According to prevailing conceptions of state subsidies’ effect on party
organization, political parties in Canada should show signs of disconnection from their
social bases, lack of responsiveness to the electorate, and declining competitiveness.
Recent changes to the regulation of political finance in Canada make the Canadian case a
crucial test for theories regarding the impact of state funding. As of 2004, Canadian
parties receive generous annual payments from the national treasury and are prohibited
from raising funds from corporations and unions. These changes to the funding of
political parties should create precisely the preconditions for the formation of cartel-type
political parties that are disassociated from their social bases of support and deeply
embedded in the state.
We find, in fact, that in the parties’ transitions to the new regime, there is little
evidence suggesting that Canadian parties are taking on the characteristics of Katz and
Mair’s (1995) cartel parties.
There are two significant factors that militate against
evolution in the direction of cartel parties. First, the single member plurality electoral
system, coupled with a Westminster-style Parliamentary system, preserves adversarial
relationships between parties and maintains electoral competitiveness, as elections remain
a ‘winner-takes-all’ proposition. Second, even though the public funding provided is
generous, the competitive relationship between the two largest parties creates significant
incentive for each to try to out-spend and out-campaign one another; as a result, the
marginal utility of each additional dollar raised through individual contributions is
heightened. This creates significant incentives for the parties seeking to form the
government to raise money from individual donors, thereby maintaining or even
strengthening their connections to their social base. The incentive has been strengthened
by the outcome of the 2004 federal election: the governing Liberal Party was reduced
from a majority to a precarious minority government. With another federal election early
in 2006 a virtual certainty, parties are focused on raising funds to try to achieve a decisive
victory in the upcoming election.
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Convention