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BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
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Description
The Canadian party system is a deviant case among the Anglo-American democracies. It has too many parties, it is susceptible to staggering swings from election to election, and its provincial and federal branches often seem unrelated. Unruly and inscrutable, it is a system that defies logic and classification – until now.
In this political science tour de force, Richard Johnston makes sense of the Canadian party system. With a keen eye for history and deft use of recently developed analytic tools, he articulates a series of propositions underpinning the system. Chief among them was domination by the centrist Liberals, stemming from their grip on Quebec, which blocked both the Conservatives and the NDP. He also takes a close look at other peculiarities of the Canadian party system, including the stunning discontinuity between federal and provincial arenas.
For its combination of historical breadth and data-intensive rigour, The Canadian Party System is a rare achievement. Its findings shed light on the main puzzles of the Canadian case, while contesting the received wisdom of the comparative study of parties, elections, and electoral systems elsewhere.
Contributor Notes
Richard Johnston is a professor of political science and Canada Research Chair in Public Opinion, Elections, and Representation at the University of British Columbia. He has also taught at the University of Toronto, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania and held visiting fellowships at Queen’s University at Kingston, the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung in Germany, and the Australian National University. He was principal investigator of the 1988 and 1992-93 Canadian Election Studies and research director for the National Annenberg Election Survey, 2000-8. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Marie Curie Research Fellow attached to the European University Institute. He is the author or co-author of five books, three on Canadian politics and two on US politics. He has co-edited four other books and written more than ninety articles and book chapters. In 2017, he received the Mildred A. Schwartz Lifetime Achievement Award for the study Canadian politics from the American Political Science Association.
Awards
- Winner, Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award, American Political Science Association
- Short-listed, Donald Smiley Prize, Canadian Political Science Association
Editorial Reviews
Johnston has written a book that will be required reading for students of Canadian politics for decades to come. In identifying and explaining the role of the Liberal and Conservative parties and their relationship to Québec, while also highlighting the importance of what he calls ‘insurgent’ third parties, Johnston provides a valuable explanatory framework for the unique nature of Canada’s party system.
— The Ormsby Review
By tackling the big claims regarding parties, elections, and electoral systems in Canada, and by placing his analysis in a comparative framework, Johnston has done the discipline a huge service[…]Simply put, The Canadian Party System is foundational reading.
— The Canadian Historical Review
