Matthew Kerby

Worth the Wait: Determinants of Ministerial Appointment in Canada, 1935–2008

The subject of ministerial career paths is neglected in the Canadian political science canon. The existing literature, data and methods are for the most part descriptive and require updating. This article addresses this deficit by focusing on the topic of ministerial appointments in the Canadian federal parliament. An event history model is developed to estimate the hazard of ministerial appointment for all government party members of Parliament for the period 1935-2008. Existing theories and explanations for ministerial appointments and their relationship to constitutional conventions and political principles are systematically tested using a series of variables identified in the Canadian and comparative literature. The paper concludes with recommendations for further research and integration with complementary country-specific and comparative research programs in the field of ministerial career paths.

Constituency Influence on ‘Constituency Members’: The Adaptability of Roles to Electoral Realities in the Canadian Case

The systematic study of parliamentary questions, their strategic uses and their consequences remains largely unexplored by political scientists. Drawing on the wider theoretical literature on political roles and political representation, this research examines the relationship between parliamentary questions and political roles in Canada. Using data compiled from the 34th–37th Canadian federal parliaments, a negative binomial regression model of parliamentary question-asking demonstrates that Canadian Members of Parliament are both socialised into their roles and that they rationally adapt their behaviour to meet their political needs particularly with respect to electoral motivations. However, the empirical results emphasise rationally adapted behaviour more than role socialisation.

Media Management in a Small Polity: Political Elites’ Synchronized Calls to Regional Talk Radio and Attempted Manipulation of Public Opinion Polls

Little is known about how elected representatives attempt to manipulate public opinion and news media through their participation on regional open line radio or media straw polls. This article examines the systematic attempts by political actors to engage these media in the small polity of Newfoundland, Canada, where politics is characterized by the hyper-local nature of 590-VOCM radio programming. Our mixed-method study draws from talk radio call-in logs, online straw poll vote results, observation of the production of open line programming, and insights from local media personnel. We draw attention to two clandestine media management techniques. First, we analyze call-ins by elected legislators to talk radio that were timed to coincide with the known field dates of a public opinion polling company. Second, we report that handheld communication devices were used by senior members of the governing party to mobilize legislators and party personnel to repeatedly vote on straw polls on regional media Web sites. Our findings show that there is a substantial and statistically significant increase in the probability that legislators will call talk radio when pollsters are in the field. Furthermore, we document and explore the manner in which political elites mobilize to engage online media straw polls, and discover that straw poll questions which address political topics attract a disproportionately higher number of “votes” than nonpolitical questions. This micro-level study offers perspective for interpreting macro-level knowledge about political talk radio, horse race/game and strategic media frames, and about political elites’ mobilization and media management tactics.

The determinants of voluntary judicial resignation in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand

This article compares supreme and high court judicial turnover with respect to voluntary exits and retirements in three Westminster parliamentary democracies, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, for the period 1970–2012. The findings of an event history model indicate that judges who author large numbers of opinions in a given year are likely to stay longer, while those who dissent from their colleagues frequently are more likely to exit early. It was also found that judges are more likely to resign if the party that appointed them was expected to lose government.

Party Policy Positions in Newfoundland and Labrador: Expert Survey Results in the Buildup to the 2011 Provincial Election

In this article, we present the estimates of the party policy positions derived from two surveys: an expert survey and a voter survey, which were conducted in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador immediately prior to the October 2011 provincial election. The experts and the sample of voters were asked to situate the major political parties on eight policy dimensions and to rank the importance of each policy area. The results of the study present not only a map of party policy space and voter preference in Newfoundland and Labrador but also an indication of party policy awareness in the province.

Temporal Methods in Political Elite Studies

This chapter provides a history and overview of the empirical methods to study temporal aspects of political elites’ careers. Building on ideas developed by Jean Blondel and others within their seminal contributions to the field, it begins with a justification for studying the careers of political elites from a temporal perspective. The chapter then illustrates early descriptive methodological approaches before plotting the trajectory of event history analysis from its early adoption by political scientists in the late 1980s and early 1990s to its current position as the modal tool to analyze political career paths. Sequence analysis is then highlighted as a complementary method which may offset some limitations of event history approaches. It shifts the focus from explaining single or multiple transitions within a trajectory to a more holistic description of the complete career. Examples from elite studies are presented to show the possibilities and potential pitfalls of temporal methods.

Les carrières ministérielles au Québec : Existe-t-il des différences entre les femmes et les hommes?

Drawing on the literature on the process of cabinet appointments and on ministerial careers and the types of mobility that they involve, this article examines the hypothesis that the rate of ministerial promotion and demotion within a cabinet differs for women and men. To verify this hypothesis, we compiled a database that integrates the several hundred individuals who served as ministers in the Quebec Executive Council between 1976 and 2012. The quantitative analysis consists of descriptive statistics and negative binomial models; it takes into consideration a number of variables, including age, education, and past political mandates. Our results show that the ministerial careers of women and men follow a similar trajectory. Specifically, women and men begin their ministerial careers with minor portfolios, but as their ministerial experience accumulates, ministers of both sexes take on portfolios of increasing importance. In other words, the ministerial careers of women do not lag behind those of men. This observation negates the idea that the ministerial careers of women are less illustrious than those of their male counterparts.

The Canada–EU Turbot War of 1995 and the Cybernetic Model of Decision-Making

Abstract This paper examines how and why in March 1995 certain elements of the Canadian government decided to take unilateral forceful action against foreign fishing off the Grand Banks and go against a long tradition of cooperation and multilateralism. In particular, it will address to what extent existing models of decision-making (in particular rational and bureaucratic models) adequately explain the process that went on in Ottawa at this time. The findings are that even though the bureaucratic politics model of decision-making can be used in a parliamentary structure like Canada, it is insufficient to explain Canadian decision-making processes during the Turbot War, and thus must be supplemented by a more inclusive cybernetic approach.