This book is part of the Towards the New Millennium Series, featuring the works of thoughtful Canadians who are profoundly interested in the future of Canada and the world.Most democracies do not use Canada’s "first past the post" voting system. To give a party more seats than its share of the popular vote warrants is deemed undemocratic by most. Such democracies use proportional representation to ensure a party’s seat-share does not exceed its vote-share.Former MLA, Nick L...

To face the future, Canada needs more Canadians. But why and how many?Canada’s population has always grown slowly, when it has grown at all. That wasn’t by accident. For centuries before Confederation and a century after, colonial economic policies and an inward-facing world view isolated this country, attracting few of the people and building few of the institutions needed to sustain a sovereign nation. In fact, during most years before 1967, a greater number of p...

A manifesto for a new world order.Having made a hugely significant contribution to the increasingly irrefutable, if alarming, diagnosis of the ills of early 21st century consumerist culture and its free-market myths, George Monbiot sets out now with this book to offer something more constructive, a set of proposals – political, democratic, economic, environmental – that might affect the cultural change that many in the West (not to mention those on the outside of the West looking i...

Federalism - particularly in Canada - involves an ongoing contestation of interests, ideas, and identities. It is a contestation that sometimes clarifies but often obscures the nature of conflicts and the manner in which they are resolved. Recognizing the great degree of ambivalence associated with federalism, the authors provide students with the conceptual tools and basic knowledge of various governmental processes that will allow them to analyze and, if necessary, critique intergovernmenta...

Is Canada a dictatorship – albeit a friendly dictatorship? In this thoughtful book, Jeffrey Simpson argues that the Liberal Party’s re-election to a third majority government must raise the question: Is Canada in danger of becoming a de facto one-party state, ruled by an all-powerful leader?An effective parliamentary system presumes that at least one party is ready and capable of replacing the existing government by winning an election. Clearly, no party was ready in the last elect...

In November 2008, as the economic decline was being fully realized, Canada's newly elected minority government, led by Conservative Stephen Harper, presented a highly divisive fiscal update in advance of a proposed budget. Unable to support the motion, the Liberal and New Democratic Parties, with the backing of the Bloc Québécois, formed a coalition in order to seek a no-confidence vote and to form a new government. In response, Conservative cabinet ministers launched a media blitz, inform...

Lucid and comprehensive, The Canadian Regime provides a unique analysis of Canada’s political regime by challenging readers to think of the political system as an organic entity where change in one area inevitably ripples through the rest of the system. The book’s focus on the inner logic of parliamentary government explains the rationale for Canada’s relatively complex political system.The new edition includes analysis of the 2011 federal election and the implications of ...

Theories of international relations, assumed to be universally applicable, have failed to explain the creation of states in Africa. There, the interaction of power and space is dramatically different from what occurred in Europe. In States and Power in Africa, Jeffrey Herbst places the African state-building process in a truly comparative perspective. Herbst's bold contention—that the conditions now facing African state-builders existed long before European penetration of the cont...

From one of this country’s best and most controversial political writers, a searing blueprint for the Next Canada.Five years into the twenty-first century, Canada is viewed as one of the most desirable nations in the world in which to live. Despite the worries of many Canadians — our country’s regional and linguistic divisions, our frequent identity crises — Canada, it seems, has a lot of good things going for it.The federal election of 2004, however, revealed new cracks in...

International Relations and International Law have developed in parallel but distinctly throughout the 20th Century. However in recent years there has been recognition that their shared concerns in areas as diverse as the environment, transnational crime and terrorism, human rights and conflict resolution outweigh their disciplinary and methodological divergences.This concise and accessible volume focuses on collaborative work within the disciplines of international law and interna...

Forty years ago, as the United States became increasingly involved in Vietnam, questions were raised in Canada about the relationship between its foreign policy agenda and that of its southern neighbour. Now, with the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is time to raise the same questions: does Canada need an independent foreign policy? Does Canada have the capacity and will to chart its own course?Divided into sections about the history of Canadian foreign policy, diplomacy, s...

Indigenous Nationhood is a selection of blog posts by well-known lawyer, activist and academic Pamela Palmater. Palmater offers critical legal and political commentary and analysis on legislation, Aboriginal rights, Canadian politics, First Nations politics and social issues such as murdered and missing Indigenous women, poverty, economics, identity and culture. Palmater’s writing tackles myths and stereotypes about Indigenous peoples head-on, discusses Indigenous nationhood and n...