Suchergebnisse

The article identifies two schools of thought on why Quebeckers choose to support or oppose sovereignty - the rational choice approach that has focused on individuals' assessments of the collective costs and benefits of sovereignty for the Quebec economy and the French language, and the socio-psychological approach that has focused on variables such as resentment, feelings of status denial, ethnic grievances and self-confidence. It has been difficult to resolve disputes between the two approaches due to weakness in available data and a lack of a comparative approach amongst scholars. Using a data set explicitly designed to compare the two schools, this article examines whether previous researchers' conclusions hold even when concepts are operationalized in different ways and when models are specified using different variables. The author examines five general dimensions: the state of the economy, the state of the French language, the state of federalism, respect and recognition, and the perceived quality of relations between English and French speakers. The major substantive conclusion is that the previous scholarship on the motivations for vote choice have significantly overestimated the importance of assessments of the French language, significantly underestimated the importance of assessments of whether Quebeckers are respected and recognized within Canada, and have also underestimated the importance of assessments of federalism and the quality of relations between linguistic groups. These conclusions hold for even the most ambivalent voters.

I thank the JOURNAL for this opportunity to continue a dialogue on
constitutional paralysis in Canada. The disagreements between myself and Janet Ajzenstat and Michael Lusztig underline some of the tensions in Canadian political science and have important implications for how we conceive processes of constitutional change.

It is widely recognized that the traditional institutions and processes
of Canadian politics, such as executive federalism, elite accommodation
and brokerage parties have fallen into disrepute with large sections of
the Canadian public, and political scientists have noted their failure
to resolve long–standing conflicts in the area of constitutional
politics. I argue that the reasons why these processes have failed to
manage constitutional political conflict have not been properly
diagnosed. In particular, Canadian political scientists have not
adequately differentiated executive federalism from accommodation and
brokerage, often assuming they are contingent on each other (as they
are, by definition, in the commonly used expression "elite
accommodation"). The pessimism among some Canadian political
scientists about Canada's ability to amend the Constitution to the
satisfaction of major groups stems in large part from the misplaced
assumption that the brokerage and accommodation necessary in Canada
require executive federalism. This conventional wisdom suggests that
since executive federalism is discredited and has been replaced by a
populist requirement for citizen participation, usually through
referendums, shuns accomodation in favour of a mojoritarianism which is
unable to deal adequately with the problems of a multinational
federation like Canada.

A rebuttal to Janet Ajzenstat's & Michael Lusztig's (both, 2000) contributions to the debate on the constitutional paralysis in Canada & the controversy over the role of public input to the constitution making & emendation process. The original position (Mendelsohn, 2000) is defended, arguing that improperly designed venues for public participation led to the failure of the Charlottetown Accord of 1992, whereas alternative procedures could lead to mutual understanding, & work should be undertaken to elaborate models that include the public in all phases of the process. Examples of a successful implementation of the "public brokerage" model in constitutional arena in Canada & abroad are quoted after Ajzenstat's misstatements & Lusztig's misreadings of Mendelsohn's original proposal are listed. Z. Dubiel