The purpose of this study is to describe and to interpret the opinions of the French-speaking residents of Quebec on the questions of war and peace during the years 1945–60. The principal sources used in the study are the editorials of the French-language press, the results of the Gallup poll, and the speeches of Quebec members of Parliament at Ottawa. In the press, few traces of outright isolationism were found, but there were sharp divisions on the questions of relations with the countries of the communist bloc and with those of the non-aligned “third world.” The general public seems to have accepted in principle the main external commitments of Canada during this period, but to have remained against participation of a military sort in practice. If foreign policy was not the specialty of Quebec members of Parliament, there were always individuals or groups to make known points of view current in Quebec, especially when these were at variance with government policy. The year 1960 appears in hindsight to have been a turning point for French-Canadian opinion because of the appearance of a new government in Quebec but also because of the foreign policy of President de Gaulle and the appearance, that year, of a large new bloc of French-speaking states, independent and members of the United Nations.

In 1960 and 1962 an intensive study was conducted of voluntary organizations and social participation in the town of Biggar, Saskatchewan. While the research was primarily focused upon the structure and characteristics of local voluntary groups, their leadership and their participants, it also delved into the related subjects of voter turnout (on the local, provincial, and federal election levels) and political party preference (on the provincial and federal levels). It is the purpose of this paper to present, and examine the implications of, these latter data. Following a brief description of the research site, and the sample chosen for study, the data are first examined in terms of the apparent relationship between voter turnout and party preference in a community where party switching (that is, voting for one party on the provincial level, another on the federal) is not an uncommon phenomenon. This analysis suggests the probability that a relatively small number of “switch voters” may be the key to party success in many Canadian communities, and examines the question of whether party popularity or keenness of a local competition plays a greater role in stimulating voter turnout. A series of eight social factors are then considered, independently, in terms of their relationships to turnout and party preference. A number of significant findings emerge, some of which support, others of which question, expectations based upon previous research in Canada and elsewhere.

As the background to his view that the liberal democratic theory of political obligation implies, under appropriate circumstances, not a right but a duty to resist one's government, Ake provides a judicious account not only of liberal democratic theory but also of utilitarian and legal positivist theory. None the less, his three synopses reveal the almost inevitable hazards of such accounts. The issue is not merely a historical one, for in each case the synoptic account determines the direction which his argument takes.

Many practitioners of political science are currently questioning the bona fides of comparative politics as a valid academic subdiscipline in their trade. At the same time, in trying to perform comparative politics in the classroom over a period of five years, I have found the standard, multi-country comparative politics course to be increasingly unsatisfactory as a component of the political science curriculum. Many factors combine to make it extremely difficult to generate an adequate university learning experience from this kind of course:

1. Superficial learning is inherent in multicountry comparative courses. Because of the pressure to deal with at least three political systems within the confines of a single course, relatively little time is devoted to each country. Moreover the bibliographical material varies wildly from country to country in its quantity, quality, methodology, and content. It can only be a rare instructor who is really competent, let alone expert, in the politics of all the fields he is expected to treat in his course.

Mr Colton's conclusion is that we ought to assume human aggressiveness and territorial instincts in the hope that “Deprived of all chance of rushing into the millennium, statesmen might concentrate on bringing a measure of rationality to this century.” This might well be a sensible way for statesmen to act, but there is nothing in the “new biology” which justifies any sort of assumption on human aggressiveness. The arguments propounded by Lorenz and Ardrey have been thoroughly criticized by a great many biologists and other scientists. These critics quite rightly call into question both the validity of concepts such as “instinct” and “imperative” in describing human behaviour, and the processes by which Ardrey and Lorenz extrapolate from the behaviour of lower animals to human behaviour. Of the two, the errors of Ardrey are by far the greater.

The notion that a relationship exists between social stratification and politics is axiomatic in political sociology. In Canada, as in other western industrial nations, we know that such elements of the stratification system as economic class, race, and religion are associated with political party choice (Reid, 1967; Meisel, 1967).

In traditional societies there tends to be a high correlation among the various dimensions of the stratification system. That is, a person who is of high status on one dimension will tend to be of high status on others, and vice versa. Since traditional societies also tend to be characterized by ascriptive stratification systems, individuals pass their relative advantages or disadvantages on to their children, and the class structure remains more or less stationary.

With the rationalization of economic systems through the process of developing industrial organization, achievement-oriented bases of social status become differentiated from traditional ascriptive bases, and assume increased importance. Thus, capable people from low status backgrounds may through education or skill enter high status occupations; that is, social mobility occurs.

Such social mobility confounds the relationship between stratification and politics, because the correlation between dimensions of social stratification becomes more imperfect. Some members of society who have little claim to status on the basis of ascriptive criteria find themselves in high status positions through their own achievements. At the same time, others from high status backgrounds find themselves earning through their own achievements lower status positions than their parents’ occupied.

This article presents a theoretical analysis of the turnover and tenure of the members of the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 through 1968. Previous studies of such turnover and tenure have been quantitative, but not theoretical, yielding precise measurements but no pattern. A statistical résumé is no substitute for a mathematical model. Both may be accurate, parsimonious, and elegant; but a mathematical theory is distinguished by its generality and its explanatory or predictive power. With the present model, for example, the members’ median and mean continuous service can be logically derived from the mathematical theory; but the converse is not true, that is, the mathematical theory cannot be deduced from the median and/or mean continuous service. Specifically, the theory implies that the median continuous service is approximately 0.693 times the mean continuous service. Despite a plethora of quantitative studies of legislative turnover and tenure, this equation (so far as we know) has not previously been discovered.

The process to be modeled can be abstractly characterized as follows: Consider the members of the House of Commons after some particular (zero) general election. These legislators are called the original members, for expository convenience. With the occurrence of deaths, resignations, political defeats, etc., only some of the original members will continue to be members of the House of Commons after the next (first) general election. These survivors are called the re-elected members.

The foreign area specialist who goes into the field frequently finds it very difficult to acquire all the documentary materials he needs in the time available. Rare books, documents, and newspapers may be in libraries or in archival collections, but unless the writing is to be done in the field, it is difficult to use these sources. Furthermore, collections of papers, letters, clippings, pamphlets, and manuscripts are frequently available from private sources, political parities, and organizations, if one attempts to locate such collections, but they can rarely be borrowed, and certainly not for the length of time needed for thorough research. Similar difficulties may face the scholar engaged in domestic research. My answer to this problem has been to develop techniques for microfilming documents on location under adverse conditions using a minimum of equipment, which can be carried easily in a brief case. With a camera and a few other small items, it is quite easy and economical to microfilm materials and, if necessary, to process the films either at home or under very primitive field conditions.