Evaluations and Evolution: Public Attitudes toward Canada's Federal Political Parties, 1965–1991

This article employs national survey data gathered over the past quarter century to analyze the evolution and present state of public attitudes toward Canada's federal political parties. A 1991 survey employing new questions on evaluations of party performance reveals that these evaluations are structured in terms of two dimensions, and that negative judgments on both dimensions are pervasive. The significance of the current negativism is assessed using 1965-1991 data on Canadians' feelings about and identifications with the federal parties. Although for a long time party affect has been lukewarm at best, and partisanship has been weak and unstable, negative trends have magnified the disaffection and dealignment. The discontent has accelerated in recent years, as the percentage of Liberal and Progressive Conservative identifiers has plummeted, and the non-identifier group has swelled to record levels, particularly in Quebec. The article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for the future of the federal party system. Resume. Cette 6tude utilise les donnees de sondages nationaux recueillies pendant les 25 dernieres ann6es afin d'analyser l'evolution et l'6tat actuel des attitudes du public envers les partis politiques f6edraux du Canada. Une enquete de 1991 utilisant de nouvelles questions sur l'evaluation de la performance des partis r6evle que ces 6valuations s'expriment en fonction de deux dimensions qui toutes deux comportent a 1'evidence des jugements n6gatifs. L'importance du negativisme actuel est 6valuee en utilisant de donnees couvrant les ann6es 1965 a 1991, sur les sentiments d'identifications des Canadiens envers les partis f6edraux. Bien que le sentiment envers les partis ait 6et marqu6 depuis longtemps, au mieux, par l'indiff6rence, et que l'adhesion partisane ait 6et faible et instable, les tendances n6gatives ont accru la d6saffection et le desengagement. Le m6contentement s'est agrav6 dans les ann6es r6centes, le pourcentage de ceux qui s'identifient aux Lib6raux ou aux Progressistes-Conservateurs a degringole, et le groupe des non-alignes a atteint un seuil record, particulir Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1991), chap. 15; and "The Dysfunctions of Canadian Parties: An Exploratory Mapping," in Thorbum, ed., Party Politics in Canada, chap. 18. 5 Meisel lists the following functions: "(1) the structuring of the vote; (2) the integration and mobilization of the mass public; (3) the recruitment of political leaders; (4) organize a government; (5) the formation of public policy; and (6) the aggregation of interests" ("The Dysfunctions of Canadian Parties," 235). 6 See, for example, Clarke et al., Absent Mandate, chaps. 1, 8; and Alain G. Gagnon and Brian Tanguay, eds., Canadian Parties in Transition (Scarborough: Nelson This content downloaded from 207.46.13.124 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:56:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms HAROLD D. CLARKE and ALLAN KORNBERG knowledge, there are no empirical studies that have attempted to ascertain whether scholarly evaluations of party performance are shared by the public which is directly affected by them. Accordingly, this study presents the responses of a 1991 national sample of the electorate to 11 evaluative statements about Canadian political parties, investigates whether there is an underlying structure to these evaluations, and determines whether they are associated with regional, socio-economic and partisan differences among those doing the judging. The second section of the article addresses the longer-term implications of these findings. For this purpose we employ national survey data gathered over the past quarter century to trace the evolution of public orientations toward the federal political parties. In the conclusion, the results of the several analyses are used to inform a discussion of the future of the national party system. Found Wanting: Evaluating Party Performance In November 1991, the authors included 11 "agree-disagree" statements concerning Canada's political parties in a national survey conducted by Canadian Facts. A sample of 1,817 respondents was invited to make judgments about the performance of the parties in carrying out the kinds of policy (statements A, C, E), representational (statements B, H, J), aggregating-integrating (statements D, F, I) and governing (statements G, K) roles political scientists typically ascribe to them.7 These statements and the responses they elicited are displayed in Table 1. Three findings are particularly noteworthy. First and foremost is the decidedly unflattering images Canadians have of their political parties. Judgments about the disjunction between a party's campaign promises and its performance in office, and about the propensity of parties to engage in rhetorical conflict during and after elections rather than focussing their efforts on governing the country are overwhelmingly negative. By way of illustration, 91 per cent agreed that there is often a big difference between what a party says it will do and what it does if it wins an election, 89 per cent agreed that parties spend too much time bickering and quarreling rather than solving national problems, and 81 per cent agreed that parties are more interested in winning elections than in governing afterwards. Second, there were a relatively large number of "don't know" and "not sure" responses to statements Canada, 1989). Aspects of the thesis of party decline are disputed by James Bickerton, in "The Party System and the Representation of Periphery Interests: The Case of the Maritimes," and Khayyam Z. Paltiel, "Financing Federal Political Parties in Canada, 1974-1986," in chaps. 20 and 14, respectively, of the Gagnon and Tanguay volume. 7 To avoid response set problems, three different orderings of the 11 statements were administered to random subsets of respondents. 290 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.124 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:56:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Public Attitudes toward Federal Political Parties, 1965-1991