1 Among Canadian third parties, only the NDP has been continually represented in the Commons throughout the period of analysis. Other parties, such as the Social Credit, the Reform party or the Bloc Québécois, are not covered in this analysis.

2 Budge, Ian and Hofferbert, Richard, “Mandates and Policy Outputs: US Party Platforms and Federal Expenditures 1948-1985,” American Political Science Review 84 (1990), 111–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hofferbert, Richard and Budge, Ian, “The Party Mandate and the Westminster Model: Election Programmes and Government Spending in Britain, 1948-1985,” British Journal of Political Science 22 (1992), 151–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Budge and Hofferbert, “Mandates and Policy Outputs,” 111.

4 Hofferbert and Budge, “The Party Mandate and the Westminster Model,” 153-55.

5 Ibid., 153.

6 Ibid., 154.

7 The classic statement of the principal-agent model is Alchian, Armen and Demsetz, Harold, “Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization,” American Economic Review 62 (1972), 777–795.Google Scholar For some applications to politics see Moe, Terry, “The New Economics of Organization,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984), 739–777CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weingast, Barry and Marshall, William, “The Industrial Organization of Congress,” Journal of Political Economy 96 (1988), 132–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kiewiet, Donald and McCubbins, Matt, The Logic of Delegation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

8 Robertson, David, A Theory of Party Competition (London: John Wiley, 1976).Google Scholar See also Budge, Ian and Farlie, Dennis, “Party Competition—Selective Emphasis or Direct Confrontation? An Alternative View with Data,” in Daalder, Hans and Mair, Peter, eds., Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change (London: Sage, 1983), 267–308.Google Scholar

4 Hofferbert and Budge, “The Party Mandate and the Westminster Model,” 175.

10 See Strom, Kaare, “A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties,” American Journal of Political Science 34 (1990), 565–598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).Google Scholar

12 See Bakvis, Herman, “Regional Ministers, National Policies and the Administrative State in Canada: The Regional Dimension of Cabinet Decision-Making, 1980-1984,” this JOURNAL 21 (1988), 539–567.Google Scholar See also Savoie, Donald, The Politics of Public Spending in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 181–204.Google Scholar

13 On American divided government in a comparative perspective, see Fiorina, Morris, Divided Government (New York: Macmillan, 1992).Google Scholar See also the collection of essays by Powell, G. Bingham, Fiorina, Morris, Laver, Michael and Shepsle, Kenneth A., and Pierce, Roy on the topic of divided government in Governance 4 (1991), 231–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Intergovernmental relations have long been a concern for scholars of Canadian federalism. Breton, Albert (”Supplementary Statement,” in Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, Report Volume Three [Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1985], 486–526)Google Scholar presents a picture of competitive federalism in which federal and provincial governments keep their distance and compete for public support by providing separate bundles of services. A contrasting image of collaborative federalism is presented by Smiley, Donald, The Federal Condition in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1987), 94–99Google Scholar, in which federal and provincial governments cooperate in federal policies of common concern. A third view is presented by Sproule-Jones, Mark, Governments at Work: Canadian Parliamentary Federalism and Its Public Policy Effects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 79–103.Google Scholar Sproule-Jones characterizes Canadian intergovernment relations as cartel-like; as such they are both cooperative and competitive, often at the same time.

15 In 1957, 1963, 1965 and 1972, the CCF-NDP, sometimes in concert with the Social Credit, agreed to back a minority Liberal government. The minority Conservative government of 1962 received tentative support from the Social Credit. In 1979, the minority Conservative government tried to govern alone. By comparison, only one of 13 postwar British governments was a minority government (this was the government following the election of February 1974).

16 Petry, Francois and Harmatz, Howard (“Politico-Economic Interactions in Canada: An Empirical Assessment,” Public Finance Quarterly [forthcoming]) show that federal expenditure decisions are less sensitive to the ideology of the governing party in minority government situation than when the government has a majority in the House of Commons.Google Scholar

17 For a study of federal party interaction in situations of minority government, see Stewart, Ian, “Of Customs and Coalitions: The Formation of Canadian Federal Parliamentary Alliances,” this JOURNAL 13 (1980), 451–479.Google Scholar

18 For an analysis of the constitutional origin of the fragile political power basis of Canadian government, see Cairns, Allan, Constitution, Government and Society in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988), 111–140.Google Scholar Recent elections confirm the fragile electoral basis of federal governments. In 1984, voters from Québec defected from their traditional Liberal party allegiance and supported the Progressive Conservatives instead. In 1993, a majority of Quebeckers voted for thenewly created Bloc Québécois, while the West supported the Reform party.

19 Thorburn, Hugh, “Interpretations of the Canadian Party System,” in Thorburn, Hugh, ed., Party Politics in Canada (6th ed.; Toronto: Prentice Hall, 1991), 114–115.Google Scholar See also Christian, William and Campbell, Colin, Political Parties and Ideologiesin Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1983).Google Scholar

20 Whitaker, Reginald, The Government Party: Organizing and Financing the Liberal Party of Canada, 1930-58 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).Google Scholar

21 The idea of two national parties altering their programmes with the shifts of opinion was proposed decades ago by Brady, Alexander, Democracy in the Dominions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1947).Google Scholar Brady quotes the observation by Sir John Willison that “no man in Canada has been more inconsistent than the man who has faithfully followed either political party for a generation.”

22 Jenson, Jane, “Party Loyalty in Canada: The Question of Party Identification,” this JOURNAL 8 (1975), 543–553.Google Scholar Recent confirmation comes from Clarke, Harold and Zuk, Gary, “The Politics of Party Popularity: Canada 1974-1979,” Comparative Politics 19 (1987), 299–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Clarke, Harold, Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon, Absent Mandate:The Politics of Discontent in Canada (2nd ed.; Agincourt: Gage Publishing, 1991).Google Scholar

24 Whitehorn, Alan, “The New Democratic Party in Convention,” in Perlin, George, ed., Party Democracy in Canada (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1988), 272–300, gives a detailed account of NDP ideological orientation.Google Scholar

25 Party programmes are drawn from Carrigan, Donald O., Canadian Party Platforms, 1867-1968 (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1968) for the 1949 to 1968 elections, and from party pamphlets for the 1972 election and onwards. Each sentence, or quasi-sentence in the case of compound sentences, was assigned exclusively to one coding category. Those which could not be fitted to one of the 12 topics were assigned to an “uncoded” category. Each party programme document was coded twice, by paid assistants and by the author, with a resulting overall agreement level of 96 per cent.Google Scholar

26 The overall similarity of Conservative and Liberal programme emphases in these policy areas is often accompanied by a tendency for these parties to interchange programmes, as suggested by Brady. Instances of leap-frogging between Conservative and Liberal programmes are quite frequent in citizen protection, health and housing.

27 See Johnston, Richard, Blais, André, Brady, Henry E. and Cretê, Jean, Letting the People Decide (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

28 Horowitz, Gad, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” in Thorburn, , ed., Party Politics in Canada, 160–177.Google Scholar

29 Chandler, William M., “Canadian Socialism and Policy Impact: Contagion from the Left?,” this JOURNAL 18 (1977), 755–780.Google Scholar According to Chandler, “contagion refers to… situations in which opposition forces can influence governments to take policy decisions which on their own they would not ordinarily take.” Chandler examines contagion from the left at the provincial level. Pétry, François, “The Policy Impact of Canadian Party Programs: Public Expenditure Growth and Contagion from the Left,” Canadian Public Policy 14 (1988), 362–376, also finds support for the idea at the federal level.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 This interpretation has been proposed in various speeches by T. C. Douglas and other NDP leaders.

31 Mallory, J. R., The Structure of Canadian Government (Toronto: Macmillan, 1971), 201.Google Scholar

32 It is assumed that Liberal and Conservative programmes propose adverse solutions on those issues. Compromise may also result, in a trivial sense, when the parties propose similar positions on an issue. Saliency theory, and our strategy for coding party programmes—Which is based on the notion of selective emphasis—does not allow differentiation between interparty agreement or confrontation on issues.

33 According to Horowitz, ”when the left is weak, the centre party moves right to deal with the Conservative challenge; when the left is strengthened, as during the war and after the formation of the NDP, the centre moves left to deal with the challenge” (”Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada,” 169).

34 The party programme data are entered for the year of the election if the election is before July 31, or for the year immediately after the election if the election is on or after July 31.

35 The signs of the coefficients for health and education in columns 2 and 4 go in the hypothesized direction. The coefficients for foreign affairs and welfare are positive in columns 2 and 4 but they are not statistically significant in column 4.

36 For a discussion of the various attributes of budgeting in Canada, see the concluding chapter in Doern, Bruce, Maslove, Allan and Prince, Michael, Public Budgeting in Canada (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 204.

38 A prediction is considered correct when the signs of the parameters are in agreement with the hypothesis, irrespective of whether the parameters are statistically significant or not. Relying solely upon the significant coefficients would have lowered the number of observations to the point of threatening the validity of the test for independence.

39 Results of a chi-square test indicate that the null hypothesis of independence between the predictive performance of the models and the policy fields can be rejected at the one per cent significance level.

40 See Cameron, David, “The Growth of Government Spending: The Canadian Experience in Comparative Perspective,” in Banting, Keith, ed., State and Society:Canada in Comparative Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 26–27.Google Scholar

41 See, in particular, Cameron, David R., “The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978), 1243–1261CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hicks, Alexander M. and Swank, Duane H., “Politics, Institutions, and Welfare Spending in Industrialized Democracies, 1969-1982,” American Political ScienceReview 86 (1992), 658–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar