The Thursday Question 2:45: Politics and political science
A must-read book for MPs, and a discussion of gender and politics and Conservative women
Last week’s annual conference of the Canadian political science association brought me to George Brown College for an apt discussion - Brown himself would have been proud - of Alex Marland, Jared Wesley and Mirielle Lalancette’s forthcoming book on party unity, There is No I in Team. The book deserves your time. It’s an easy read, relies on serious political science research, and deals with serious questions about of the life of MPs and MLAs. It is grounded in findings from the 300 or so MPs who left their caucus over the last generation.
The life of an MP revolves around the essential constitutional feature of our political order - the party caucus. That life is both empowered and constrained by what political parties can do and what they can’t.
Parties are the way - and the only way - we keep Canadian politics both democratic and effective; both free and ordered. The fact that Parliament is structured around parties is what lets governments govern with the confidence of the House *and* lets the government’s opponents organize to oppose it loyally. And yet, life in a political party isn’t for everyone. The oddballs, malcontents, mavericks and free thinkers want to be free from the constraining influence of party structure. When they escape it, they also forfeit a role in governing and opposing, the two engines that produce the genius of parliamentary government. Many countries have just one party. Democracy allows for multiple parties.
(The repeated efforts of Mr. Trudeau’s government to abolish the opposition in the Senate outright deserved more opprobrium. The recent success of Leo Housakos in bolstering the opposition party’s ranks in the other place is an important development that deserves praise.)
Of course, there is no “I” in team. But if you look closely there is a re-formed “me”. Just as no one doubts that the Oilers are at their best with McDavid on fire or that the Jays will suffer if they lose Vladdy, we know that changing up MPs can change a party’s fate. Take the Liberals of 2024, subtract Trudeau, add Carney, and everything changes in 2025. One substitution erased Poilievre’s 26 point lead and, as it turns out, the NDP.
From time to time, Twitter serves up foolish tweets in my feed. Few posts torment me like the semi regular outbursts raging against political scientists commenting on politics in the media. Why must we - self-proclaimed political pros - listen to the ill-informed commentary of ivory tower so-called experts? I can sympathize when clueless commentary from someone with a PhD ends up in print, just as I grind my teeth when some clueless political commentator blows hard to blame campus “culture” for some social ill. But bad commentary must exist so we may have an appreciation of good commentary. So, read Marland et al with an open mind. Political pros will learn a few things about their profession from the scholars.
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On the margins of the panel about the book, there was a side discussion on the gendered dimension of party unity and discipline.