The political use of political science

Political scientists claim for science and for themselves, as scholars, a maximum of independence in their dealings with government and Parliament. At the same time, science finds itself so inextricably bound up with the actual political process that it has become an “establishment” as strong and formidable as religion was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Liberal political scientists put themselves into a contradictory position when they demand for themselves, in the pursuit of their task as scholars, a political status which would protect them from the scrutiny of the elected representatives of the people, a condition which, they would refuse to grant to any other social group, and yet simultaneously in their teaching and writing set themselves up as the ardent defenders of representative and responsible democracy. What must one sacrifice, science or democratic responsibility? Is it necessary to aim at excluding science from the democratic process, at the risk of seeing our society regress towards a pre-industrial age, or should one regard representative and responsible democracy as relevant to questions of minor importance while significant issues which concern the present and future of society are to be dealt with by other political methods?

Community action: diversity and ambiguity

The present article tries to outline the diversity and the internal tensions in community action by examining various forms of community consciousness (revolutionary, radical, defensive, reformist) and various kinds of leadership activity (protest, organizational, pragmatic). The existence of several kinds of leadership combined with multiple possibilities of action produces splintered activity which is reinforced by its dependence in the political arena and by political restraints. Community action in the process of political decision-making has little impact on the determination of the rules of the game, which are controlled by the government, and on the legitimate and public definition of the issues, which are set, in part, by the mass media. Concerted community action is thus held to be a precarious social movement whose particular conditions of origin, situation, and the peripheral position in society of its community agents determine its heterogeneous, critical, and Utopian dimensions.

The tribunicial function and the Créditiste group in the Quebec National Assembly, 1970–3

An analysis of the attitudes and behaviour of the Créditiste group since its first appearance in Quebec's National Assembly (1970–3) has two interesting aspects. First, it clarifies the Créditiste phenomenon, supporting the conclusions arrived at in a study conducted by Vera Murray. This study held that the RCQ was distinguished by the exercise of a specific function, namely, the defence and representation of the interests of underprivileged social classes. This is a function which Georges Lavau has described as tribunicial. We intend to show that the Créditiste members, in spite of the internal splits in the party during the leadership of Camil Samson and Armand Bois, have clearly fulfilled a protective function on behalf of “proletarian social elements” in the political system.

The election of Yvon Dupuis to head the party in February 1973 inaugurated the progressive abandonment of this specific role, which had characterized the RCQ until then on Quebec's political chessboard, in favour of the function of providing governmental alternatives. Second, this study enables us to clarify and to distinguish between certain points in regard to the tribunicial function and the function of providing alternatives, used by Georges Lavau. In our opinion, the case of the RCQ is a much purer illustration of the tribunicial function than is the case of the PCF.

In brief, the essence of the tribunicial function is the use of social criticism – not political criticism – based on the defence of underprivileged classes and revolving around the detailed denunciation of the political establishment. The tribunicial function also displays very little interest in the discussion or elaboration of a program of wholesale reform.

Developments and problems in contemporary thinking about strategy

The purpose of this analysis is to review the most important changes in contemporary thinking about strategy and to draw certain conclusions. Beginning with the different stages in the evolution of “classical” theories and the coming of “academic” ideas developed as explanations of a strategy of deterrence between the two super-powers, the analysis emphasizes the relation between the new explanations of conflicts among social groups and the new categories for defining strategy. It also stresses the relation between a theory of the multiple causes of conflicts and wars and the development of the interdisciplinary interpretation of the analysis of strategy. In conclusion, it is argued that the current stage of research into a “qualitative” change in the analysis of strategy also implies new objectives for strategy that are required for the problem of the survival of mankind.

Public Housing in Hull

The purpose of this article is to explain the program of public housing construction in Hull. The first section evaluates the construction completed. Basing their appraisal on several indices, the authors conclude that the municipality began the program enthusiastically but that its activity has decreased since then. Certain factors which could explain these two phases are identified. The authors point out the importance of relating public housing to urban renewal, although the latter would not explain the whole situation by itself. After having noted that pressure groups played a negligible role, the authors examine the chain of communication among the local political elite. One thing they show is how the perceptions of the elite can sometimes be influenced by a certain bias in the information that comes to them from the public. Finally, the authors note the impact of “external” information which connects the local elite to those in other Quebec municipalities and in the neighbouring province.

In a recent article in this Journal, Paul M. Sniderman, H. D. Forbes, and Ian Melzer challenge the proponents of what they characterize as the “textbook theory” of Canadian parties. They claim that their examination of the 1965 and 1968 Canadian national election studies contradicts the conclusions of almost every analyst of parties and voting in Canada. While a little debunking of long-held interpretations is always valuable in any discipline, one should exercise caution. Conventional wisdom does not usually acquire that status without containing at least some small measure of validity. In this case I must conclude that more confusion has been created than has been cleared away and previous analysts should not be considered to have erred quite as much as the authors of this article would like us to believe. Sniderman et al. argue that, because of “an obsession with national unity” on the part of political parties and a fear of fragmentation which produces undifferentiated politics of accommodation, “Canadian voters tend to lack strong loyalties to the older parties, at least when compared to the Americans and the British. As a consequence, electoral support for the older parties in Canada tends to be unstable.”

The first part of this proposition asserts that concern with national unity necessarily produces such similar policy positions that parties are interchangeable, being distinguished only by their leadership. Although this is an interesting proposition, it will not be dealt with here.

Recent works have compared political participation in a variety of democratic polities. One major finding of some of this research is that to classify individuals as highly active or inactive politically is to oversimplify the notion of participation. Political participation is multidimensional: active participants in one kind of political behaviour may be inactive in another. Preoccupation with one form of participation, such as voting, may obscure the extent and nature of participation taking place. This finding was summarized neatly in a recent work: “Citizens differ not only in the overall amounts of participation they perform but also as to the types of acts in which they choose to engage. Furthermore, these different types of acts are quite distinctive in form and function and can almost be thought of as alternative participatory systems: – systems that are used for different purposes, that are able to provide types of benefits, and that relate the participant to his government and to his fellow citizens in fundamentally different ways.” Surprisingly, perhaps, these types of participation have been found to be similar across several democratic polities. Four distinct activities have been located in the several nations: (1) voting; (2) active participation in political campaigns; (3) cooperative activity such as joining with others formally or informally to pursue political goals; and (4) contacting government officials about some public problem. There has been little analysis of the forms of participation of Canadians.

In the many volumes written on the “agrarian question” in Mexico, probably no subject has received as much attention as the ejido, village communal land. Whether polemical or objective, most of these works have been concerned with the ejido primarily in economic terms. Questions have been raised about its importance as an economic unit, government action to improve its output, and its reform or even abolition for economic reasons. Related studies have been concerned with the ejido in terms of social justice, that is, the extent to which and the ways in which the ejidatarios, members of the ejido, have benefitted from the revolution. A few studies have been sociological or anthropological in nature, examining the ejido in terms of how it reinforces or breaks down traditional social and cultural patterns. While utilizing the data presented in these various studies, this note is concerned with the political aspect of the ejido or more specifically, how the ejido is a device which, both alone and in conjunction with a subculture of poverty, allows political control to be exercised over a vast peasant population engaged for the most part in primitive agriculture while urban Mexico proceeds with industrialization.

In the early 1920s George McCutcheon McBride insisted in his major study of Mexican land tenure patterns that the Indians had to be kept on the land.