In the past decade, patterns of variance in Canadian political culture have been documented in several studies of the attitudes and beliefs of the Canadian mass public. To date, however, the nature and significance of variations in political culture in Canada at the elite level remain largely unexplored. Given the importance generally attributed to elites in descriptions of the functioning of the Canadian political system, examination of the belief systems of Canadian political elites is a salient research priority. As a contribution to this field of inquiry the present research note presents the results of an investigation of the ideological self-perceptions of provincial legislators in all ten provinces.

In a recent article, “An Environmental Case Against Equality of Right,” Professor Lewis argues for no less than the complete rejection of those highly-prized liberal values upon which much of the institutional framework of Western societies has been built, the values of civil peace, unlimited acquisition, and equality of right. This radical recommendation is urged on the basis of the mundane and, until very recently, much-ignored problem of environmental destruction. Lewis’ environmental case is (1) that equality of right, which is recommended by Hobbes as the necessary condition of civil peace, “logically entails”—and this is clear, he contends, from Locke's use of the concept in the Second Treatise—the right of unlimited appropriation; (2) that unlimited appropriation destroys nature and ultimately man; and (3) that we must consequently rethink our allegiance to unlimited appropriation, to equality of right (because it logically entails unlimited appropriation), and to civil peace (whose necessary condition is equality of right), and be prepared to accept alternative theoretical foundations upon which to reconstruct our major social institutions. While this attack on unlimited acquisition will undoubtedly strike a responsive chord among many social critics, the concomitant rejection of the Hobbesian hope of civil peace and of equality of right will receive a much less hospitable welcome. But the catch in Lewis’ argument is that we cannot get rid of the former without jettisoning the latter two at the same time. If his analysis of this matter is correct, then the costs of preventing the further destruction of nature and the future demise of man are extremely high, much higher than most critics have yet been willing to recognize.

In recording party preference and political attitudes, election surveys usually fail to measure the liked among what is disliked and the disliked among what is liked; they use a simple like-dislike continuum with exclusive polar opposites, the continuum that dominates Western thought, rather than less clear-cut models, such as those underlying Eastern ideologies in which the principles in opposition are normally intertwined.

Professor Seaman contends that I am mistaken in asserting a logical connection between equality of right and unlimited acquisition. I argued that equality of right as employed by Locke in the Second Treatise logically entails the right of unlimited acquisition, and a consequent danger of environmental destruction, resulting from the necessary commitment of political structures to unlimited acquisition.

Although there exists a respectable literature on political thought in Canada, relatively little of this work has been done by political theorists or philosophers. Much of the research has been carried out by historians, sociologists, or more recently by political scientists working with sociological conceptions such as “political culture.” But there is still a place in the study of Canadian political thought for one of the traditional tasks of political theory, the critical analysis of significant texts. This paper examines one such document, which deserves to be better known than it is, the “Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land and the North West,” of December 8, 1869. The text is presented in both English and French versions, the background of the document is briefly discussed, and its argument is analyzed at some length.

To many Canadians anti-Americanism is not only as old as Canada itself, but it also seems to have been and still is an integral part of the entire Canadian experience. To the historian Baker, anti-Americanism is a recurring theme in Canadian history and exists today as it did a century ago. However, anti-Americanism, to the best knowledge of the authors, has not been investigated through systematic behavioural empirical research. The development of a scale to measure anti-American attitudes is a necessary step in the empirical investigation of Canadian anti-Americanism. The purpose of this research note is to present some data that contribute to the empirical development of a measure of Canadian attitudes towards Americans which may be used as an anti-American scale.

Concepts are like wines; some do not travel well. Thus, a frequent problem concerns whether phenomena with the same label in two societies are really the same. Party identification is a concept which is particularly interesting in this regard. The effect of party identification on voting decisions has been examined in more than a dozen countries, and the data have evoked controversy about the concept's utility, especially in Canada. Although this paper will focus on the term's usefulness in Canada compared to the United States, the arguments are sufficiently general to have implications for analysis elsewhere.

Concepts do not travel; theories do. The distinction is an important one because the concept party identification and its measurement in different contexts provides students of voting with one of a class of problems in comparative analysis. Comparative analysis implies a search for and the development of general laws about human behaviour, laws which are valid across political systems. The way that this search is carried out is through the development, confirmation, and modification of theory. One such theoretical exchange has involved explanations of voting and a major concept in these theories has been “party identification.” The concept is controversial to the extent both that different theories describe it and its role differently and that variations have been observed in patterns of the relationship between some aspects of party identification and political behaviour. However, the role of theory and its status in analysis is problematical in David Elkins' “Party Identification: A Conceptual Analysis.” Comparative analysis requires, first and foremost, that the theory within which any concept is located be specified.