Considering their many geographic, economic, demographic, and institutional commonalities, the three prairie provinces ought to feature very similar political environments. Indeed, this is the assumption underlying the tendency among many academics to group the three provinces into a common region for comparative analysis.1 In this, “the probability that combining data for the prairie provinces may be about as meaningful as combining data for Ontario and Quebec and calling it Central Canada hasn’t occurred to everyone yet.”2 Closer examination of their provincial party systems reveals that prairie Canadians live in three distinct political terrains.
Since Confederation only twice, for a total of nine years, has the same party formed government in all three provinces.3 Moreover, each province’s party system has its own unique “tilt.” Clear relationships exist between the dominance of conservatism and right-wing parties like Social Credit and the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta, and socialism and the success of the left-wing CCF-NDP in Saskatchewan. The balance between the forces of left and right in Manitoba help to set it apart from its prairie neighbours in this respect. Aside from the major parties involved, the dynamics of competition between them varies drastically from province to province. Recent contests in Manitoba have involved “three enduring and competitive parties and the periodic experience of minority government,”4 whereas Saskatchewan elections have been closer to a “two-plus” party model, and Alberta campaigns a “one-party, non-competitive” type.5 In sum, despite sharing a relatively similar topography, industrial base, and set of political institutions, Canada’s three prairie provinces maintain distinct patterns of party competition.
This chapter suggests that by downplaying the role of ideas and agency, structural theories offer only partial solutions to this “paradox” on the Canadian prairies. In ignoring the rhetorical boundaries dominant parties place on their party systems through their campaign messages, the academic community has neglected the extent to which parties themselves help shape the climates in which they compete. As discussed below, successful parties and their leaders have crafted unique dominant discourses—or “political codes”—that have helped promote freedom in Alberta, security in Saskatchewan, and moderation in Manitoba as each province’s fundamental value. In doing so, these parties have helped create an atmosphere in which they succeed, both ideologically and electorally.
The political diversity found on the Canadian plains is puzzling. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are each separated by essentially artificial boundaries, their borders based on arbitrary longitudinal lines rather than topographic or ethnic divisions.6 All three are associated with a common iconic landscape: vast stretches of prairie, bounded only by mountains to the west and the Canadian Shield to the east. Tied so closely to the land, their populations have been historically small and rural compared to their neighbours in British Columbia and Ontario. In natural resources and primary industry, the three prairie provinces share a common economic base, dependent as it is on the unpredictable climates of the international market and the weather, and (according to some) vulnerable as it is to the economic engine of central Canada.7 Furthermore, like all provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta operate under the same Westminster style of parliamentary government and plurality-based electoral systems. Thus, at first glance, one might expect the prairie provinces to share a common political climate. They do not, and the contrasts are starkest in terms of the region’s three provincial party systems.
Most accounts characterize Alberta’s various governments as “right-wing,” reinforcing the province’s image as the bastion of Canadian conservatism. Only four parties have governed Alberta—a fact that divides the province’s history into distinct eras. Over sixteen years, the Liberal Party formed the province’s first four majority governments. Their successor, the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), also enjoyed massive majorities throughout its fourteen years in power. Also true to form, the Farmers were unceremoniously removed from power by a new political party, William Aberhart’s Social Credit. The Socreds would win nine successive elections between 1935 and 1967, earning Aberhart (1935–1943) and his protégé, Ernest Manning (1943–1968) majority governments for over three decades. This dynasty came to an end under Social Credit premier Harry Strom (1963–1971), whose loss of power in 1971 marked the most recent change of party government. Since that time, five Progressive Conservative (PC) premiers—Peter Lougheed (1971–1985), Don Getty (1985–1992), Ralph Klein (1992–2006), Ed Stelmach (2006–2011), and Alison Redford (2011 to the present)—have presided over a Canadian-record twelve consecutive majority governments.8 In sum, not once over the province’s first century have Alberta voters elected a minority government, with victorious parties winning an average of nearly half of the popular vote and enjoying an average seat advantage of five to one over the opposition. What is more, no governing party has ever returned to power once ousted. In this, Alberta features the very definition of dynastic party competition.9
This conservative, dynastic pattern contrasts sharply with Saskatchewan where, since World War II, the province’s “natural governing party” has been avowedly social democratic.10 As Marchildon describes, “in the typical stereotypes of these contrasting identities, Saskatchewanians are depicted as collectivist-inclined social democrats who emphasize security and egalitarian social development while Albertans are portrayed as entrepreneurial ‘small c’ conservatives who are dedicated to the individualistic pursuit of liberty and prosperity.”11 In Saskatchewan, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its progenitor, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), have formed governments following twelve of the last eighteen elections.
In this vein, there are two prominent features of Saskatchewan party politics. First, the system is cyclical in nature, featuring regular, if relatively infrequent, alternation of parties in government. Second, the party system is highly competitive and polarized, in partisan if not ideological terms.12 Since World War II, the main combatants have been the left-leaning CCF-NDP and a succession of three right-wing challengers—the Liberals, Conservatives, and Saskatchewan Party. Hence, the Saskatchewan party system has featured four distinct eras, each roughly separated by pivotal elections in the province’s history:
The Liberal-Conservative Era (1905 to 1934);
The Liberal-CCF Era (1934 to 1978);
The NDP-PC Era (1978 to 1999); and
The NDP-Sask Party Era (1999 to present).
Four parties have governed Saskatchewan since its entry to Confederation in 1905.13 As a single organization, the Liberal Party has won the most elections, forming a total of ten majority governments over the province’s first seven decades. The Conservatives have led a total of three governments, including the Depression-era Anderson Coalition and Grant Devine’s two consecutive majorities in the 1980s. As heirs to the province’s right-wing tradition, the Saskatchewan (Sask) Party formed its first governments in 2007 and 2011. With the notable exception of the pre-war Liberals, none of these three parties has enjoyed sustained success. Since World War II, each has formed government only once, for a maximum of two terms (the Liberals, 1964 to 1971; the Conservatives, 1982 to 1991; and the Saskatchewan Party, 2007 to present). In this, episodes of right-wing party rule have served as interludes in the recent history of Saskatchewan politics.
Combined, the CCF and its successor, the NDP, have won the remaining twelve Saskatchewan elections. Indeed, since running in its first campaign in 1938, the Saskatchewan CCF-NDP has won two of every three elections it has contested. Only one other Canadian party (the Ontario Conservatives), has enjoyed a better winning percentage over the same period. In terms of its consistency, the CCF-NDP is the only Saskatchewan party (and one of only a handful in Canadian history) to have governed in every decade since World War II.14 Over this period, every one of its leaders—from Douglas to Calvert—has served as premier; the party is the only one in post-war Saskatchewan to have won three consecutive elections, performing the feat on three separate occasions (1944 to 1960; 1971 to 1978; and 1991 to 2003). Moreover, of all political parties in Canada, only five have averaged a higher proportion of the popular vote in the post-war period, none east of the Ottawa River.15 The depth of its dominance may not compare with right-wing dynasties in Alberta; nonetheless, considering its longevity, the Saskatchewan CCF-NDP ranks as one of Canada’s most successful “natural governing parties.”16
Its ideological identity is what distinguishes the Saskatchewan CCF-NDP most, however. Since inspiring Lipset’s Agrarian Socialism over fifty years ago, the party remains the most successful social democratic organization in North America. Many accounts—including the myriad based on Lipset’s observations—attribute the CCF-NDP’s success to its innate connection to Saskatchewan’s collectivist political culture; that is, the party has been portrayed as a beneficiary of a socialist-inclined electorate.17
Further east, party competition in Manitoba has been more evenly balanced between the left and right. A self-proclaimed “non-partisan” government ruled the province from 1922 to 1958. Under the amorphous “Liberal-Progressive” banner, a succession of coalition administrations was held together loosely under a platform of laissez-faire politics before giving way to a series of moderate partisan governments beginning in the late 1950s.18 Since that time, Manitoba has alternated between Progressive Conservative and New Democratic governments, with each serving twenty-six and twenty-seven years in power, respectively. Thus, the Manitoba party system has evolved through three key eras: a traditional period (1883 to 1922); a semi-partisan period (1922 to 1958); and a cyclical period (1958 to the present).
Following a decade of non-partisan administration, provincial party politics emerged in earnest in Manitoba in the mid-1880s.19 For the next four decades, election campaigns featured heated competition between Liberals, headed by Premiers Thomas Greenway and T.C. Norris, and Conservatives, whose most prominent leaders included Hugh John Macdonald and Rodmond Roblin. As in Alberta, the Progressive era ushered in a new form of party politics in Manitoba. Having pushed the Liberals into a minority position in 1920, the United Farmers of Manitoba (UFM) toppled the government—and the party system—two years later. Under various labels, the Farmers governed Manitoba, uninterrupted, for the next thirty-six years. After fusing with the provincial Grits in 1932, the party settled on the title “Liberal-Progressive”—a moniker that suited the diverse nature of its constituent elements, but is somewhat misleading with regard to the party’s ideology. Under Premiers John Bracken, Stuart Garson, and Douglas Campbell, the Liberal-Progressives were as committed as any other Canadian party to the laissez-faire doctrine of classic liberalism. The Liberal-Progressives also preached a distinctive brand of “business-like” politics that was rhetorically “non-partisan” but “semi-partisan” in practice. Based on these principles, Bracken assembled a series of coalition governments throughout the 1930s and 1940s, making his party the only one in Canada to remain in power through both the Great Depression and World War II.
The Liberal-Progressives were ousted by a second “Progressive” party in 1958—Duff Roblin’s Progressive Conservatives—whose brand of red and blue toryism marked the beginning of Manitoba’s modern province-building era. Roblin’s definition of “progress” differed distinctly from the laissez-faire approach of the Liberals, however, who had now begun serving five decades as Manitoba’s marginalized third party.20 The Tories’ promotion of the “active state” provided a rhetorical and institutional foundation for the rise of Edward Schreyer’s New Democrats in 1969. Indeed, the rightward drift of the Conservatives under leaders Walter Weir and Sidney Spivak left much of the middle ground to Schreyer’s message of moderate social democracy. This mode of moderate politics shifted dramatically, if briefly, under Conservative premier Sterling Lyon, whose new right ideology polarized the party system from 1977 through the mid-1980s.21 Lyon’s zealous approach to partisanship earned him a single term in office, however, making him the only premier in Manitoba history to win one (and only one) election without retiring. Since that time, Manitoba politics has settled into its conventional mould, with the New Democrats (under social democrat Howard Pawley and third-way democrats Gary Doer and Greg Selinger) and Conservatives (under Tory-turned-new-right-conservative Gary Filmon) trading places in government. Since 1969, neither party has garnered the support of more than half, nor much less than a quarter, of Manitoba voters.22 Selinger’s victory in 2011—the NDP’s historic fourth consecutive majority—leaves some questioning whether the New Democrats have emerged as the province’s new “natural governing party.” This said, consistently strong performances by the Progressive Conservatives and the survival of the Liberal Party have helped keep the two-and-a-half-party system intact.23
In sum, Alberta’s pattern of party competition has been right-wing dynastic, involving long-term, one-party dominance by conservative parties, interrupted by relatively sudden changes in government. Since 1944, Saskatchewan’s pattern has featured a left-wing natural governing party, whose control of the legislature has been less dominant and more frequently overturned. The pattern of party politics in Manitoba has been the most balanced and competitive, both in terms of the electoral strength of its major parties, and in terms of their centre-leaning ideologies. The question remains: how could three such distinct party systems develop within a single region?
The paradox can be explained, in part, by combining a series of four prominent theories. To solve the origins of the dilemma, I have relied in my previous work, Code Politics,24 upon Wiseman’s seminal research to suggest that each provincial political culture was formed in the early-twentieth century by a unique combination of settlement patterns (fragment theory), economic activity (staples theory), and pivotal episodes (formative events theory). Alberta’s conservative political culture was attributable to an early influx of right-leaning, populist American settlers whose livelihoods in the agricultural and petroleum industries tended to reinforce a capitalist ethos in the province. In this regard, the striking of oil at Leduc in 1947 served as a formative event. By contrast, Saskatchewan’s social democratic political culture was imported by a group of Fabian-inspired immigrants from Britain whose approach to the young province’s agricultural industry was decidedly collectivist. The onset of the Great Depression, and the political class’s response, helped reinforce the dominance of communitarianism in Saskatchewan. Manitoba’s more moderate political culture—which strays neither left nor right, but remains fixed in the “progressive centre”—was the result of the approach of early, ideologically eclectic (“Tory-touched liberal”) immigrants from Ontario. Unlike its western neighbours, whose economies were tied to the highs and lows of global commodity markets, Manitoba’s economy was given to neither boom nor bust, thus sheltering its political culture from the extremes of political ideology. Rare, transformative events, like the Winnipeg General Strike, served as punctuations in an otherwise calm political atmosphere, helping to reinforce the exceptional nature of pitched conflict in the province.
Supplementing Wiseman’s findings, I argue that the persistence of these cultural differences could be attributed to the powerful, enduring campaign narratives crafted by each province’s dominant politicians. Examining the rhetoric found in hundreds of speeches, platforms, pamphlets, and other campaign materials, I have found that prairie politics have been defined by three distinct “political codes”—unique, elite-level projections of each province’s over-arching values. In Alberta, campaigns have revolved around the concept of “freedom,” with dominant parties emphasizing the importance of preserving the province’s individualism, populism and autonomy. “According to this code, the Alberta government—and, by extension, the party in power—serves as the defender of provincial interests against external, oppressive forces, be they the federal government, a socialist menace, or any other Big Shot foe of the Alberta community.”25 In nearby Saskatchewan, the code has been defined by the notion of “security,” combining an emphasis upon dirigisme, collectivism, and polarization to reinforce the importance of the state “as a pioneer in Confederation, a provider of social services, and a director of the provincial economy.”26 Meanwhile, Manitoba’s political discourse has been defined by “moderation,” with leading politicians stressing the values of progressive centrism, pragmatism, and trans-partisanship throughout their campaigns, reinforcing the state’s role as a “broker in federal-provincial relations, moderator of internal social issues, and participant in the provincial economy.”27 In short, “by transmitting distinct, age-old value systems through a series of unique campaign narratives, and by perpetuating these codes over time, dominant party leaders have helped sustain the three different political cultures that now characterize the Canadian prairies.”28
Left unaddressed in Code Politics, however, was the fact that, once established, these dominant forms of discourse actually affect the structure of party politics in each province. In other words, these political codes were not merely symptoms of the long-term dominance by certain political parties; they were also sources of those very patterns of party competition.
It seems straightforward to draw the causal arrow in the former direction, from patterns to narratives. From this perspective, the fact that the Alberta code is grounded in the right-wing concept of “freedom” is due, quite simply, to the longevity of conservative parties in office. The same is true in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, respectively, where left-leaning and centre-straddling parties have prevailed at the polls and in establishing their own ideologies as paramount. Yet, the causal arrow could just as easily point in the opposite direction. Left-wing parties could enjoy natural governing status in Saskatchewan, and moderate parties could thrive in Manitoba, because separate codes of elite discourse help ensure their success. As narrative constructs, these codes could structure the way parties compete, and establish a system of advantages and disadvantages for certain organizations. Hence, rather than resulting from party competition, these dominant narratives could actually shape the party systems we see on the Canadian prairies today.
Like most questions of structure versus agency, this dichotomy is largely artificial. As the following discussion reveals, the causal arrow runs in both directions: patterns of party competition and dominant narratives reinforce one another. While the stability of the former contributes to the durability of the latter, at the same time, the persistence of a code makes the continued success of dominant parties more likely. Party dominance begets ideological prominence, and vice versa—a point Duverger made decades ago: “a party is dominant when it is identified with an epoch; when its doctrines, ideas, methods, its style, so to speak, coincide with those of the epoch…. Domination is a question of influence rather than of strength: it is also linked with belief. A dominant party is that which public opinion believes to be dominant.”29
In Alberta’s case, the parallels between the dominance of Social Credit and the Progressive Conservatives appear obvious. Both have been described as populist, right-wing, province-first parties whose appeal stems from the intimate connection between their shared ideology and the province’s conservative political culture.30 Indeed, my analysis confirmed that these dominant parties have drawn on a common campaign theme—a “socially shared political understanding”—in each of the past twenty Alberta elections.31 From Aberhart’s Social Credit to Redford’s Conservatives, representatives of both dynasties have emphasized the importance of keeping Alberta strong and free. This notion of “freedom” constitutes the code—the persistent, core narrative—of Alberta politics, favouring right-wing parties like Social Credit and the Progressive Conservatives, and marginalizing opposition parties like the CCF-NDP and Liberals.
In Saskatchewan, many claim the CCF-NDP has tapped the vein of the province’s political culture, be it rural populism, progressivism, pragmatism, the cooperative spirit, or simply a desire for good government. While not disputing their accuracy, Code Politics reversed the causal arrow in these interpretations. An examination of their campaign rhetoric reveals that the CCF-NDP not only draws upon, but actively promotes, three key facets of political life in Saskatchewan: collectivism, dirigisme, and polarization. Under the broader concept of “security,” these three elements constitute Saskatchewan’s political code—a tradition of elite-level rhetoric that extends back to the Liberal Party’s dominance in the pre-war era. By emphasizing the concept of “security,” the province’s natural governing parties have cultivated a unique field of political competition in Saskatchewan, one that sets the province apart from both Alberta and Manitoba and has helped guard against the success of right-wing and overly-centrist parties.
Despite its easternmost position, Manitoba represents the Prairies’ political middle ground. Ideologically, its politics span the spectrum between right-tilting Alberta and left-leaning Saskatchewan, and its most successful elites have conscientiously avoided either pole. Indeed, throughout most of its history, centrist parties have dominated Manitoba politics. At the height of their influence, each of its three post-Depression governing parties—the Liberal-Progressives, Progressive Conservatives, and New Democrats—have epitomized this search for moderation. This began with “Brackenism,” the middle-of-the-road ideology promoted by Manitoba’s longest-serving premier, John Bracken. Thus, whereas Aberhart staked out the right and Douglas the left, Bracken defined the “progressive centre” as the fertile “middle ground” of Manitoba politics. His successors, Stuart Garson and Douglas Campbell, reinforced this vision before ceding power to Duff Roblin’s Progressive Conservatives in the late-1950s. Yet, as transformative as it was, Roblin’s arrival did not represent a comprehensive reinvention of the provincial code. Just as Lougheed and Romanow adapted their parties’ ideologies to fit within the broad boundaries of their respective provincial discourses, shifting their codes in the process, so, too, did Roblin reshape Progressive Conservatism in Manitoba. When his successors pulled the Conservatives back to the right, joining the Liberal-Progressives on that side of the spectrum, room was left for a second adaptation of the progressive centre: Ed Schreyer’s moderate version of New (Social) Democracy. Ever since Schreyer’s rise to power in 1969, Manitoba politics has featured a two-party-plus system, with the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats alternating in power to the exclusion of the Liberal Party. Theirs is a recipe for political success and failure that dates back to the Bracken era: when any major party strays too far from the principles of progressive centrism, pragmatism, and flexible partisanship, its opponents sit poised to assume the mantle of government.32
Drawing on these lessons, this chapter advances a neo-institutional solution to the Prairie paradox, in which dominant narratives both reflect and constrain party behaviour. On the latter point, codes help determine the tilt of party competition by defining the acceptable role(s) for the provincial government, and the competitiveness by identifying key “enemies” of the state. Opposition parties often find it difficult to overcome these constraints, as their own visions typically conflict with, or are marginalized by, the prevailing discourse. As a result, unique patterns of competition develop in each polity, bestowing certain parties with advantages, and penalizing others, depending on the content of the dominant narrative.
Codes shape politics in much the same way as do constitutions, laws, and other more conventional institutions. In addition to rules, norms, and customs, codes provide symbols, cognitive scripts, and moral templates that shape, consciously or subconsciously, the conduct of political actors, namely parties and their leaders.33 Through these constraints, “(1) players are identified, (2) prospective outcomes are determined, (3) alternative modes of deliberations are permitted, and (4) the specific manner in which revealed preferences, over allowable alternatives, by eligible participants, occurs.”34
By creating an array of incentives and disincentives, codes forge a sense that “there is no alternative” but to abide by the established rules of political competition. By defining the scope of debate, this type of “T.I.N.A.” politics restricts the ability of opposition parties to express opinions that conflict with, or lie outside, the dominant discourse.35 In this way, codes constrain all parties in a system, whether in terms of their behaviour or their performance. As Berman notes, “Many scholars have found that ideas can influence political behaviour even if political actors have not internalized or do not believe in them. In such cases, ideational variables work indirectly; they influence the translation of interests into outcomes by shaping the incentive structures associated with different courses of action. Even if actors do not believe in particular norms, they might abide by them if non-compliance carries a high cost.”36
In the case of codes, these “high costs” are often felt at the polls. Parties that do not speak “in code” are often marginalized during political debates, labelled as extremists and outsiders, or, as discussed below, branded as enemies of the polity, itself. These labels often define a party’s legitimacy, both among elites in the party system and among voters in the electorate.
It is important to note that, while constraining their behaviour, codes are nonetheless constructed by dominant elites themselves. In this sense, party politics on the Prairies “is not simply a matter of negotiating coalitions of interests within given constraints of rights, rules, preferences, and resources. Politics extend to shaping those constraints, to constructing accounts of politics, history, and self that are not only bases for instrumental action but also central concerns of life.”37 The question becomes, then: precisely which rules, norms, or expectations do codes establish, and how do these constraints help to determine patterns of party competition?
This study suggests codes impose two sets of constraints on political parties and their leaders: they (1) establish the “proper” functions of government, while (2) defining which types of opposition are “acceptable” within a given party system.
First, as elsewhere, elites in each prairie province have fought over the proper role of government in a variety of different spheres.38 The dominant discourses that have evolved from these debates have established three specific roles for the provincial state: one in terms of representing the community’s position in Confederation; a second with regard to domestic and social needs; and a third vis-à-vis the provincial economy (see Table 1).
|
State’s Role in: |
Alberta |
Saskatchewan |
Manitoba |
|
Confederation |
guardian |
pioneer |
delegate |
|
Society |
ombudsman |
provider |
moderator |
|
Economy |
liberator |
director |
participant |
Table 1: Codes and the Role of Prairie States
In Alberta, for instance, the dominant narrative portrays the state as a guardian against outside influence, specifically from the federal government and other central Canadian elites. In terms of social affairs, the code describes the state’s role as more of an ombudsman—reactively and prudently responding to citizens’ concerns as they arise. Lastly, in their campaign rhetoric, dominant elites in Alberta have defined the state as an economic liberator, preserving the “freedom” of individuals and businesses to compete in open markets. In Saskatchewan, the state has been defined as a pioneer among Canadian governments—an innovator in developing government programs and approaches. On the domestic front, Saskatchewan elites have touted the state as a provider of key social services, and a director of the provincial economy. In all of these ways, dominant elites have promoted the importance of state-sponsored “security” in Saskatchewan. By contrast, Manitoba’s dominant elites have portrayed their state as a delegate in federal-provincial relations, a moderator of internal social forces, and an active, but not overpowering, participant in the economy. Reflected in their campaign messages, Manitoba premiers have been among the country’s most conciliatory and diplomatic at the first ministers’ table, providing both a buffer and a bridge between the interests of east and west and the haves and have-nots.39 The state has been viewed as having a similar role within Manitoba society, moderating between the varied social, economic, ethnic, geographic, and other interests in the province. Befitting the province’s code of “moderation,” elites have also depicted a middling position for the state vis-à-vis the economy, neither as interventionist as its neighbour in Saskatchewan, nor as laissez-faire as its Alberta counterpart.40
Flowing from these definitions, the various tilts of party politics we see on the Prairies today are attributable, in large part, to the different ways in which dominant provincial elites in each province have conceptualized and confined conflict. By defining “the normal” or “the acceptable” limits of political debate, these codes have “organized out” certain opposition parties by virtue of their identities or ideologies. In addition to conditioning the behaviour of established elites, as discussed below, codes affect political aspirants’ attitudes about government, politics, and partisanship. This deters certain types of individuals (e.g., socialists in Alberta, neo-liberals in Saskatchewan, or utopians in Manitoba) from seeking public office, particularly under opposition party banners. This, in turn, only serves to reinforce the existing patterns of party competition by granting dominant parties a greater proportion of the political talent in a given community.
Beyond the definition of the “proper,” however, a second key component of code politics—and the mechanism behind its impact on the competitiveness of each party system—lies in the identification of a polity’s greatest “enemy.” In some ways, codes lie at the heart of what some observers label “the politics of fear”: they identify the objects in need of protection and single out oppressors to give the public a “clear target for their unrest.”41 During periods of uncertainty, the identification of “enemies” is especially powerful—so much so that leaders may be tempted to manufacture crises in order to derive the positive benefits of being the community’s saviour.42 This strategy amounts to the cultivation of a “wartime psychology” in which the party is portrayed as society’s defender.43
In their broadest terms, the “villains” in Alberta have been those forces that impinged on the province’s liberty and autonomy.44 Throughout the last seven decades, the various threads of the province’s populist, individualist, alienated political culture have been tied together by an underlying theme: “If we pull together we can defeat the ‘enemies’ and return Alberta to prosperity and its natural state of grace.”45 These foes have ranged from the federal government and eastern Canadian capitalists to atheists and socialists; from individual prime ministers and federal parties to abstract concepts like Keynesianism, “big government,” and “the debt.” By invoking these themes, Alberta’s dominant party leaders have proven masterful at externalizing opposition.46 Aberhart’s marriage of evangelism and Social Credit turned any criticism of his government into an attack on God Himself.47 Manning’s portrayal of Socred ideology as the natural antithesis of Soviet-style communism made any opposition seem un-liberal, un-democratic, and un-Canadian. Years later, Peter Lougheed’s promotion of a “quasi-colonial mentality” to link provincial Liberals and New Democrats to their unpopular federal cousins made “enemies” of Alberta’s Official Opposition.48 And Ralph Klein’s parochial appeals to the province’s frontier roots made resistance to his party’s ideology “unseemly, anti-Albertan, and, to some extent, traitorous.”49 On most occasions, in fact, Alberta premiers have refused to name or engage the provincial opposition altogether; when they have been forced to do so—as Richard Reid, Harry Strom, and Don Getty have discovered—their fortunes wane.50
As Elton and Goddard described, “In such a milieu, the mass electorate, it would appear, becomes depoliticized, allowing natural intergroup conflicts to be smothered under a screen of consensus of support for the elites in their battle against external threats.”51 This presents opposition parties, like the Liberals and New Democrats, with the unenviable choice between being anti-Albertan and tacitly supporting the dominant party. In these ways, the ability of Social Credit and the Progressive Conservatives to externalize opposition, embodied in the provincial code, adds to existing explanations of one-party-dominance in Alberta.
One province to the east, “enemies” of the Saskatchewan state have been defined quite differently. There, the natural governing CCF-NDP has identified the province’s primary threat as a domestic, right-wing challenge to Saskatchewan’s collectivist traditions. By highlighting the polarized, partisan nature of provincial politics throughout their campaigns, leaders from Douglas to Calvert have portrayed their party as the dirigiste defenders of the Saskatchewan welfare state, resource sector, and crown corporations. Douglas and Lloyd touted their achievements in medicare and public automobile insurance, for instance, warning voters that the Liberal Party may reverse these gains. Years later, Allan Blakeney emerged as the champion of the government’s role as a resource entrepreneur, cautioning voters not to “sell out” their “birthright” by electing a Conservative government. And Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert persuaded voters, for a time at least, to move “Forward, Not Backward” by electing the New Democrats to protect core social programs and services against the free-enterprise designs of the Saskatchewan Party.
In this way, the Saskatchewan CCF-NDP have not only helped to sustain their own dominance over provincial politics by presenting themselves as the protectors of Saskatchewan’s social democratic traditions. They have also left room—in some ways, even cultivated the space—for a minority right-wing force. Periodically, conservative leaders of various political stripes have exploited this opportunity and risen to power—Ross Thatcher’s Liberals, Grant Devine’s Conservatives, and Brad Wall’s Sask Party have each risen from Opposition to government. Yet their longevity in office has been limited by the prevailing code established by the natural governing party. Thus, just as in Alberta, code politics may help us to better understand the competitiveness of party politics in Saskatchewan, where a left-wing party dominates, but right-wing parties play a prominent, if periodic, role.
While dominant parties have helped shape their environments by externalizing opposition in Alberta, and internalizing conflict in Saskatchewan, elites in Manitoba have established a more balanced pattern of party competition by minimizing such partisan and ideological tensions. Indeed, dominant party leaders in Manitoba have identified extremism—in all its forms, from partisanship to dogmatism—as their province’s greatest enemy. John Bracken viewed non-partisanship and “business-like” administration as the best means of securing “good government” for Manitoba. His definition of politics marginalized both Social Credit and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation—both of whom rose to power elsewhere on the Prairies, and both of whom joined Bracken’s coalition governments in the 1930s and 1940s. Building on similar premises, Duff Roblin constructed his brand of Progressive Conservatism as a middle-of-the-road alternative to the more “extreme” versions of laissez-faire liberalism and state-first socialism being advocated by the Liberals and CCF in the 1950s and 1960s. Upon his departure, Roblin’s cultivation of “progressive centre” provided fertile ground for the more moderate version of social democracy developed by Ed Schreyer and the New Democrats, while continuing to marginalize more doctrinaire conservatives on the right. Following a brief period of polarization—during which neither Sterling Lyon’s new-right Conservatives, nor Howard Pawley’s old-left New Democrats could retain power for more than a single, full term—the party system once again settled under the code of moderation. After the rightward drift of Gary Filmon’s PCs, the moderate, third-way approach of Gary Doer and Greg Selinger has kept the New Democrats in power for over a decade. Hence, just as in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the nature of the dominant political discourse has played a role in determining the shape of party politics in Canada’s original prairie province. There, moderation has bred balance, with the most successful parties trading places in the “progressive centre” and taking turns in office.
Minor opposition parties have struggled to gain traction in each of these provinces, thanks in large part to the constraints placed upon them by each of these codes. In Alberta, for example, the CCF-NDP has enjoyed little success compared to its eastern prairie cousins. Beyond the many economic, cultural, and institutional barriers typically cited, the present analysis suggests that the electoral weakness of social democratic parties in Alberta is attributable, in part, to their inability (or unwillingness) to frame their ideology to fit the province’s freedom-based political narrative. In this, “the ideology of the NDP appears to be somewhat antithetical to the political culture of Alberta, with its greater emphasis on individualism.”52
Notwithstanding subtle changes in their adaptation of social democracy—most notably in the 1980s—the New Democrats have remained the most ideologically consistent party in Alberta (indeed, the entire prairie region). Perhaps this is as much a symptom of the party’s distance from power as a source of its (limited) success. As Dyck suggests, since the onset of the Tory dynasty “the NDP, with its limited audience in the province, strives to represent an ideological alternative—greater public ownership and control of power and other utilities, selective nationalization of resource industries, a pro-union stance on labour legislation, more concern with unemployment, and defense of social programs.”53 These same principles may be traced back to the party’s origins in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. From their first campaign in 1940 to their most recent in 2008, the CCF-NDP strategy has been to identify all other major parties as “Tory Twins” (or “Triplets”), portraying themselves as the only real alternative to the conservative Socreds, Conservatives, and Liberals. Hence, while overshadowed by a variety of conservative party ideologies, social democracy has remained a constant—if, at times, marginalized—element of the Alberta political party spectrum.
The Alberta Liberal Party’s challenges stem from two additional sources. First and foremost, the party has suffered from its association with the federal Liberal brand. This link has been by name alone throughout much of the post-war period, and persists despite vehement protests by the provincial wing and a formal severance of institutional ties in 1977. Throughout the post-war period, Alberta Liberals continue to hold open discussions about changing their party’s name to avoid this brand association, but no such plans have come to fruition. Heated battles between Liberals in Ottawa and Social Credit and Progressive Conservative governments in Edmonton have only served to bolster the popularity of the latter as the defender of provincial autonomy.54 Second, the Alberta Liberal Party has experienced a long-lasting ideological identity crisis since losing power in the early twentieth century. At certain times, the party has straddled the political centre, incorporating elements of both left-wing “security” and right-wing “freedom” in its platforms; in the process, the Liberals have failed to establish themselves as an authentic champion of either side of the spectrum. At other times, the party has lurched from left to right, leader to leader. The resulting form of political schizophrenia has prevented the Liberals from establishing themselves as a consistent, recognizable alternative to government. In short, if the New Democratic Party has suffered from ideological inertia, the Alberta Liberals have faced the opposite affliction. Neither condition has aided in the opposition in their attempts to unseat Social Credit or the Progressive Conservatives.
In Saskatchewan, right-wing opposition parties have struggled to displace the CCF-NDP as the province’s natural governing party. Some of their leaders have spoken in code, at least early on in their careers. All three post-war right-wing premiers entered office by campaigning on toned-down platforms and commitments to uphold the principles and institutions of Saskatchewan “security.” Ross Thatcher was fond of mentioning his own early roots in the CCF movement, for instance, while Grant Devine labelled himself as the true heir to Tommy Douglas’s legacy during the 1986 campaign. And Brad Wall’s breakthrough with the Sask Party in 2007 may be attributed to his commitments to keep several of the province’s key crown corporations in public hands. In the two earlier instances, both the Liberals and Conservatives drifted gradually back to their right-wing roots, however. In Devine’s case, second-term attempts to rewrite the Saskatchewan code in the image of “Alberta freedom” failed to come to fruition. To this point, none of the CCF-NDP’s opponents have managed to crack, let alone supplant, the code of security that has helped keep the party in power more often than not in the post-war period.
Challengers to the dominant parties have faced unique obstacles in Manitoba as well. During the Bracken era, opposition leaders of every label were forced to choose between allying themselves with a very popular premier or sitting alone on the opposition benches. The former option would grant the leader a position at the Cabinet table while in coalition, whereas the latter would earn him the label of an outsider in the non-partisan environment of Manitoba politics. Recognizing the futility of the latter approach, all major party leaders—from Social Credit on the right to the CCF on the left—joined Bracken’s coalition at one point or another. Following the premier’s departure during World War II, both the CCF and the Progressive Conservatives withdrew from the coalition. It would take a decade before either party could formulate an alternative, moderate vision for Manitoba’s future. But once Duff Roblin’s vision of the “progressive centre” took hold, it was the Liberal Party that found itself on the wrong side of the provincial code. For decades to come, the Grits were victimized as representatives of an outdated version of their polity’s creed—as a backward party in a forward-facing world. (Borrowing from this script, a decade later in Alberta, Peter Lougheed would portray Harry Strom’s Socreds in a similar light.) Despite a minor resurgence in the 1980s, when the party managed to position itself in the “progressive centre” during a brief period of polarization, the Liberals remain outside the province’s mainstream to this day. Instead, the New Democrats and Conservatives now trade turns in office; when one strays too far from the “progressive centre,” the other has proven poised to assume its position in government.55
Thus, codes in each of the three Prairie provinces have established unique sets of incentives and disincentives related to party competition. Parties run a significant risk, and incur high electoral costs, by defining the Alberta state’s role as anything but a guardian, ombudsman, or liberator; criticizing the Saskatchewan state’s position as a pioneer, provider, or director; or ignoring the Manitoba state’s function as a delegate, moderator, and participant. Parties that become defined as, or associated with, “enemies of the state” face even greater challenges. Meanwhile, as crafters and champions of their state’s role in Confederation, society, and the economy, dominant parties enjoy a significant competitive advantage over their opponents. This ideological edge is just as critical to their continued success as any other formal institutional safeguards they may establish while in office (including electoral systems and other legal barriers).
As a result, minor parties are forced into one of two strategies: to serve as principled actors, committed to their own ideological tenets; or to submit to the dominant discourse and speak “in code.” The former route, chosen by the CCF-NDP in Alberta and periodically by all parties in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, has left these organizations on the margins of power. The latter path, chosen at various times by right-wing leaders in Saskatchewan, has secured their parties control of government, if only temporarily. Neither strategy has proven effective in displacing the dominant parties, however. As a result, the right-leaning Socreds and Conservatives in Alberta, left-leaning CCFers and New Democrats in Saskatchewan, and centrist Liberal-Progressives, PCs, and NDPers in Manitoba remain their provinces’ only natural governing parties.
In this way, code politics raises the spectre of hegemony—that, once entrenched in a party system, a set of ideas will determine winners and losers in an almost mechanical and enduring fashion. Continued rule by the Progressive Conservatives, or some other right-wing party, seems inevitable in Alberta. We can predict with confidence that the New Democrats will return to power more often than not in Saskatchewan. And Manitoba will continue to be governed by moderate parties of the left and right for the foreseeable future. These worries intensify when the culture, code, and creed become virtually synonymous with a political party. As one editorialist put it, “Ideologies that control the culture also control the politics.”56
It is true: patterns of party competition are subject to the same processes of “lock-in” as the codes that help produce them. A code institutionalizes processes of “positive feedback” and “increasing returns” that advantage certain types of political actors depending on their ideology.57 In turn, the resulting patterns of competition establish their own sets of expectations about the strong and weak players in a given party system. These norms define the level of credibility, respectability, viability, and overall prospects for the various parties (such that the NDP is viewed as a major player in the eastern Prairie provinces, for instance, but not in Alberta). By filtering the world around them, these expectations shape the behaviour of a wide range of political actors—from the media and academics to potential party sponsors and activists to voters and political elites. Journalists and observers talk about “safe seats” and “secure majorities,” serving to reinforce those same patterns in the minds of their audience. Donors tend to fund the strongest parties and activists too, focusing their resources on influencing those parties closest to power. Some voters may be drawn toward winners, or to vote strategically for the party most likely to stop their least-favoured alternative. And the norms embedded in a party system can affect the decision of would-be candidates to run under a party’s banner, or to even contest an election at all. In these and other ways, existing patterns of party competition generate their own path-dependent momentum by establishing expectations based on the existing hierarchy of power in the system.58
In other words, codes limit the choices available to all political actors during elections. Granted, each party system analyzed in this study contained a wide variety of choices on the ballot. In some cases at certain times, these ranged from orthodox communism on the left to traditional liberalism on the right or, later, new-left social democracy to new-right neo-conservatism. Yet, in order to establish true “choice” on the ballot, these options must not only be available—political actors in the system must view them as viable alternatives to government.
According to most theories, the basic premise of democracy is the provision of elections that offer voters a variety of competing visions for the future.59 This “choice” is rooted in a variety of options on the ballot and, equally importantly, the ability to choose among feasibly electable alternatives. That is, for citizens to make meaningful democratic decisions, the options presented to them during elections must be both distinguishable and viable.60 In developed countries like Canada, the quality of electoral choice is determined primarily by “its politicians, its political parties, and its patterns of party competition”61 If these “patterns” dictate that only one type of political party is likely to form government, while others have few prospects of success, the quality of democratic “choice” is compromised.
Gloomy or accurate as it appears, this is an overly deterministic view of political life. Just as codes can be cracked and altered, so too can patterns of party competition. The process is not an easy one, given that both codes and patterns of party competition are deeply entrenched in the political system. Yet, as with any institution, there are ways to erode, convert, layer, or even replace existing constraints. Codes can be rewritten under certain circumstances—that is, when political actors are able to create or exploit an opportunity during a period of intense uncertainty to establish a new way of conceptualizing the state’s role in society, the economy, or in Confederation.
Exogenous events may introduce anomalies or uncertainty into the political system—for instance, creating an opportunity for new political ideas (and the actors carrying them) to rise to prominence. Such events—including wars or depressions—are few and far between; moreover, as witnessed on the Canadian prairies, they do not always produce dramatic changes to the political status quo. While they may create the prerequisite demand for change, political entrepreneurs must supply a popular and acceptable vehicle if major transformations are to take place.
More often, to rise above the expectations established for them by the present pattern of party competition, leaders must first learn to “play by the rules” of the game before they can convert them to their own advantage. As Pal argues, to succeed in party politics “requires leadership, a capacity to sense instinctively the patterns of accepted discourse and the creative, even artistic ways in which they may be modified to suit different interests and agendas.”62 To break their dominant predecessors’ grip on power, for instance, Duff Roblin and Peter Lougheed first adopted, then adapted, their respective political codes. Roblin accepted the Liberal-Progressives’ creed of “moderation,” progressive centrism, flexible partisanship, and pragmatism, just as Lougheed drew upon the Socreds’ principles of “freedom,” individualism, populism, and autonomy. Their strategy, however, was to point out the disjunctions between these ideals and the perceived realities of the world around them. Roblin and Lougheed, like Schreyer after them, were able to alter their provinces’ patterns of party competition by pointing out these “ironies” and converting the existing code to new ends.
From this perspective, party competition is rarely a matter of opposing sides presenting conflicting codes or paradigms. Rather, it is more often a contest between conflicting interpretations of those ideals. The most successful opposition parties seek to highlight not the “anomalies” left unsolved by the dominant narrative, but rather the disjunction between the realities of political life and the promise contained in the existing code. These ideals constitute the community’s “creed”—a relatively unsystematic conglomeration of symbols, values, and beliefs that serve as the guiding principles of a society and its political actors. In this sense, ideas can guide political development in that the non-realization of a society’s creed may empower an opposition group to challenge the governing party by restating (and often reinterpreting) the basis of that original creed. In this context, Huntington argues, party competition seldom “takes the form of idea versus idea…but rather of idea versus fact. The conflict is between…groups who believe in the same political principles: those who find it in their interest to change existing institutions immediately so as to make them comply with those principles, and those who accept the validity of the principles but who perceive existing institutions as being in accord with the principles insofar as this is feasible.”63
None of this is to suggest that parties must conform, ideologically, to the norms of their respective provinces if they expect to gain office. A party does not have to be arch-conservative to be successful in Alberta; nor orthodox socialist to attain power in Saskatchewan. (Peter Lougheed and Roy Romanow have dispelled these notions.) For one, the norms of each community are seldom so rigid. As the history of Prairie politics reveals, there is much room for interpretation within the bounds of these guiding codes and creeds. Rather, in order to gain and retain power for a significant period of time, party leaders must at least speak (if not act) “in code.” To dominate politics in Alberta requires speaking with a freedom-based accent. There, dominant party leaders may emphasize “freedoms from,” if they are from the right, or “freedoms to” if they are from the left. By the same token, long-term success in Saskatchewan entails talking security. Once again, there is room for interpretation of the provincial code; however, those on the left may emphasize “freedom through security” while those on the right may offer “security through freedom.” And consistent victory in Manitoba means promoting moderation from either side of the spectrum.
Once in power, these parties may work toward shifting the norms of party competition in their favour. If the experiences of Ross Thatcher and Grant Devine in Saskatchewan or Sterling Lyon and Gary Filmon in Manitoba offer any guidance, such an undertaking is a long-term process.
As Wiseman puts it, whatever broad similarities there may be among Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, “treating them as a single region is akin to trying to tie…watermelons together with a single piece of string.”64 In particular, the partisan diversity in the region poses a dilemma: considering they were divided rather arbitrarily just over a century ago, why have Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta developed into three worlds “thriving in the bosom of a single region?”65 This chapter suggests that by downplaying the role of ideas and agency, structural theories offer only partial solutions to this Prairie paradox. Formative event, fragment, and staple theories neglect the extent to which parties themselves help shape the climates in which they compete.
As revealed, campaigns in each of the three Prairie provinces are characterized by a unique modes discourse that helps to define their politics and structure their party systems. The Alberta code centres on the concept of “freedom,” such that successful parties in that province have emphasized themes like individualism, populism, and autonomy. This dominant discourse differs from those found in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where the most successful parties have stressed “security” and “moderation,” respectively. By crafting these unique “codes,” major party leaders have set the bounds of acceptable debate in their respective provinces, and constrained their opponents by labelling them as outsiders or enemies of the provincial community. In this way, dominant parties have helped perpetuate their own success, shaping the distinct patterns of party competition in the process. Such an emphasis on ideas and agency is missing in conventional accounts of party politics; adding it brings us one step closer to solving the “paradox” on the Canadian Prairies, and to understanding the ideational foundations of party systems beyond the region.
1 André Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau, and Neil Nevitte, Anatomy of a Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the 2000 Canadian Election (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002); Harold D. Clarke, “The Ideological Self-Perceptions of Provincial Legislators,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 11 (1978): 617–633; Michael Lusztig, Patrick James, and Jeremy Moon, “Falling from Grace: Nonestablished Brokerage Parties and the Weight of Predominance in Canadian Provinces and Australian States,” Publius 27, 1 (1997): 59–81; David E. Smith, “The Prairie Provinces” in The Provincial Political Systems: Comparative Essays, eds. D.J. Bellamy, J. Pammett and D.C. Rowat, (Toronto: Methuen, 1976).
2 David E. Smith, The Regional Decline of a National Party: Liberals on the Prairies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), xvi.
3 The Liberals governed all three provinces from 1915 to 1921, and the Conservatives did so from 1988 to 1991.
4 R.K. Carty and David Stewart, “Parties and Party Systems” in Provinces: Canadian Provincial Politics,” ed. C. Dunn (Peterborough: Broadview, 1996).
5 Peter McCormick, “Provincial Party Systems, 1945–1986,” in Canadian Parties in Transition: Discourse, Organization and Representation, eds. A.-G. Gagnon and A.B. Tanguay (Scarborough: Nelson, 1989).
6 D.K. Elton, One Prairie Province? Conference Proceedings and Selected Papers (Lethbridge: Lethbridge Herald, 1970).
7 Smith, “The Prairie Provinces,” in The Provincial Political Systems, 47–50.
8 In Ontario, the Progressive Conservatives won an unprecedented twelve consecutive elections from 1943 to 1981. They failed to achieve majority status on three occasions, however (1943, 1975, and 1977).
9 Edward Bell, Harold Jansen, and Lisa Young, “Sustaining a Dynasty in Alberta: The 2004 Provincial Election,” Canadian Political Science Review 1, 2 (2007): 27–49.
10 Jocelyne Praud and Sarah McQuarrie, “The Saskatchewan CCF-NDP from the Regina Manifesto to the Romanow Years,” in Saskatchewan Politics: Into the Twenty-First Century, ed. H. Leeson (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2001); Ken Rasmussen, “Saskatchewan: From Entrepreneurial to Embedded State,” in The Provincial State in Canada: Politics in the Provinces and Territories, eds. Keith Brownsey and Michael Howlett (Peterborough: Broadview, 2001).
11 Gregory P. Marchildon, “Why the Heavy Hand of History?” in The Heavy Hand of History: Interpreting Saskatchewan’s Past, ed. G.P. Marchildon (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2005), 4.
12 John Wilson, “The Canadian Political Cultures: Towards a Redefinition of the Nature of the Canadian Political System,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 7, 3 (1974): 438–483; Jane Jenson, “Party Systems,” in The Provincial Political Systems; David Stewart and R. Kenneth Carty, “Many Political Worlds? Provincial Parties and Party Systems,” in Provinces: Canadian Provincial Politics, 2nd ed., ed. C. Dunn (Peterborough: Broadview, 2006); Peter McCormick, “Provincial Party Systems, 1945–1993,” in Canadian Parties in Transition, 2nd ed., eds. A.B. Tanguay and A.-G. Gagnon (Toronto: Nelson, 1996); Christopher Dunn and David Laycock, “Saskatchewan: Innovation and Competition in the Agricultural Heartland,” in The Provincial State: Politics in Canada’s Provinces and Territories, ed. K. Brownsey and M. Howlett (Mississauga: Copp Clark Pitman, 1992).
13 In this count, I consider the CCF-NDP to constitute a single party.
14 The federal Liberals, Saskatchewan CCF-NDP, Ontario Conservatives, and the New Brunswick and PEI Liberals are the only Canadian parties to have governed in every decade since World War II. (The Quebec Liberals governed up to the end of World War II, and have served in government in every decade since.)
15 The Saskatchewan CCF-NDP has earned an average of 44.8 percent of the popular vote in elections since World War II. Only the PEI Liberals (49.8) and Conservatives (47.4), and the Liberals in Newfoundland (49.4), New Brunswick (48.9), and Quebec (46.3) have performed better over the same period.
16 Praud and McQuarrie, “The Saskatchewan CCF-NDP,” 143; Rasmussen, “Saskatchewan,” 258; Nelson Wiseman, “Social Democracy in a Neo-Conservative Age: The Politics of Manitoba and Saskatchewan,” in Canada: The State of the Federation 2001: Canadian Political Culture(s) in Transition, eds. H. Telford and H. Lazar (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 2002), 218.
17 Numerous studies dispute the extent to which the Saskatchewan electorate is, in fact, “socialist.” See for example Don Baron and Paul Jackson, Battleground: The Socialist Assault on Grant Devine’s Canadian Dream (Toronto: Bedford House Publishing, 1991); Rand Dyck, Provincial Politics in Canada (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1996); Evelyn Eager, Saskatchewan Government: Politics and Pragmatism (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1980); Michael D. Ornstein, “Regionalism and Canadian Political Ideology,” in Regionalism in Canada, ed. R.J. Brym (Toronto: Irwin, 1986).
18 Jared J. Wesley, “The Collective Centre: Social Democracy and Red Tory Politics in Manitoba,” paper read at Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, York University, Toronto, 2006.
19 Dyck, Provincial Politics in Canada, 397; W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 221.
20 The Liberal-Progressives dropped the term “Progressive” from their party name in 1960. The Liberals enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1980s, under leader Sharon Carstairs. The party formed the official opposition from 1988 to 1990—the first time it had done so since 1969.
21 David K. Stewart and Jared J. Wesley, “Sterling Lyon,” in Manitoba Premiers of the 19th and 20th Centuries, eds. B. Ferguson and R. Wardhaugh (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center Press, 2010).
22 Since 1969, the New Democrats have garnered between 23.6 percent (1988) and 49.4 percent (2003) of the popular vote. The Conservatives have won between 35.7 percent (1969) and 43.8 percent (1977).
23 Chris Adams, “Manitoba’s Political Party Systems: An Historical Overview,” paper read at Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Toronto, 3 June 2006; Dyck, Provincial Politics in Canada, 419; Donald Swainson, “Manitoba’s election: patterns confirmed,” The Canadian Forum (September 1973): 4–7; Nelson Wiseman, Social Democracy in Manitoba: A History of the CCF-NDP (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983), 147.
24 Jared Wesley, Code Politics: Campaigns and Cultures on the Canadian Prairies (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011).
25 Ibid., 236.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 237.
29 Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1967), 308.
30 Some analysts disagree with this interpretation. For instance, Archer and Hunziker argue that while “there is a popular assumption that the province’s long history of one-party dominance is the product of a set of homogeneous political attitudes and beliefs… [in fact] Alberta is characterized by significant attitudinal diversity”; “Leadership Selection in Alberta: The 1985 Progressive Conservative Leadership Convention,” in Leaders and Parties in Canadian Politics: Experiences of the Provinces, eds. L. Erickson, D.E. Blake and R.K. Carty (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Canada, 1992), 81. See also Doreen Barrie, The Other Alberta: Decoding a Political Enigma (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2006).
31 Nelson Wiseman, In Search of Canadian Political Culture (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 240.
32 Jared J. Wesley, “Staking the Progressive Centre: An Ideational Analysis of Manitoba Party Politics,” Journal of Canadian Studies 45, 1 (2011): 143–177.
33 Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, eds. Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Lonstreth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
34 Kenneth A. Shepsle, “Studying Institutions: Some Lessons from the Rational Choice Approach,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 1, 2 (1989): 135.
35 British prime minister Margaret Thatcher coined the term “TINA” in her defence of market supremacy, alluding to the pre-eminence of neo-liberalism in the 1980s.
36 Sheri Berman, “Ideas, Norms, and Culture in Political Analysis: Review Article,” Comparative Politics 33, 2 (2001): 242.
37 James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen, “Institutional Perspectives on Political Institutions,” Governance 9, 3 (1996): 257.
38 The Provincial State in Canada, 14–15.
39 Gerald Friesen, The West: Regional Ambitions, National Debates, Global Age (Toronto: Penguin Group / McGill Institute, 1999), 9; Morton, Manitoba, 420-421; Dyck, Provincial Politics, 381; Paul G. Thomas, “Manitoba: Stuck in the Middle,” in Canada: The State of the Federation 1989, eds. R.L. Watts and D.M. Brown (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1989); Paul Thomas, “Leading from the Middle: Manitoba’s Role in the Intergovernmental Arena,” Canadian Political Science Review 2, 3 (2008): 29–51.
40 There are obvious disjunctions between what has been portrayed by these elites in their campaign rhetoric, and the actual performance of these states. At various times, Saskatchewan governments have reduced their state’s role as a pioneer, provider, and director. Likewise, Manitoba elites have, from time to time, abandoned their code of “moderation” by choosing sides at the federal-provincial table, in debates over private versus public development, or in domestic social disputes. And, in Alberta, the code of “freedom” is difficult to reconcile with the development of the province’s expansive welfare state and programs of corporate assistance. See Dyck, Provincial Politics, 514; Mark Pickup, Anthony Sayers, Rainer Knopff, and Keith Archer, “Social Capital and Civic Community in Alberta,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 37, 3 (2004): 617–645; Government and Politics in Alberta, eds. Allan Tupper and Roger Gibbins (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1992), xv; Kenneth H. Norrie, “Some Comments on Prairie Economic Alienation” in Society and Politics in Alberta: Research Papers, ed. C. Caldarola (Toronto: Methuen, 1979); Mark Lisac, Alberta Politics Uncovered: Taking Back our Province (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2004), 2–3.
41 Edward Bell, Social Classes and Social Credit in Alberta (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 153.
42 Christine de Clercy, “Leadership and Uncertainty in Fiscal Restructuring: Ralph Klein and Roy Romanow,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 38, 1 (2005); Trevor Harrison and Gordon Laxer, “Introduction” in The Trojan Horse: Alberta and the Future of Canada, eds. T. Harrison and G. Laxer (Montreal: Black Rose, 1995), 7–8; Jean Blondel, Political Leadership: Towards a General Analysis (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1987), 93–7.
43 Keith Archer and Roger Gibbins, “What do Albertans Think? The Klein Agenda on the Public Opinion Landscape” in A Government Reinvented: A Study of Alberta’s Deficit Elimination Program, eds. C. Bruce, R. Kneebone and K. McKenzie (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997), 466.
44 Wiseman, In Search of Canadian Political Culture, 248, 250.
45 The Trojan Horse, 5–7.
46 Michael R. Georgeson, “A One-Party Dominant Party System: The Case of Alberta,” (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1974).
47 Edward Bell, Social Classes and Social Credit in Alberta (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 153–154; Carlo Caldarola, “The Social Credit in Alberta,” in Society and Politics in Alberta: Research Papers, ed. C. Caldarola (Toronto: Methuen, 1979), 40.
48 David K. Elton and Arthur M. Goddard, “The Conservative Takeover, 1971,” in Society and Politics in Alberta: Research Papers, ed. C. Caldarola (Toronto: Methuen, 1979), 68.
49 Linda Trimble, “Comments on Chapter 13” in A Government Reinvented, 488.
50 Allan Tupper, “Alberta Politics: The Collapse of Consensus,” in Party Politics in Canada, 6th ed., ed. H.G. Thorburn. (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1991), 459.
51 Elton and Goddard, “The Conservative Takeover,” 68. Blondel discusses how dominant leaders often “close their borders” to competing ideas, “branding foreigners as potential enemies” to the domestic consensus (Political Leadership: Towards a General Analysis, 32). In Alberta, for example, “Governments in the province have been successful in deflecting attention towards the deficiencies of the federal government and away from any shortcomings of the provincial government. In these contemporary intergovernmental battles, the population invariably lines up behind the Premier like Albertans did generations ago…. [A] unique Alberta identity has been forged in part by driving a wedge between Albertans and the national government and, by extension, the national community.” Barrie, The Other Alberta, xiii.
52 David Stewart and Keith Archer, Quasi-Democracy? Parties and Leadership Selection in Alberta (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), 172.
53 Dyck, Provincial Politics, 518.
54 James Fischer, “Liberals in Alberta: Studying the Lessons of History” (MA thesis, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1986).
55 Wesley, “Staking the Progressive Centre,” 143–177.
56 Susan Martinuk, “Harper spinning his wheels in pursuit of elusive majority: Ideologies that control the culture also control the politics,” Calgary Herald, January 18, 2008, A20.
57 W. Brian Arthur, Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
58 Such “expectations” are key to understanding the dynamics of party competition. See Kenneth Janda, Robert Harmel, Christine Edens, and Patricia Goff, “Changes in Party Identity: Evidence from Party Manifestos,” Party Politics 1, 2 (1995); Graham White, “One-Party Dominance and Third Parties: The Pinard Theory Reconsidered,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 6, 3 (1973): 400–01; David J. Elkins, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 7 (1974). As Stern suggests, “interparty competition is usually taken as one of the basic factors defining the state of behaviour in party systems. However, it is the actors’ perceptions of interparty competition which in fact underlies their actions in the system.” Mark Stern, “Measuring Interparty Competition: A Proposal and a Test of a Method,” Journal of Politics 34, 3 (1972): 890. As Pinard argued, “a system of one-party dominance is a party system in which the traditional opposition party (or occasionally, parties) cannot be considered a serious challenge, a viable alternative to the dominant government party…. In the end it is the people’s perception of this condition that counts.” Maurice Pinard, “Third Parties in Canada Revisited: A Rejoinder and Elaboration of the Theory of One-Party Dominance,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 6, 3 (1973): 440.
59 E.E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 140–141; Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1942).
60 J.A.A. Lovink, ”Is Canadian Politics too Competitive?” Canadian Journal of Political Science 6, 3 (1973): 342; T.J. Pempel, Introduction, in Uncommon Democracies, ed. T.J. Pempel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 9–10; Donald V. Smiley, The Canadian Political Nationality (Toronto: Methuen, 1969), 68.
61 Wesley, ”The Collective Centre.” R. Kenneth Carty, William P. Cross, and Lisa Young, Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), 14.
62 Pal, “The Political Executive,” 5.
63 Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981), 32.
64 Nelson Wiseman, “The West as a Political Region” in Riel to Reform: A History of Protest in Western Canada, ed. G. Melnyk (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1992), 280.
65 Smith, “The Prairie Provinces,” 46.