Synopsis
In erudite, engaging prose, "In Search of Canadian Political Culture" explores ways of understanding Canada's multi-layered and diverse political culture. It makes the case for bottom-up, regional analyses of Canadian politics in order to fill a gap in how we think and write about the country.Wiseman focuses on the interplay of five broad waves of immigration, plumbs their ideological orientations, and presents provincial political parties and institutions as their exoskeletons. The book's first half explores and builds upon national perspectives and established conceptual pathways by examining Canada's ideological foundations, the significance of formative events, economic structures and classes, and survey research. Throughout, Wiseman treats constitutions and institutions as culture. The second half traverses the regions from east to west, highlighting the singularity of each and assigning to the provinces inventive metaphorical images that conjure up the politics of other or older societies.The most thorough review of Canadian political culture to be written in a generation, "In Search of Canadian Political Culture" will interest specialists in Canadian political culture and generalists in Canadian politics.