Those phenomena that are called revolutions, in the conventional sense of the word, are essentially moments of turbulent acceleration following periods of retardation; and such are the phenomena of the révolution tranquille in Québec, which are confused by some with the inclusive events of long duration. In this perspective, and as a prelude to the analysis of current conceptions of the so-called quiet revolution in Québec, the author offers a study of the economic and social history of the United States from 1920 to 1940. He sees no sharp break between the fabulous twenties and the depression decade; nor does he see a gap between the interwar period and the preceding so-called progressive period. This can be seen through the unfolding of social, political, and economic events, provided that care is taken to adopt the mental set of transcending the conflictual in order to assent to the cumulative aspects of the historical process. Seen from this angle, the issues appear more complex, and contemporaries may easily be pardoned for failing to grasp the fundamental questions or for seeing revolutions where there are none. In the freedom of dancing, smoking, and drinking with women or, again, in the freedom of teaching the theory of evolution in schools (freedoms conquered in the twenties and the early thirties), some have seen a revolution. In a like manner, the New Deal has been described as revolutionary, as has the economic theory of J.M. Keynes. But if capitalism really has undergone such trials, how then can it still carry on so vigorously? In fact, it has learned to adapt itself to the changing conditions of its survival without altering its basic character. New regimes arise and the system carries on. The New Deal created a new regime to which capitalism acclimatized itself; and in the new regime capitalism managed so well that it could take advantage of the change in mentality in order to save the system. Under the New Deal, however, capitalism reached an important stage of its politicization, as it did somewhat later, under the new fiscal policies derived from Keynes’ general theory. Yet, despite all revolutionary appearances, it continued to operate on the basis of usury, and while taking hold of the new media of information it mobilized resources with a view to profit and in so doing it organized things and men with equal indifference and efficiency. The system has continued to operate on the same basis of usury and, in order to sidetrack violent protest, it has adopted the issue of social justice; it has been willing to substitute assistance for employment, destructive idleness for creative leisure. Those benefits that are labeled social security and are now distributed without much regard for human creativity have the properties of a tranquillizing pill. And so we are reminded of the panem and circenses politics of a declining Empire. Are we really prepared to swallow the tranquillizing pill?

The article first presents the broad outlines of a recent work of the author. It shows that Social Credit was a movement long before it became a political party, a fact which offers the opportunity to present a brief history of the Social Credit phenomenon in Quebec. This political movement is defined as a protest movement, and its ideology is that of the right in the sense that it makes its appeal particularly to conservatism, with a view to preserving a social and economic order threatened with disappearance. One can distinguish three phases in the evolution of the movement: a mobilization phase, a consolidation phase and a phase of institutionalization. For each of these phases there is a corresponding type of leader. Moreover factionalism acts as the catalyst of change of the movement from one phase to another. The last part of the article presents and discusses the recent developments of Social Credit in Canada and in Quebec. Two different choices appear to be available to the party: to radicalize its appeal as a movement of right-wing protest, or to modernize its ideology in such a way as to become a moderate party of the centre right. Finally the Creditiste phenomenon is examined as a particular species of a broader genus which would include the Parti Québécois as well. One could therefore apply to the latter the same type of analysis that was applied to the Creditiste phenomenon.

In single-member constituency, simple plurality electoral systems, the disproportion between the popular vote polled by a party and the number of representatives it elects has stimulated much controversy. We review the mathematical and statistical models of two-party systems of this type which have been proposed by Kendall and Stuart, Theil, Lemieux, March, and the present authors. This leads to a detailed empirical study of series of elections in three systems: the provincial systems of Quebec and Ontario, and the Canadian federal system. In verifying a “sliding distribution” model more general than that of Kendall and Stuart, we construct the distribution of constituencies according their level of support for a given party, and hence provide an index of electoral regionalization. Less detailed seat-vote data, for longer series of elections in five systems, provide evidence for the persistence of electoral disproportions and the distinguishability of seat-vote characteristics between different systems. The extreme sensitivity of legislative proportions in Québec to small changes in popular vote proportions is shown to be a consequence not of peculiarities in the electoral map, but of the small standard deviation and large kurtosis (peakedness) of the distribution of constituencies.

This paper focuses upon municipal reorganization as a process involving community values and attitudes. Its main objectives is to test current hypotheses concerning the influence of population characteristics upon attitudes toward local government and annexation, and to compare attitudes toward services and taxes with attitudes toward metropolitan government and annexation. The study actually shows that some of the hypotheses are not confirmed in the Quebec region and that the system of relationships between variables is not the same in every community.

To many political scientists the stuff of the discipline is supposed to be the delineation and comparison of power and influence relationships. Yet I doubt that we have really progressed very far in our empirical analysis of such phenomena; and indeed empirical studies, especially those conducted in the field, or in the “real” world, which have actually demonstrated influence relationships or tested formulations, seem to have lagged far behind the conceptual part of the enterprise. As one leading formulation puts it, one actor has influence over another actor in so far as he can change his behaviour (opinions, etc.) or get him to do something he would not otherwise do. Even to demonstrate that in any given setting certain actors have more influence and others less, let alone to explain the finding convincingly or to attempt comparisons with other settings, requires careful measurement of the motives, skills, and resources of both influencers and influencees. The requirements are very demanding, of course, and it is no wonder that empirical research has not been able to portray and explain the full reciprocal nature of influence relationships. The concession made to the conceptual and empirical difficulties of the problem seems to have been to examine only one of the actors, or half of the relationship; and in practice this seems to have worked out to be a concentration more on the influential than on the influenced. At times it seems that we have been enthralled simply by the thought of having discovered the influence-wielder, and that we have forgotten that there must also be others who are influence-recipients. As a hopeful correction to this one-sided treatment of influence relationships, and also simply to present some evidence on a topic that needs more documentation, my intention in this paper is to examine those influenced in local politics.

The intensive use of paid time and space in mass media by political parties and candidates during electoral campaigns in Western democracies has given rise to the widespread opinion that advertising expenditures can and do influence the outcome of the voting process. If this were indeed so it could be argued that parties and candidates with rich coffers might, at least in some measure, buy their way into seats of power by lavish outlay on advertising. The continuous debate in Canada and other democratic countries on the desirability of limiting campaign funds attests to the importance of this issue.

If the importance of one-party dominance as a determinant of the rise of third parties were to be evaluated on the basis of the attention it has already received from political scientists, we would have to conclude that it must not be negligible. Obviously, however, this would not be a proper way of evaluating a theory. Fortunately, its importance rests on other grounds. Apart from my own quantitative and qualitative evidence, there is now Graham White's evidence, presented above in his article “One-Party Dominance and Third Parties,” which, as will be seen, I read to be in line with my own. And while André Blais, in “Third Parties in Canadian Provincial Politics,” above, concludes that he was “impressed with the number of negative results of the tests [he] used” (I am not!), he nevertheless showed an unusual reluctance to discard the theory and finally maintained that “one-party dominance is not irrelevant,” though it is “not a crucial factor.” We shall see later that his evidence is far from being that negative. Another critic of the test of the theory at the district level maintained, nevertheless, that the theory itself was very sound (“inattaquable”) and that its tests at the provincial level were convincing.