Absent Mandate ’88? Parties and Voters in Canada

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Abstract
Canadian party politics is brokerage politics, but, contrary to what is sometimes suggested, brokerage parties can differ on important questions of public policy, as the Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democrats showed in 1988. Whether or not such differences exist, it will normally be very difficult to justify a clear electoral mandate using public opinion data, as the 1988 election also illustrated. Nonetheless our constitution requires that mandates sometimes be conferred, and the main evidence for one must be a parliamentary majority.

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