Cultural and racial pluralism have increasingly become a “riveting reality” of contemporary Canadian society. Various dimensions of this reality are explored and critical observations are made about the contribution of Canadian political science to an understanding of the phenomenon and its impact on our political life. The increasing polyethnicity of Canadian society has pressured our decision-makers into articulating both a vision and a policy of multiculturalism. However, since the early 1980s both vision and policy have come under siege. The motives of the critics of multiculturalism are questioned, and an endorsement is made of policies which continue to seek answers in pursuit of the democratic ideals of procedural justice, human equality and mutual respect.

The orthodox view that Canada's ideological tradition is more supportive of an active state cannot explain earlier innovations in social and labour policy in the United States. A neo-pluralist and neo-institutionalist synthesis is used to contrast these nations. Organic ideologies of labour, agrarian, business and professional groups reveal no consistent national differences in support for state action. Initial state interventions were similar and limited. But institutional development occurred in different contexts, producing more effective executive leadership in Canada. American policy was constrained by the Congress, with its opportunities for blocking, and by inadequate executive power. Frustration with inaction plus greater social well-being reduced demands in the US for state action. Canada's institutions allowed more creative policy and fostered greater support for state action, especially where the weak economy exacted costs on social groups. But constitutional change could replicate American gridlock, and reduce the capacity for new state action.

The Trudeau-Lévesque debate has created a political deadlock that threatens not only Confederation but federalism as well. At the core of the political deadlock is a philosophical dispute about language, in which liberty is set against community, and particularism becomes opposed to universalism. Not only does the Trudeau-Lévesque deadlock presuppose an antagonism between basic values that is difficult to justify, but it has also diverted attention from important dimensions of Canadian federalism. An exploration of the Trudeau-Lévesque debate provides insights as to how the deadlock can be dissolved, thereby facilitating the re-imagination of Confederation.

This article proposes a political culture explanation of the collapse of Communism in the GDR and of the current crisis of democracy in reunited Germany. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of an original survey, it argues that the erosion of values that had stabilized East German society motivated the popular revolution of 1989. The conflict of surviving distinct values with those of the West has poisoned the socio-political climate in Germany and contributed to the rise of xenophobia. A constitutional debate accompanying reunification might have mitigated this conflict and the present crisis.

The literature on Canadian Foreign Policy has often been characterized as overly descriptive and theoretically weak. This type of characterization, advanced most recently by Maureen Molot, is no longer wholly accurate. By reviewing several relatively recent contributions and debates in this literature, it is demonstrated that in pockets, the subfield has advanced substantially in theoretical sophistication. Nevertheless, it continues to manifest important gaps and limited cumulation. The article speculates on why this should be so, and on how the theoretical condition of the subfield can be advanced. Approaches which incorporate the interplay of internal and external influences on policy, which borrow from important developments in the wider fields of International Relations and Comparative Politics, and which engage in comparison across issue-areas, countries and time are advocated. Applications drawing on “historical materialist,” regime, and epistemic community literatures are specifically promoted.

The article proposes a simple model to explain election outcomes in Canadian federal elections. The model hypothesizes that the share of the vote obtained by the Liberal party depends on deviations from the average rate of unemployment, inflation and income growth, and on the presence or absence of a party leader from Quebec. The results confirm the hypotheses regarding the impact of unemployment and party leader, but inflation and income growth prove to be nonsignificant. The evidence also suggests that the model may be less satisfactory for elections involving governments that had been in place for less than a year (1958 and 1980).