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Fascinating. Legolas Send a noteboard - 05/03/2012 10:52:32 PM
The analysis doesn't really hold true for Canada, and your facts are somewhat wrong. The smallest province had a 135k population by 2006 (last major redivision of the constituencies), 10 times bigger than your numbers (25-35k are more like the size of a small constituency in the smallest provinces). It is true that numbers favour the low population areas to an extent - constituencies in PEI have around 25K pop, while the rural provinces like Manitoba have around 80k and the denser provinces like Alberta, Québec, Ontario, BC have many urban constituencies in the 130-150k range (and most between the 80 to 100k range).

I did say provinces/territories. Northwest Territories, Yukon Territories and Nunavut all have 30-40k inhabitants (I'm not sure where you think I got that number, but you must've been giving me either too much or too little credit - I remembered it because I'd just been reading about the Canadian provinces and territories on Wikipedia a few days earlier), and they all have a seat. It's not as if you could afford to *not* give them a seat, that's what I was saying - but still they have a seat for a far smaller population than the other provinces have per seat.
But the numbers don't quite paint the whole picture. E.g.: the Maritimes together have about a third of the number of constituencies of Quebec... and about a third of Quebec's population. Cities like Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver have more MP each than the smaller provinces do.

That seems like a no-brainer.
We're a country of natural resources with a big and diversified territory. Some of the areas with low population aren't necessarily underdevelopped, and those MP representing 30k people can often represent more heterogenous interests than MP representing 100k people in far more homogenous city neighborhood often just a few sq. km in size.

And again with the no-brainer. But perhaps I was a bit vague with "favours regions with low population"; I meant no more than that the regions with low population were artificially favoured in the voting system, precisely because a strictly population-based seat division might result in untenable and unacceptable results such as entirely disenfranchising Nunavut. I hardly intended to say that Nunavut held any real power in Canadian politics - I'm not aware of any country that gives its thinly populated regions as disproportionate an amount of power as the United States, though no doubt there are a few.
It's true the system limits the number of viable parties and makes it nearly impossible for fringe parties to ever get seats despite sometime getting over 5% of the vote globally, but as for stability, or giving a lot of power to regions over the cities, it's not really true.

I never intended to say (nor said) the regions had "a lot" of power compared to the cities.

But your explanation about the lack of stability is interesting, alright. Canada does conform to the general rules in its amount of parties, and in the BQ's being a regional party, which is the most obvious way of having more parties than one would expect (it's the same way in the UK), but evidently not in terms of stability.
That would be a myth too as far as Canada is concerned. Stability was the result of the enduring strength of the center-left Liberal party far more than of the system. The voting picture can be utterly volatile since the 90s (far more so than, say, in the US).

It'd be interesting to learn what makes Canada such a special case... I'm inclined to say part of it must simply be the power of precedent and expectation - if you've seen a landslide as spectacular as that 1993 election you mention, you know it can happen again, and you're not afraid to cast your vote in such a way as to make a new landslide possible. Third parties in the US and UK lose tons of votes every election because voters do *not* believe such a thing is possible.

But there has to be more to it than that. Do Canadian MPs have much of a bond with their district - I don't necessarily mean in the pork sense, though that can be part of it?
In the 1993 election, Mulroney retired in utter disgrace and the Conservatives went from that 169 seats to a whooping 2 seats, straight from one of the strongest governments of the century to being 10 seats short of even being recognized as a party by the Chamber... The oldest party in the country. It's exactly as if the Republican party virtually collapsed overnight in the US (and thought near impossible in Canada, much as that would be in the US) Regional parties emerged, the morally and fiscally ultra-conservative Reform in the West (the "old" Tories were wiped out from Alberta after over 50 years of holding the majority of seats there) and Bloc Québécois in QC. Overnight the picture totally changed, with 2 Conservatives, 177 Liberals, 54 Bloc Québécois (out of the 75 seats in Québec) 52 Reformists from the Prairies, mostly Alberta and 9 NDP (social-democrats, pretty far left for a Canadian party). A regional (and separatist) party was all of a sudden the Monarch's loyal opposition, as embarrassing as that was for them (the Queen might see worse soon). In 1997, the Reformists gained a few seats and the BQ lost about 10 then regained them later.

I have to admit, looking at that election, one is almost inclined to reject the "single-seat constituencies promote stability" theory altogether. Going from 43% of the popular vote to 16% would've been a catastrophe for any party in any country, but in a multi-seat constituency system it wouldn't have been a killing blow like it was there, at least not in terms of number of seats. I guess it's more of a "it's less likely to happen, but when it does happen it's going to be an earthquake" deal, with Canada somehow having managed to get into a rhythm where it does happen on a regular basis.

Out of interest, what do you mean by "the Queen might see worse soon"?
By 2001 and largely because they realized under the Reform platform and banner they had peaked and were stinking way too much of the US moral right for Canada, the party absorbed the remnants of the old Tories and took its name, and gradually pushed to the fringe its moral, evangelical or right-wing catholics. The unification of the economic right, coupled with the enduring strength of Bloc Québécois (and disgust with the liberals in Qc) from one election to the other resulted in a series of minority governements - both liberal and conservative, some lasting no more than a year, with the strength of the social-democrats varying greatly. In the meantime, Alberta got richer and more relevantly bigger, and thus got more seats (and now the power has shifted west... but total lack of support in Qc and Ontario prevented it for a while). We seemed destined to be stuck in that unstable situation forever (especially since the country was doing quite well nonetheless), and at the start of the last campaign it really look more of the same, but the picture changed completely in three wees. Bloc Québécois went from 49 seats to 4 when it was expected to retain most of them. The Conservatives who are the old Reform in disguise minus the most radical elements got close to "their" Mulroney years score with 166 seats. The Liberals who had 177 seats 15 years ago now have 34 and are in a serious crisis. The social-democrat NDP had 9 seats 15 years ago, and never had been able to find support in Qc until a recent by-election where it got its first, but overnight in 2011 it went from that single seat to 59 seats in Qc, and a total of 103 in the country, becoming the official opposition facing a majority conservative government. And it's not over... the NDP got elected largely because of the popularity of its leader in Quebec (people voted for the leader, often having no idea or interest who their MP was), only to see the guy die of cancer before the parlimentary session even began. Their leadership race is still ongoing with a solid candidate from Qc, but the party has its roots in BC and industrial Ontario and the chances of the guy are really up in the air...so go figure what will happen in 2015, especially if the NDP don't choose the guy from Qc.

The Dutch precedent isn't a pretty one. But then, that really was a one-man party, so when someone murdered their one man it was fairly obvious the party was going to disintegrate very fast. Just not fast enough for them not to be voted into the government, sadly.

Still, one does expect things to go back to normal at some point - not necessarily with the same two big parties you used to have, but still with two big parties. No?
The situation is hardly more stable on the provincial level, where we went from decades of having two dominant parties (one separatist and center-left, one federalist and liberal) to the rise of a fiscal right that very nearly went from having a handful of seats for many years to coming a few seats short of forming the government 2 elections ago (and relagating the separatists to third party for the first time since 1976) only to collapse in the following election and finally to disappear this year, where the separatist party (PQ) has gone through several leadership and orientation crisis in the last years - all this resulting in absurdly keeping in power the Liberals by default rather than choice, for the first time in a majority government after a few minority ones, despite them enjoying an historical and enduring low popularity... and now we have a fairly weak PQ just out of its biggest crisis yet, a second separatist party - this one socialist, massively impopular liberals, a new fiscal right/reformist party (CAQ( found by an ex-PQ minister and that is actually an alliance of federalist and separatist forces from the right that got spectacular poll results two months ago (to the point of being the "sure bet" next majority government of most commentators) to an equally spectacular (and very fast) decline in favour, and the separatist leader deemed finished by New Year's day - people were even foreseing the end of the party after this year's election... - but weeks later she's rebounded, to the point the polls have her and PQ win a short victory if the elections are next spring.

Yeah. Political volatility has a way of getting worse and worse when it starts - I think it's grown worse in a lot of countries, even in the US though it's still rather limited there.
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