Prior to May 2015, the oil-rich jurisdiction of Alberta had, for over four decades, been a one-party state. During that time, the rule of the Progressive Conservatives essentially went unchallenged, with critiques of government policy falling on deaf ears and Alberta ranking behind other provinces in voter turnout. Given the province’s economic reliance on oil revenues, a symbiotic relationship also developed between government and the oil industry. Cross-national studies have detected a c...

From December 1995 to summer 1998, Ontario witnessed eleven one-day general strikes and Days of Action across its major cities. These protests were sparked by the so-called Common Sense Revolution associated with Conservative Premier Mike Harris, elected to office in 1995. Written during the twenty-fifth anniversary of this significant social movement, Austerity and Resistance aims to tell its story and draw lessons from it.Paul Kellogg draws on his experiences as a former...

From fur and fish to oil and minerals, Canadian development has often been understood through its relationship to export staples. This understanding, argues Paul Kellogg, has led many political economists to assume that Canadian economic development has followed a path similar to those of staple-exporting economies in the Global South, ignoring a more fundamental fact: as an advanced capitalist economy, Canada sits in the core of the world system, not on the periphery or semi-periphery.

Beginning in 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was divided into opposing sections, one led by Vladimir Lenin, the other by Iulii Martov. Until 1917, both Lenin and Martov were equally prominent figures in Russian politics. Martov, an anti-war socialist intellectual from a Jewish background, wrote prolifically for a number of important publications inside and outside Russia*.* Although the books, articles, and pamphlets written by Lenin during the same period remain readily a...

Just north of the Arctic Circle is the settlement of Vorkuta, a notorious camp in the Gulag internment system that witnessed three pivotal moments in Russian history. In the 1930s, a desperate hunger strike by socialist prisoners, victims of Joseph Stalin’s repressive regime, resulted in mass executions. In 1953, a strike by forced labourers sounded the death knell for the Stalinist forced labour system. And finally, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a series of strikes by new, independen...

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminish...

This book offers a short, comprehensive history of post-war Canada. All the major events and developments in Canadian history are discussed: the evolution of the welfare state; the growth of economic domination by the United States; the halcyon days as a Middle Power; the Quiet Revolution; the First Nations' quest for autonomy; the flowering of English-Canadian nationalism; Quebec nationalism; the women's movement; neo-conservatism; and globalization. Finkel covers political, economic, soc...

Between them, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien radically altered the structure and functions of the federal government, first by signing and implementing major trade liberalization projects, and then by cutting back the size of their governments' budgets and the scope of their policies. Uncle Sam and Us analyzes the Mulroney-Chrétien era's impact on Canadian governance through two related factors, globalization from without and neoconservatism from within.Stephen Clarkson ...

The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the most successful parties in the democratic world. It dominated Canadian politics for a century, practising an inclusive style of “big tent” politics that allowed it to fend off opponents on both the left and right. How did it do this? What kind of party organization did it build over the decades to manage its remarkable string of election victories?This book traces the record of the party over the twentieth century, revealing the cyclical ch...

The legacy of Jean Chrétien, Canadian prime minister from 1993-2003, is difficult to assess in the context of the sponsorship scandal and the subsequent cloud of uncertainty surrounding the Liberal Party's electoral prospects. The contributors to this volume use their considerable experience and expertise as policy observers and critical thinkers to provide provocative essays that analyse Chrétien's government and provide insights into Canadian politics and public policy.

Those who hoped the collapse of financial markets would usher in the end of neoliberalism and rehabilitate support for traditional social democratic policies programmes have been disappointed. It is not only the irrationality of markets which is the focus of public discontent, but the inefficiency of states and the inability of elected governments to humanise and control global market capitalism. So, in the aftermath of the 2008 crash prompted by the failure of US financial services conglo...

Canada and the United States: Differences that Count investigates why and how the United States and Canada—while so close and seemingly so similar—remain different in so many ways. In seventeen analytical yet readable chapters, leading authorities look at the American and the Canadian ways of doing things. The questions they address affect us all in ways great and small: as citizens, as students, and as policymakers. Our similarities and our differences are not always as we have a...