Two contemporary streams of thought in international relations offer significant theoretical challenges to the field and to the way it has been organized since the time of Rousseau. New power cycle theories propose that the etiology of war resides in different growth rates among the major powers. Hegemonic wars are a recurrent consequence of the states system. The literature suggests that the patterns of the past are likely to be repeated in future; hence, the only solution to the problem of war is the transcendence of the states system. The second body of literature proposes that growing interdependence is bringing profound structural changes that are already leading to the demise of the nation state and to the transformation of the states system. The essay critically examines these theories and outlines reasons why both are empirically and logically deficient. These bodies of literature also illustrate how even among rigorous quantitative analysts, normative concerns animate research. Finally, the author suggests why the search for a theory or model of international politics is doomed to failure, and why a healthy field will be characterized by intellectual pluralism.

How can we explain the differences and the similarities between the different political parties in Canada? This question is addressed by comparing the positions taken by the three dominant political parties on five topics: abortion, capital punishment, unemployment, the deficit and a nuclear freeze. The relations between the political parties themselves, their relationship with their target constituencies and the demands of social life all force political opinions to become more alike. This increasing uniformity does not prevent the emergence of original political philosophies and strategies.

Insurance classifications that rely on demographic information are often accused of being discriminatory. There is a strong movement, based on human rights legislation as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to abolish them. However, analysis shows that the common criticisms of these classifications are self-contradictory and also apply in large measure to the behavioural criteria most commonly proposed as substitutes. Whether current practices are “reasonable” in the sense of the Charter will be an important question for determining the scope of the “equality rights” of section 15 of the Charter.

Proposals to strengthen regional representation in national institutions are premised on the assumption that representation of (regional) interests and accommodation of conflicts between competing interests are compatible roles, and most likely when national decision makers represent all contending interests. The article argues that the two roles are not necessarily compatible. The behaviour of MPs on the agriculture and transport committees in debating three bills during the 32nd Parliament shows considerable efforts at representation but much less at conflict management. The emergence of specialist interest groups promotes representational efforts by MPs but often at the expense of conflict management. Other factors affecting the joint occurrence of interest representation and interest accommodation include the individual and collective characteristics of members, their partisan incentives, and the diversity of the goals of their client groups.

This article cautions against facilely casting Oakeshott's thought in the mold of either Kantian liberalism for its account of civil association as purely formal association to which rational individuals could consent, or Burkean liberalism for its emphasis on the continuity of general practices and traditions in diurnal politics. Oakeshott's work is then thematically summarized with an eye to showing its artfulness and originality as a synthesis of modern European individualism, providing a theoretical account of civil association which combines, without logical contradiction, the Aristotelian idea of politics as the activity of attending to the arrangements of the whole, and the liberal (and Christian) idea of the individuality of value, mediated (and made logically possible) by the Roman idea of civil obligation to the form of authority.