Political Culture and Regimes in Atlantic Canada

1. Political Culture and Regimes in Atlantic Canada D Brown St Francis Xavier University Pols 322 January 2007

2. Political Culture and Regimes in Atlantic Canada • Overview of Adamson and Stewart (2001) “Changing Party Politics in Atlantic Canada” • Six indicators of the regime and the culture: • Party system stability • Social Bases of Politics • Social composition of political elites • Leader dominance • Political patronage • Role of Ideology

3. Regime and Culture…1 • Regime institutions differ little from other regions of Canada … • Westminster-style parliaments, cabinet and public services • First-past-the-post electoral system (single member plurality) • Federalism of provinces

4. Regime and Culture ..2 • But political culture said to be “traditional and conservative” in Atlantic Canada • Stable, unchanging, durable partisan attachments to old-line parties • Male, anglo dominated • Leader-oriented and dominated parties • Patronage-ridden • generally non-ideological parties (or uni-ideological) • Traditional social cleavages explain party support: religion, language, ethnicity, class

5. Traditional model Dominance of Liberal and Conservative Very difficult for new parties to compete Tight connection of provincial and federal parties Revised Assessment NDP breakthrough in Nova Scotia (fed and prov elections) 1997-2003: Atlantic Canada sticks with old PCs, bucking national trends Rise and fall of COR in New Brunswick Party Stability

6. Traditional model Old-style cleavages Heavily local and rural-based attachments Catholics, French vote Liberal (except NL) Protestants, Anglicans vote Conservative (except NL) Women vote same as men Revised Assessment Urban-rural split, esp in NL and NS Decline of rural society means decline of partisan attachment? French in NB now more flexible Women more likely than men to vote NDP, Liberal Social Bases

7. Traditional model Male, white English and French (latter especially in NB) Some degree of consociationalism Revised Assessment A degree of improvement for women, minorities Religious consociationalism no longer important ? Social composition of elites

8. Traditional model Leaders dominate their parties Leaders choose when to leave, or are defeated in election Leaders chosen in delegated, broker-style conventions Revised Assessment Premiers still dominant, but Opposition party leaders vulnerable A few cases where Premiers forced out Some moves to direct membership election of leaders Leader Dominance

9. Traditional Model “treating voters” on election day Many patronage jobs Pork-barrel form of allocation of public goods Patron-client dependency Revised Assessment Newfoundland and Labrador eliminated a lot of patronage after Smallwood years NS’ John Savage took strong stand against Elsewhere: some proctices in decline, less acceptable Dependency on government now more a feature of socio-econ status. Patronage

10. Traditional Model Two parties converging at the middle “Ins” vs “Outs” Pragmatic, not radical Supportive of Big Business…and Big Government? Lags behind ideological trends elsewhere Revised Assessment No lag effect in adoption of Neo-conservative and “new public management trends But overall AC continues to support continuity over change, and moderate over radical ideology In 1990s strong support for PCs and NDP indicated a regional political preference for continuity and moderation Ideology

11. Conclusions • Many aspects of traditional model no longer apply • Political culture converging with Canadian norm …but in ways that stress continuity and moderation. • Potential forces driving change: urbanization; interregional mobility; changing federal political landscape; media and education.