- 194 views
- 569 downloads
Moving Pieces: A Comparison of Canadian Provincial Party Platforms
-
- Author / Creator
- Buckley, Clare
-
An idealized description of elections suggests they center around competing visions for the future of the state. Campaign platforms provide parties with the opportunity to present these competing visions and for voters to decide among them. In order to understand what issues are being discussed, researchers must analyze what policies are being prioritized and emphasized. While party policy shifts have been studied more frequently internationally, this type of platform-focused research is less popular in the Canadian context. This thesis aims to fill this gap by analyzing the continuity and shifts in Canadian provincial party platforms. I ask the following question: what policy priorities do provincial parties in Canada set out in their platforms, and why do these differ and change? By advancing a framework based on identifying and coding policy priorities articulated in platform section titles, I argue and substantiate that variables such as time, party family, and province/ region influence the priorities provincial parties set out in their platforms. Through a comprehensive analysis of over 20 provincial parties and 100 platforms, this study demonstrates how Liberal parties, New Democratic parties, and right-wing parties in Canada such as Progressive Conservative parties adopt different campaign strategies. Of the major party families, Liberal parties had the highest percentage of social issues as the first chapter topic, while New Democratic parties were the most likely of all three party brands to cover economic and business topics in their platforms’ first section. Parties in Western Canada were also more likely to prioritize economics and business topics first compared to parties in Eastern provinces. Further, when looking at consistency levels over time, many provincial parties were inconsistent in their policy priorities and emphasis; however, the NDP were the most likely to be classified as somewhat consistent. Findings also suggest that parties who experienced changes in leadership demonstrated only slightly lower levels of consistency, despite the significant influence of the leader over party decisions in Canadian politics. When comparing consistency levels under the same and different leaders, I found that the more activist-dominated New Democratic Party showed similar consistency levels under the same and different leader, results that are compatible with existing research. Finally, despite differences in policy prioritization levels, differences in average space dedicated to policy issues by party family is minimal. Ultimately, this study reinforces that in Canadian politics, political parties show their values and build their brand not necessarily through their policy positions, but through their priorities. A concluding discussion highlights the value and significance of this research and suggests areas of future exploration about Canadian political parties.
-
- Graduation date
- Fall 2020
-
- Type of Item
- Thesis
-
- Degree
- Master of Arts
-
- License
- Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.