Big Tent Politics

A masterful account of the Liberal Party’s long domination of Canadian politics.

How did Canada’s Liberal Party become one of the most successful parties in the democratic world? Will it be able to reinvent itself for the twenty-first century?

R. Kenneth Carty is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of British Columbia. One of the country’s foremost experts on Canadian party politics, he was honoured with the Mildred A. Schwartz Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Political Science Association in 2013. He is also a past president (2002) of the Canadian Political Science Association. Carty has served as a consultant to both national and provincial royal commissions on issues of electoral organization and was a member of the Federal Electoral Boundary Commission for British Columbia for the 2004 national redistribution. During 2003-04, he was the director of tesearch for the British Columbia Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform.

G.A. McBeath:

Carty … is a leading authority on Canada’s political parties. He traces the history of the party, paying attention to its cycles against important changes in Canada’s demography (e.g., when increased immigration changed regional and national dynamics) and when parties entered the system.

Stephen Clarkson, author of The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics:
Comprehensively researched, engagingly argued, and smoothly written, Ken Carty’s masterly mix of narrative and analysis provides a “big tent” kind of analysis worthy of its mammoth subject. Carty wears his learning lightly, presenting us with an authoritative, concise, and fascinating set of insights into what was one of the main driving forces of Canadian politics for more than a century.

John English, Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, Trinity College at the University of Toronto:
In Big Tent Politics Ken Carty looks at the how and why of the Liberal Party’s remarkable twentieth-century success, focusing on its masterful practice of brokerage politics. Taking note of today’s rapidly changing electoral terrain, Carty also raises serious doubts about whether the “big tent” that the Liberals so carefully erected can withstand the strong winds generated by ideology, regionalism, and a disengaged electorate.

Tom Axworthy, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau:
The Liberal Party of Canada was once so successful it was known as the government party. How things have changed. Now, for more than a decade, it has become the non-government party. Ken Carty’s succinct and insightful analysis delves into the secrets of the Liberal Party’s success while it ponders the reasons for its more recent decline.

Stéphane Dion, MP for Saint-Laurent–Cartierville and former leader of the Liberal Party 2006–08:
I thought I knew everything about the party I once had the honour of leading. But while reading this book, every page taught me something. To read about the history of the Liberal Party is to learn about the history of political life in Canada since Confederation. It is to also understand why, of all democratic countries, Canada is the one that has been most often led by a party from the centre. These are among the many insights in this thought-provoking book by one of Canada’s top political scholars.