Through his writings, Walter Bagehot gave order and meaning to the institutions of parliamentary government. The English Constitution (1867) acknowledges the Crown as centrepiece but relegates it to the category of symbol. Institutions, Bagehot said, were “dignified” or “efficient” according to their constitutional function, and the Crown was the apotheosis of a dignified element. By contrast, the author argues that the Crown is an integral part of a practical form of government in Canada, and advances as proof three areas of Crown influence: representation, information and participation. The discussion concludes by noting the relevance of the Crown for the study of Canadian federalism.

Why are Quebeckers favourably disposed or opposed to sovereignty? This choice partly depends upon the prospective evaluation of the costs and benefits of sovereignty and federalism. What are the relative contributions of economic and linguistic expectations in this choice? Does the impact of these expectations vary according to the time horizon in which they are set? The authors approach these questions from the perspective of the economic theory of voting and with the help of original measures of the determinants of support for sovereignty. They compare expectations of what would occur to the economy and to the French language were Quebec to become a sovereign country with expectations of what would occur if Quebec remained a province of Canada. These measures are taken from a survey of university students. Our logistic regression analysis shows that the implicit calculation of costs and benefits plays a significant role in the choice between sovereignty and federalism, and that economic expectations influence the formation of opinion to a somewhat greater degree than do linguistic expectations. Moreover, medium-term expectations are more important than short-term economic expectations and more important than long-term expectations about the situation of the French language in Quebec.

This article examines two contrasting views of Quebec block voting in federal elections. One view has it that the Quebec electorate tends to behave in a monolithic fashion; the other, put by Cairns in 1968, claims that this phenomenon is “a contrivance of the electoral system, not an autonomous social fact.” The evidence shows that block voting, namely, the degree to which an electorate mobilizes behind the largest party, is much more pronounced in Quebec than it is in other provinces, and especially when compared to that in Ontario. Quebec is also more likely than Ontario to determine which party forms the government. The tendency of the electoral system to magnify seat allocations to the largest party, however, is only marginally greater in Quebec relative to Ontario. At the same time, the composition of the Quebec “block” vote has varied considerably over time; it has not always been a distinctively francophone phenomenon. The article further challenges the assumption that the single-member plurality system is inherently inferior to proportional representation as a means of securing the protection of minorities in ethnically diverse societies.

Although North American integration has been the topic of heated public debate, it has not yet received adequate theoretical attention from the field of international relations. This article reviews the movement to codify North American integration, and explores the implications for integration and international relations theory. The first section reviews the intellectual history of integration theory as it developed in the European context. The second considers the North American experience of codifying integration, 1982–1994. The third part returns to integration theory and international relations, offering some amendments and suggestions considering the North American experience. The article argues that the clearest understanding of regional integration in the 1990s can be achieved through an approach which stresses developments in the global political economy as catalysts for change, and looks to national and transnational institutions and social forces to explain variations in integration projects. Because other international relations theories such as neofunctionalism and interstate bargaining are unable to integrate these levels of analysis, they offer an incomplete view of present dynamics.

The Valour and the Horror is a series of three documentary films describing Canadian participation during the Second World War which were aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1992. The series aggressively challenged “official” war history, arguing that while ordinary soldiers served with dignity and bravery, the incompetence and immorality of senior British and Canadian commanders produced terrible blunders and losses and grotesque assaults against civilian populations in Germany. This article analyzes the controversy that surrounded the series, a controversy that mushroomed into a political struggle over who had the right to control “memory” and who had the right to produce and interpret “reality.” The struggle produced a Senate subcommittee investigation, placed the CBC under intense pressure and scrutiny and evoked strong reactions from veterans' groups and the journalistic and artistic communities. Three frameworks are used to assess the forces that contend against each other in media production: the hegemonic view (that the media celebrate and reinforce the dominant interests in society); the organizational or institutional perspective (that media organizations pursue their own interests even if these interests do not necessarily coincide with those of other dominant groups in society); and the journalist-centred framework (that journalists as professionals exercise considerable discretion over their own work). The article suggests that each of these perspectives can provide valuable insights, but that each by itself fails to provide a satisfactory explanation for the events. By utilizing multiple perspectives for the analysis, a wider range of questions is addressed.