Fighting Elections: An Example of Cross-Level Political Party Integration in Canada Paper for presentation at the Canadian Political Science Association University of British Columbia Friday, June 6, 2008 Anna Esselment Department of Political Science The University of Western Ontario Social Science Centre, Room 4154 London, Ontario N6A 5C2
[email protected] Draft: Comments Welcome (not for quotation or citation) 2 Abstract To this point, conventional wisdom on the structure of political parties in Canada has emphasized their confederal nature. In other words (and with the exception of the New Democratic Party), parties with identical partisan affiliation at the federal and provincial levels still operate in “two political worlds” and, as a result, have few integrating links. This may be true in terms of certain organizational aspects of the Liberal and Conservative parties. For instance, finances, headquarters, constitutions, constituency associations, and even decisions on policy are often kept strictly separate from their political “cousins” across the federal divide. However, this chasm is not maintained in other aspects of party structure and operations. From research gathered in four provinces, this paper will argue that a key integrating link between political party affiliates can be found in the way they fight elections, particularly in terms of shared activists (the party professionals, campaign managers, strategists, paid organizers, and party staff) and expertise (especially technological expertise). Left unstudied by most academics, the way in which political parties engage in electoral battle reveals a fair extent of cross-level collaboration, accommodation, and cooperation. In defiance of popular thought, then, political parties that share the same label, and the activists that work within them, have a common goal to help their “party” win government, whether that be at the federal or provincial level.