Political Parties

A volume of the Canadian Democratic Audit, this book examines the history, structure, mechanisms, and performance of Canadian political parties, and assesses the degree to which they function as vehicles for grassroots political participation.

This book delves into the history, structure, mechanisms, and roles of Canada’s political parties.

William Cross is Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Chair in Canadian Studies and professor of political science at Mount Allison University.

Both as individual books, as well as the state goals of the Canadian Democratic Audit series, the analyses achieve what they set out to do. It is heartening to see that the state of politics is taken seriously, that there are difficult questions asked, systemic weaknesses are pointed out, and that these authors have the capacity to recommend what it is that might work better to develop a more inclusive and participatory democratic system. These books succeed in that they are moving into a territory that has a broad scope in challenging issues and institutions that set the stage for the major political categories of analysis ...

Anthony Sayers, University of Calgary:
He does an excellent job of using the main themes of this research to explore the democratic limitations of parties, presenting them in an accessible manner. Throughout the study, and comprehensively in the last chapter, he offers a range of provocative reforms aimed at both encouraging on-going discussion and improving democratic practices within parties as well as at elections.

Christopher Moore:
How does the Democratic Audit itself stand up to its own auditing criteria? The CDA promises to test Canadian democratic practices against standards of participation, responsiveness, and inclusiveness. Its books certainly welcome readership; they are compact, well designed, well organized , and easy to “use” – certainly some of the most accessible works of academic political science we’ve seen in years. Despite the range of topics, each author manages to return to a series of report-card-style assessments based on the prearranged audit standards ... William Cross and his colleagues in the Canadian Democratic Audit are on to something important. Canadians are concerned, and interested, too, about the state of how we govern ourselves. And if the CDA doesn’t answer all the questions, at least it helps raise most of them.