On May 2, 2011, as Canadians watched the federal election results roll in and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives achieve a majority, it appeared that we were witnessing a major shift in the political landscape. In reality, Canadian politics had been changing for quite some time. This volume provides the first account of the political upheavals of the past two decades and speculates on the future of the country’s national party system. By documenting how parties and voters responded to new challenges between 1993 and 2011, this book sheds light on one of the most tumultuous periods in Canadian political history.

Canadian Parties in Transition examines the transformation of party politics in Canada and the possible shape the party system might take in the near future. With chapters written by an outstanding team of political scientists, the book presents a multi-faceted image of party dynamics, electoral behaviour, political marketing, and representative democracy. The fourth edition has been thoroughly updated and includes fifteen new chapters and several new contributors. The new material covers topics such as the return to power of the Liberal Party, voting politics in Quebec, women in Canadian political parties, political campaigning, digital party politics, and municipal party politics.

Party systems. Party organization. For too long, scholars researching in these two areas have worked in isolation. This book bridges the divide by bringing together leading political scientists from both traditions to examine the intersection of rules, society, and the organization of parties within party systems. Blending theory and case studies, Parties and Party Systems builds upon the pioneering work of R. Kenneth Carty, whose ideas about brokerage politics have influenced a generation of scholars. The contributors explore four thematic pathways: How does brokerage work across lines of division in society? How do partisan teams hold together in the face of the centrifugal pressures that necessitate brokerage? How can parties withstand the complicated principal-agent relations that inevitably arise? And, how does the institutional context constrain a multitude of competing interests when it, itself, is quite fragile? By providing new perspectives on parties as organizations that exist within political systems and by raising key questions about the sustainability of brokerage politics, this volume will provoke theoretical reconsideration, prompt further integrative thinking, and inspire future research at the political organization-system nexus.

The Canadian party system is a deviant case among the Anglo-American democracies. It has too many parties, it is susceptible to staggering swings from election to election, and its provincial and federal branches often seem unrelated. Unruly and inscrutable, it is a system that defies logic and classification – until now. In this political science tour de force, Richard Johnston makes sense of the Canadian party system. With a keen eye for history and deft use of recently developed analytic tools, he articulates a series of propositions underpinning the system. Chief among them was domination by the centrist Liberals, stemming from their grip on Quebec, which blocked both the Conservatives and the NDP. He also takes a close look at other peculiarities of the Canadian party system, including the stunning discontinuity between federal and provincial arenas. For its combination of historical breadth and data-intensive rigour, The Canadian Party System is a rare achievement. Its findings shed light on the main puzzles of the Canadian case, while contesting the received wisdom of the comparative study of parties, elections, and electoral systems elsewhere.

In the 2011 general election, the New Democratic Party stunned political pundits by becoming the Official Opposition in the House of Commons. After near collapse in the 1993 election, how did the NDP manage to win triple the seats of its Liberal rivals and take more than three-quarters of the ridings in Quebec? Reviving Social Democracy examines the federal NDP’s transformation from “nearly dead party” to new power player within a volatile party system. Its early chapters – on the party’s emergence in the 1960s, its presence in Quebec, and the Jack Layton factor – pave the way for insightful analyses of issues such as party modernization, changing ideology, voter profile, and policy formation that played a significant role in driving the “Orange Crush” phenomenon. Later chapters explore such future-facing questions as the prospects of party mergers and the challenges of maintaining support in the long term.

The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the most successful parties in the democratic world. It dominated Canadian politics for a century, practising an inclusive style of “big tent” politics that allowed it to fend off opponents on both the left and right. How did it do this? What kind of party organization did it build over the decades to manage its remarkable string of election victories? This book traces the record of the party over the twentieth century, revealing the cyclical character of its success and charting its capacity to respond to change. It also unwraps Liberal practices and organization to reveal the party’s distinctive “brokerage” approach to politics as well as a franchise-style structure that tied local grassroots supporters to the national leadership. R. Kenneth Carty provides a masterful analysis of how one party came to lead the nation’s public life. In a country riven by difference, the Liberals’ enduring political success was an extraordinary feat. But as Carty reflects, given the party’s not-so-distant travails, even with an election win, will it be able to reinvent itself for the twenty-first century?

The New NDP is the definitive account of the evolution of the New Democratic Party’s political marketing strategy in the early twenty-first century. In 2011, the federal NDP achieved its greatest electoral success – becoming the official opposition under Jack Layton’s leadership. David McGrane argues that the key to the party’s electoral success of 2011 lies in the moderation of its ideology and modernization of its campaign structures. Those changes brought the party closer to governing than ever before but ultimately not into power. McGrane then poses a difficult question: Was remaking the NDP message and revitalizing its campaign model the right choice after all, considering it fell to its perennial third-party spot in 2015? The New NDP examines Canada’s NDP at a pivotal time in its history and provides lessons for progressive parties on how to win elections in the age of the internet, big data, and social media.

Elections are not just about who casts ballots – they reflect the citizens, parties, media, and history of an electorate. Fighting for Votes examines how these factors interacted during a recent Ontario election. The authors begin by examining the province’s political culture and history. They then delve deeply into the campaign by exploring three lines of enquiry that help define representative democracy: How do parties position themselves to appeal to voters? How is information from and about parties transmitted to voters? And how do voters respond to the information around them? Looking at information from a wealth of sources – from political party websites and debate transcripts to Twitter feeds – they provide a sophisticated analysis of the interplay between voters and political parties in an era of new media. The most complete account of a provincial election available, Fighting for Votes illuminates the evolving electoral landscape.

Why do Canadians vote the way they do? For more than forty years, the primary objective of the ongoing Canadian Election Studies (CES) has been to investigate that question. This volume brings together principal investigators of the Studies to document the history of this impressive collection of surveys, examine what has been learned, and consider their future. The wide-ranging collection of essays provides useful background and insights on the relevance of the CES and lends perspective to the debate about where to steer the CES in the years ahead.

When people discuss politics, they often mention the promises politicians make during election campaigns. Promises raise hopes that positive policy changes are possible, but people are generally skeptical of these promises. Party Mandates and Democracy reveals the extent to and conditions under which governments fulfill party promises during election campaigns. Contrary to conventional wisdom a majority of pledges—sometimes a large majority—are acted upon in most countries, most of the time. The fulfillment of parties’ election pledges is an essential part of the democratic process. This book is the first major, genuinely comparative study of promises across a broad range of countries and elections, including the United States, Canada, nine Western European countries, and Bulgaria. The book thus adds to the body of literature on the variety of outcomes stemming from alternative democratic institutions.