Permanent Campaigning in Canada

Election campaigning never stops. That is the new reality of politics and government in Canada, where everyone from staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office to backbench MPs practise political marketing and communication as though each day were a battle to win the news cycle. Permanent Campaigning in Canada examines the growth and democratic implications of political parties’ relentless search for votes and popularity and what constant electioneering means for governance. With the emergence of fixed-date elections and digital media, each day is a battle to win mini-contests: the news cycle, public opinion polls, quarterly fundraising results, by-elections, and more. The contributors’ case studies reveal how political actors are using all available tools at their disposal to secure electoral advantage. This is the first study of a phenomenon – including the use of public resources for partisan gain – that has become embedded in Canadian politics and government.

Alex Marland is an associate professor of political science and an associate dean at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a leading expert on political marketing in Canada. He is the author of Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control and was the lead editor of Political Marketing in Canada, Political Communication in Canada: Meet the Press and Tweet the Rest, and “Canadian Election Analysis 2015: Communication, Strategy and Democracy.” Prior to entering academia, he worked in the public and private sectors in Ottawa and St. John’s. Thierry Giasson is a professor of political science and the director of the Groupe de recherche en communication politique (GRCP) at Université Laval. He is also a past president of the Société québécoise de science politique. He has published on political communication, political journalism, and digital politics in Canadian and comparative contexts and is coeditor, with Alex Marland, of the series Communication, Strategy, and Politics at UBC Press. Anna Lennox Esselment is an assistant professor and associate chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. She is also a director of the Canadian Study of Parliament Group and a board member of the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy. She has published about parties, elections, and partisanship in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Canadian Journal of Public Administration, and Publius: The Journal of Federalism.

Contributors: Amanda Clarke, David Coletto, Kenneth Cosgrove, Jonathan Craft, Anna Lennox Esselment, Tom Flanagan, Mary Francoli, Thierry Giasson, Phillipe Lagassé, Mireille Lalancette, Andrea Lawlor, Mario Levesque, J.P. Lewis, Alex Marland, Maria Mathews, David McGrane, Denver McNeney, Steve Patten, Tamara A. Small, Sofia Tourigny-Koné, André Turcotte, Simon Vodrey, and Paul Wilson