Representative Democracy in the Canadian Provinces

Toby Rupert was a librarian living in Toronto.

This book is an introduction for college-level students to provincial politics in Canada, with an evaluation of their performance, largely derived from vast series of numeric data bases containing information about political attitudes and behaviour.

Canada has one of the most decentralized federal political systems in the world, in an attempt to create a series of checks and balances. The authors, too, have attempted a balanced book — to note the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the provincial political systems, as well as the posturing that all of the provinces indulge in on diverse issues. The authors state that the book focuses on the “commonalities” of the provinces — the similarities of mixed economies, well-educated populations, liberal value systems, and so forth. The contents, then, deal with elections, parties, interest groups, legislatures, bureaucracies, judiciary, and the policy process. And, of course, there are many charts and figures to back up the statements, all fully rationalized through the bibliographic notes.