Introduction
One of the greatest challenges facing Canadian political scientists is perhaps the question of producing and reproducing a diverse and inclusive scientific knowledge—that is, one that illustrates the multiple ways in which Canadian social and political realities are constructed and understood in a so-called multinational society (see Cairns, Reference Cairns, White, Vipond and Simeon2008; Cairns, Reference Cairns1974; Rocher, Reference Rocher2007). In the 1970s and 1980s, diversity in Canadian politics was mainly perceived through the prism of the two solitudes, denoting limited communication between English- and French-speaking scholars that resulted in isolated research endeavours, each following its respective narrative. More recently, Rocher highlighted the systematic neglect or omission of knowledge produced by francophone scholars in works published by anglophone scholars. He warned of the risk that Canadian political scientists might “produce a biased representation of social reality” that reinforces the dominant discursive universe (Reference Rocher2007: 849).
As both the discipline and the producers of knowledge themselves have diversified, scholars have shifted from looking strictly at language to encompass gender, racial or ethnic diversity, as well as intersectional identities as hallmarks of a comprehensive Canadian political science (CPS) (Green, Reference Green2001; Ladner, Reference Ladner2017; Nath, Reference Nath2011; Thompson, Reference Thompson2008; Vickers, Reference Vickers2015). In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Canadian Journal of Political Science—committed to fostering political science research in Canada through bilingual and high-quality research—invited scholars to reflect upon the status of diversity in their field. Scholars acknowledged the notable growth in scholarship both produced by and focused on groups previously often ignored, including women, Indigenous peoples and racialized citizens (Hardt et al., Reference Hardt, Kim, Smith and Meister2019; Harris et al., Reference Harris, Croston, Hutti and Eyler2020; Ladner, Reference Ladner2017; Everitt, Reference Everitt2021; Kim, Reference Kim2017; Young et al. Reference Young, Amery, Bates, McKay, Miller, Billings, Hayton, Holt, Khatri, Marvin, Ogunsanya, Ramdehal and Sullivan2021). Yet despite significant improvements, they recognized that our field is still resistant to change and that this more “recent” research often has been siloed in subfields, which are perceived to be peripheral to the “core” of the discipline (Tolley, Reference Tolley2017; Mathews and Anderson, Reference Mathews and Andersen2001; Nath et al. Reference Nath, Tungohan and Gaucher2018).
As for the representation of English- and French-speaking scholars in the field, a majority of francophone scholars still predominantly publish their work in English (Godbout, Reference Godbout2017; Rocher and Stockemer, Reference Rocher and Stockemer2017), which rather limits the ability of these scholars to disseminate their research within their own student community, many of whom often do not speak English. But given the dominance of English as the global lingua franca and the asymmetrical bilingualism it produces (Laponce, Reference Laponce2006; Simeon and Cameron, Reference Simeon, Cameron, Cameron and Simeon2009), the question of a real (or forced) choice arises (May, Reference May, Kymlicka and Patten2003). Additionally, the enduring two solitudes pattern (see Brie and Mathieu, Reference Brie and Mathieu2024) seems to find partial anchoring in Canadian universities where francophone scholars remain systematically underrepresented in assigned readings of Canadian politics courses and comprehensive exam lists (Daoust et al., Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022). This is especially worrying, as professors of Canadian politics are best positioned to understand the extent to which Canadian linguistic cleavages are associated with distinct understandings of the country's political reality. By building upon a recent analysis by Daoust and colleagues, this article quantifies the extent to which French-speaking scholars are systematically underrepresented in the assigned readings of Canadian politics courses considering i) their demographic proportion in Canada; ii) their representation in political science departments; iii) their scholarly output, measured by the proportion of publications. Indeed, the lack of any baseline in previous studies makes it challenging for the authors to quantitatively assess the significance of francophones’ underrepresentation in the discipline.
Daoust et al.'s Study (Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022)
Drawing from an original dataset based on 351 syllabi from 42 Canadian universities, Daoust et al. (Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022) reveal that French-speaking scholars are systematically absent or underrepresented in the assigned readings of Canadian politics courses. Indeed, half of these syllabi feature less than 5 per cent of readings with at least one French-speaking author. When using a standard for inclusivity of 31 per cent—which matches the proportion of francophone authors in the publications of CJPS from 2000 to 2022—only 24 per cent of the courses taught during this period meet this threshold. Unsurprisingly, the proportion of readings with at least one francophone author in Canadian politics courses varies notably depending on the region and institutional language. In English-language institutions, 30 per cent of syllabi have less than 5 per cent francophone-authored readings, compared to 86 per cent in French-language institutions. Out of 351 syllabi across the country, 133 include no francophone authors at all. A subsequent analysis of 16 Canadian politics PhD qualifying exam lists shows a similar pattern of underrepresentation. But again, there is no established standard to gauge the extent of underrepresentation or over-representation of each linguistic group. For instance, one might question whether these findings are influenced by variations in scholarly productivity between French- and English-speaking scholars or their relative presence within political science departments.
The question asked by Daoust and colleagues (Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022) underscores broader issues regarding how our discipline is taught, understood and disseminated (see also Marcoux, Reference Marcoux2018 or McMahon et al. Reference McMahon, Alcantara and Stephenson2020). By not engaging with the works produced by their anglophone or francophone counterparts, Canadian political scientists inadvertently promote a skewed narrative of Canadian political reality. As previously mentioned by Rocher (Reference Rocher2007), bridging the gap goes beyond the idea that English-speaking scholars cite French-speaking scholars more frequently and vice versa. It is about displaying a genuine interest in what the Other has to bring to our understanding of our own society. Otherwise, the danger is the poor spread of francophone political scientists' ideas to their anglophone peers (Rocher, Reference Rocher2007; Sonntag and Cardinal, Reference Sonntag and Cardinal2015)—a concern described by Cairns (Reference Cairns, White, Vipond and Simeon2008) as “whom can speak to whom.”
Data and Methods
To replicate and expand on Daoust et al.'s (Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022) study, we created two datasets. First, we gathered syllabi from 2022 Canadian politics courses from 49 universities across the country (n = 57), either by downloading the file via their website or by contacting the political science department chair.Footnote 1 We focused on courses offering a comprehensive overview of Canadian politics, excluding those centred on subfields such as social welfare or Indigenous politics. For each syllabus, we documented the languages of the assigned readings, the authors' names and their mother tongues, as well as the names, mother tongues, departments, and affiliated universities of the instructors. Mother tongue identification was manually conducted using available information like names, language proficiency from resumes and bachelor's degree institutions. In ambiguous cases (~12), we confirmed details through our network. This resulted in data on 405 assigned readings from 58 courses.
Our second dataset encompasses faculty members’ information (name, first language, gender, rank, years of study) from political science departments in 57 Canadian universities, totalling 1325 professors. We included publication and citation counts from Google Scholar (n = 619) to gauge scholarly work's scope. Deliberately opting for these counts as proxies for scholarly activity, we are aware of this method's limitations, notably the exclusion of the qualitative dimensions of academic contributions.Footnote 2 Since not all faculty members have a Google Scholar account, we reweighted the number of francophones and anglophones based on department compositions for the projections in Table 1.Footnote 3 This dataset enables a quantitative assessment of French-speaking scholars’ representation, considering demographic presence and academic activity. The demographic benchmark reflects the expectation that academic visibility might, at least in part, mirror societal linguistic makeup; the academic benchmark allows us to consider francophones' representation where academic discourse is generated; and the productivity benchmark offers an understanding of francophones' contribution to the academic discourse, gauging whether visibility in syllabi aligns with active engagement in the field. The use of various benchmarks, based on intuitive albeit common expectations (see Huang et al., Reference Huang, Gates, Sinatra and Barabási2020; Kwiek and Roszka, Reference Kwiek and Roszka2021), offers a more nuanced portrait of francophone scholars’ visibility.
Table 1. Disparity in Representation of Francophone Scholarship in Syllabi Based on Different Assumptions
Results
In this section, we present the baseline data for various projections of francophone scholars’ work in Canadian politics syllabi, which we compare with the actual proportion of francophone authors in these syllabi (17.43%). We calculate the current proportion of francophone authors by dividing the total number of cited francophone authors by the total number of cited authors. This differs from Daoust et al.'s approach, which counts syllabi readings that include at least one francophone author, treating it as a binary variable. We detail the distribution of this variable across political science departments in Figure A1 of the Appendix. The localized concentration of francophones’ scholarly work in courses within a few universities underscores the persistence of the two solitudes in Canadian academia, where scholars predominantly teach knowledge produced by their own linguistic group. This is problematic if we accept Rocher's expectation that scholars interested in Canada cannot ignore the voices of one of the two main linguistic groups for our discipline to be comprehensive and inclusive (Reference Rocher2007: 838). Table 1 further illustrates the disparity in representation of francophone scholarship in syllabi under different assumptions. For instance, the first row in Table 1 indicates that if syllabi are expected to mirror the proportion of francophones in the Canadian population (21.4%), there is an underrepresentation of francophone scholarship in syllabi of 3.97 percentage points. A positive value signifies over-representation compared to the baseline, while a negative value indicates the opposite.
Based on different baseline projections (see Table 1), the gap in representation of francophone scholars in syllabi ranges from -3.97 to +0.54 percentage points. Our first projection compares the proportion of francophone citations in syllabi with the francophone share of Canada's population, 21.4 per cent according to the 2021 Census. This projection reveals the largest linguistic gap, a 3.97 percentage point discrepancy between the representation of francophone authors in syllabi and their demographic presence in Canada.
Our second projection is based on the percentage of francophone scholars in CPS departments. Figure 1 shows the composition of each department based on faculty members’ mother tongue (both for tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty). Unsurprisingly, most French-speaking universities have a majority of francophone faculty (80.5% in Quebec, 62.8% in the rest of Canada), while anglophones are predominant in English-speaking universities (86.1% in Quebec, 95.4% in the rest of Canada). Francophone professors constitute 16.84 per cent of the CPS community, a representation that slightly increases to 19.10 per cent among tenured faculty alone. This projection suggests a minor over-representation of francophones (+0.54) overall and a 1.67 percentage point under-representation among tenure-track faculty.
Figure 1. Composition of Political Science Departments by Mother Tongue in 2022.
Note: This figure presents the percentage of faculty members with French or English as a mother tongue within CPS departments (16.89% on average across all departments, with an aggregated average of 13.7% when giving an equal weight to each department). Faculty members with a mother tongue other than French or English are considered in the denominator but not represented in the figure. Data = Political Science Department Websites.
Our last projection builds on the productivity of scholars across linguistic groups, as evaluated by their number of publications. Figure 2, which presents the median number of publications for francophone and anglophone scholars, shows that at almost all career stages, francophone scholars have a higher median publication number than their anglophone counterparts. Overall, this would suggest an under-representation of francophone scholars between 2.11 percentage points (all faculty) and 2.81 percentage points (only tenure-track faculty) when based on productivity.
Figure 2. Political Scientists’ Median Number of Listed Publications (by Mother Tongue).
Note: This figure presents the median number of publications for francophone and anglophone faculty members across Canada, which is respectively 19 and 16 for adjuncts/instructors, 23 and 17 for assistant professors, 39 and 40 for associate professors, 123 and 97 for emeritus professors and 83.5 and 81 for full professors. Overall, the average number of listed publications within our sample is 79.3 publications for French-speaking scholars and 70 for English-speaking scholars. Publications include all items listed on Google Scholar, some of which are not peer-reviewed. Data = Google Scholar and Political Science Department Websites.
Discussion
Drawing from two original datasets based on 59 syllabi from 49 Canadian universities, this analysis quantitatively assesses the significance of francophones’ representation in CPS. Using demographic weight, departmental composition and productivity as baselines, most projections suggest the existence of a systematic bias in representation, up to four percentage points. However, we observe a slight over-representation of francophone scholars in syllabi when compared to the number of francophone scholars in departments (+0.54 percentage points) without regard for academic rank, which might be due to the under-representation of francophones in the discipline nationwide. Our analysis, while applying a different metric from Daoust et al. (Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022), uncovers a subtler but still significant trend of linguistic under-representation in Canadian political science syllabi. While Daoust et al. reported a stark absence of francophone scholars in core course materials, our study confirms and quantifies this gap while suggesting a significant, though less extreme, under-representation. Data from Google Scholars shows that citations of francophone scholars within departments account for only 13.24 per cent of all citations, significantly lower than their share of publications in the field. However, higher- and lower-quartile journals or presses were not distinguished, which could potentially account for this disparity. Another limitation pertains to the broad scope of our benchmark concerning representation across political science subfields, which could potentially over- or under-estimate francophone representation within the specific area of Canadian politics.
While less pronounced, these gaps evoke Rocher's (Reference Rocher2007) concerns from previous decades and raise broader questions on the future of the discipline. Yet it is important to acknowledge recent progress in CPS scholarship—such as Canadianists becoming theory “makers” and increasingly engaging with comparative politics scholars outside Canada (White et al., Reference White, Simeon, Vipond and Wallner2008; Turgeon et al., Reference Turgeon, Papillon, Wallner and White2014)—the limited exchange between francophone and anglophone scholars, coupled with the diminished visibility of francophone scholarship in knowledge dissemination, risks a misunderstanding of our primary subject of study. Indeed, how can one fully seize the complexity of Canadian federalism or Canada's “mega constitutional politics” if the perspectives of one of the core linguistic groups are excluded? Another concern relates to future research questions that will drive our students, many of whom will eventually contribute to the discipline. Although a lack of functional bilingualism within the English-speaking community might partly explain the phenomenon, this disparity invites a deeper examination of the comparative worth attributed to the contributions of francophone scholars relative to their anglophone counterparts. Additional analyses could explore how such disparities intersect with and potentially exacerbate other inequalities related to gender, race or class, considering that linguistic biases often align with other forms of injustice (Piller, Reference Piller2016).
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
Appendix
Figure A1. Percentage of Francophones in Syllabi across Political Science Departments.
Note: This figure presents the percentage of francophone scholars listed in readings from Canadian politics courses across Canadian political science departments. Data = Canadian Political Science Courses Syllabi.
Figure A2. Political Scientists’ Median Number of Citations (by Mother Tongue).
Note: This figure presents the median number of citations for francophones and anglophones faculty members across Canada, which is respectively 47 and 171 for adjuncts/instructors, 101 and 117 for assistant professors, 295 and 604 for associate professors, 1072.5 and 1832 for emeritus professors and 1353.0 and 1902.5 for professors. Overall, the average number of listed publications within our sample is 1833.9 citations for French-speaking scholars and 2590.6 for English-speaking scholars. Publications include all items listed on Google Scholar, some of which are not peer-reviewed. Data = Google Scholar and Political Science Department Websites.
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