investigation into whether transitions have an inter-governmental dimension, for instance, nor have transitions been studied with the government's partisan complexion in mind. This article addresses this gap in the literature by examining the 2003 Ontario Liberal transition through intergovernmental and political lenses. Using indicators to assess the role and impact of partisanship, the Ontario case suggests that partisan complexions matter in how the transition process is planned and executed. The provincial team will seek advice on the matter from their federal cousins, for example, and will recruit experienced political staffers from Parliament Hill to be part of the new sub-national government. Shared partisanship may also predict whether harmonious relations with Ottawa will prevail during the first several months in power. The article concludes by asserting that in provinces where political party organizations formally overlap or are informally intertwined across the federal divide, partisanship can play a role in determining how a new government prepares and implements its transition process.

Abstract. Conventional wisdom about the structure of political parties in Canada has emphasized their confederal nature. In other words (and the New Democratic party excepted), parties with identical partisan complexions at the federal and provincial levels are thought to operate in “two political worlds.” This paper argues that election campaigns are a key integrating link between parties. How they fight elections reveals extensive cross-level co-operation, particularly through shared activists (local party activists, party staff and party professionals) and technological expertise. This has the effect of shrinking the space between party cousins and forges unity between them. While there are certain obstacles to electoral collaboration, there are also incentives for these parties to work to maintain and strengthen their ties with their partisan cousin at the other level. These findings make an important contribution by directly challenging the notion that Canada's federal system has led to increasingly disentangled political parties. Résumé. L'opinion communément admise au sujet de la structure des partis politiques au Canada a mis l'accent sur leur nature confédérale. En d'autres termes (exception faite du Nouveau Parti démocratique), on considère en général que les partis à caractère partisan identique au palier fédéral et provincial fonctionnent dans «deux mondes politiques à part». Le présent article avance que les campagnes électorales constituent un facteur d'intégration clé entre les différents niveaux d'un parti. La façon dont un parti dispute une élection révèle un haut degré de coopération entre les organisations provinciales et fédérales, surtout du fait qu'ils partagent des militants communs (militants locaux, personnel politique et professionnels du parti) et leur expertise technologique. Ce phénomène tend à rétrécir l'espace entre cousins du même parti et à bâtir l'unité d'organisation entre les deux niveaux. Même s'il y a des obstacles inévitables à la collaboration électorale, les partis cousins ont de bonnes raisons de veiller à maintenir et à renforcer leurs liens réciproques. Ces conclusions apportent une contribution importante à l'étude des partis politiques, en contestant directement l'idée que le système fédéral au Canada a encouragé les partis politiques de même allégeance à mener leurs activités de manière indépendante.

Courts and Federalism: Judicial Doctrine in the United States, Australia, and Canada, Gerald Baier, Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2006, pp. 207. Is everything old new again? Gerald Baier's insightful book brings back into the mainstream a long neglected examination of federalism from the perspective of judicial review. His analysis of the courts' impact on the development of federalism involves a detailed study of division of powers jurisprudence in the United States, Australia, and Canada. In each of these countries, Baier argues, the decisions of the highest courts continue to affect the shape of federalism, but his central claim turns on how these decisions are made. For Baier, judicial doctrine plays a significant role in influencing the reasoning of the courts and must be considered an independent variable worthy of study in its own right. Many scholars have debated the significance of doctrine on judicial decision making. However, Baier takes issue with scholars who, on the one hand, have characterized doctrine as a tool of objectivity and certainty, and those, on the other hand, who view doctrine as entirely political in nature (27). For Baier, doctrine is neither of these but it is “distinctly legal in character” and it is this legal reasoning that shapes outcomes (27).