Social Conservatives and the Boundary of Politics in Canada and the United States

SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES AND THE BOUNDARY OF POLITICS IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES by James Harold Farney A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto © Copyright by James Harold Farney (2009) SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES AND THE BOUNDARY OF POLITICS IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES James Harold Farney Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto 2009 Abstract This dissertation investigates social conservative activism in the American Republican Party and in four parties of the Canadian right: the Progressive Conservative Party, Reform Party, Canadian Alliance Party, and Conservative Party of Canada. While issues like gay and lesbian rights and abortion became politically contentious in both countries during the late 1960s, American social conservatives emerged earlier than their Canadian counterparts and enjoyed considerably more success. Understanding this contrast explains an important part of the difference between Canadian and American politics and explicates a key aspect of modern conservatism in North America. The argument developed here focuses on different norms about the boundary of politics held in right-wing parties in the two countries. Norms are embedded components of institutions that codify the “logic of appropriateness” for actors within a given institution (March and Olsen 1989, 160) and both construct and regulate the identities of political actors (Katzentstein 1996). The recognition of norms has been an important development in organizational theory, but one that has never been applied to modern office-seeking parties (Ware 1996, Berman 1998). ii Qualitative case studies establish that many Republicans understood both sexuality and appeals to religion as politically legitimate throughout the period under investigation. In Canada, alternatively, Progressive Conservatives saw such questions as being inappropriate grounds for political activity. This norm restricted social conservative mobilization in the party. It was only when the Reform Party upset both the institutions and ideology of Canadian conservatism that social conservatives began to gain prominence in Canadian politics. Since then, the success of Canadian social conservatives has been limited by Canada’s political culture and institutions but they are now, as their American counterparts have long been, consistently recognized by other Canadian conservatives as partners in the conservative coalition. iii Acknowledgements Donald Forbes has been a wonderfully encouraging mentor and model as my supervisor. Rob Vipond and Linda White deserve thanks for reading (far too many) drafts as committee members. David Laycock and David Rayside were wonderfully insightful external readers. The project would not have been possible without the financial support of the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science and the School of Graduate Studies travel funding, as well as the Royal Bank Public Policy Fellowship. The Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University provided both a congenial place to do much of the writing and funding for a final round of interviews. This project would have been impossible without the help of the many people who took the time to answer my questions and point me in the right direction during interviews. I have been very lucky to make a wonderful group of friends during my PhD. I am much richer for the camaraderie of Victor Gomez, Celine Mulhern, Reuven Scholzberg, Luc Turgeon, Jenn Wallner, and Steve White. At Queen’s Oded Haklai and Scott Matthews have been patient listeners while I’ve sought to balance teaching and writing. Craig Burrell, Jon Malloy, Michael Seibert, and Kevin Vaughan have all reminded me of the joys of the life of the mind at times when I’d forgotten it. The support and encouragement of my parents, Bill and Jane Farney, has been priceless throughout my education. Janet and Ross Farney have always been understanding of their older brother’s fascination with books while my grandfather, Harold Laycock, provided me with much support and an example. Most of all, I owe a debt of gratitude to my wife, Christina Attard. I would have never finished this work iv without the joy she brings into my life, although it might have been finished more quickly had I heeded her advice, on our first date, to narrow my topic. v CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. Three Approaches to the Study of Political Parties 7 The Sociological Approach The Competitive Approach The Institutional Approach Methodological Considerations 2. Traditionalist, Laissez-Faire, and Social Conservatives 31 Traditionalists Laissez-Faire Conservatives Social Conservatives 3. American Conservatism before Reagan 60 Conservatives in the Republican Party The Conservative Movement 4. Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Social Conservatism 90 The Conservative Movement from 1980 to 1992 Social Conservatives and the Republican Party, 1980-1988 Social Conservatives and the Republican Party 1988-1992 5. Social Conservatism and the Republican Party from 1992 to the Present 119 Social Conservative Social Movements during the 1990s Social Conservatives, the Republican Revolution, and the Clinton Administration Social Conservatives and George W. Bush vi 6. The Progressive Conservatives and the Expanding Boundary of Politics 144 The Emergence of Social Issues in 1968 Social Movement Activism and Charter Politics Mulroney, the Charter, and Morgentaler Same Sex Rights and Conservatives in the 1980s 7. The Reform Party of Canada and Social Conservatives 167 Differentiating Populism and Social Conservatism Social Conservatives and the Party’s Origins Social Movements and Same-Sex Rights The Reform Party and Same-Sex Rights in the House of Commons The Office-Seeking Transformation 8. Social Conservatives and the Unified Canadian Right 192 Social Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance Stephen Harper and the Return to Brokerage Politics The Courts and Social Movements Same-Sex Marriage in Parliament Conclusion 215 Works Cited 221 vii INTRODUCTION This dissertation’s starting point is the observation that conservatives generally and social conservatives in particular have been more successful in American than Canadian politics over the last forty years. This observation goes to the heart of the political differences between the two countries and calls into question two classic works that are usually offered as insightful examinations of the differences between Canadian and American conservatism: Gad Horowitz’s 1966 “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation” and George Grant’s 1965 Lament for a Nation. Both pieces argued that Canada was a more conservative country than the United States. Answering why our situation is different from the one that Grant and Horowitz described means dealing with two puzzles: how our definition of conservatism has changed over the intervening forty years and how the differences between Canadian and American politics influence the type of conservatism espoused by political parties in the two countries. The first question – how the meaning of ‘conservative’ has changed since the 1960’s – receives explicit attention in Chapter Two. It identifies a group of conservatives, usually called social conservatives, who have emerged since the 1960s. They are distinguished from two older types of conservative: traditionalist conservatives and laissez-faire conservatives. For different reasons, both traditionalists and laissez- faire conservatives are hesitant to treat issues like same-sex rights or abortion as political or to allow explicit religious doctrine much role in the public square. Social conservatives, alternatively, argue that social change creates vital political questions. To them, it is entirely appropriate to address these questions from a religious perspective. To say that social conservatives represent a new form of conservatism that has contributed a great deal to our image of the United States as the more conservative country is important. But this observation, in turn, naturally leads to the question: why have they been more successful in the United States than in Canada? This dissertation examines one aspect of the difference: the place that social conservatives have found in Canadian and American right-wing parties. Differences between the political culture and religion or political institutions of Canada and the United States are often used to explain such differences (Lipset 1990). Chapter One examines both of these claims and suggests that neither a cultural nor an institutional approach is completely satisfactory. Both political culture and institutions set important boundary conditions for politics, but a more nuanced account is needed to explain the different success of social conservatives in the two countries. This dissertation argues that such a nuanced account should pay attention to the norms held in right-wing parties about what topics were appropriate for political debate and partisan endorsement, in addition to the broader cultural and institutional situation. The inductive development of this claim is a contribution to the study of political parties, 2 for the existing literature on political parties emphasizes the influence of institutions and material incentives but downplays the role of ideas, beliefs, and norms (Ware 1996, Wolinetz 2002). Chapter One explains how that the usual tools of comparative party analysis do not completely explain the differences between Canada

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