The literature on the Quiet Revolution tends to present this important moment in the history of contemporary Quebec as resulting from the actions of an enlightened class, the new middle class, who wished to make Quebec a modern society. The objective of this thesis is to criticise this elitist and essentialist interpretation of social change. It proposes a conceptual alternative that could take into consideration the profound mutation in state and society relations between 1944 and 1960, a mutation that facilitated the advent of the welfare state in Quebec. Based on a theory of civil society as a sphere of interaction between the state and the individual, the thesis demonstrates that the Quiet Revolution was the result of the development of a new ethos that favoured the values of social justice, participation and equality which contributed to undermining the foundations of the Duplessis regime.

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