This thesis is a review and analysis of the selection of William N. Vander Zalm as the third leader of the British Columbia Social Credit party on July 30, 1986. It examines in detail the events and circumstances which allowed the last candidate to enter the most contested leadership race in Canadian history to win the convention. This thesis incorporates an overview of the British Columbia Social Credit party, its traditions, leaders, and criteria for selecting its leaders. The sixty-nine day campaign is chronicled and the other eleven candidates and their campaigns are examined. In addition to reviewing the public and private record on these matters, several interviews were conducted. This thesis also benefits greatly from the analysis and articles on the Social Credit leadership contests produced by the University of British Columbia’s Political Science department. Personal observations are also incorporated into this paper, as the writer was a voting delegate. (I have been a Social Credit party member since 1981. At the leadership convention I supported Vander Zalm on all four ballots. While I readily acknowledge my political biases, I nevertheless have endeavoured to write a balanced academic account of this event). The Vander Zalm victory contradicts much of the conventional wisdom on the organization and conduct of successful leadership campaigns. The Vander Zalm campaign effort was poorly organized with no real strategic planning. The campaign finances were modest. The candidate had little caucus support and no endorsements from the party elites. Furthermore, the candidate did not enter the contest until it was half over and eleven other candidates were already in the race. How then did he win? In this thesis, I argue that the Vander Zalm victory was the result of four factors, all linked and all essential to his success. First, Vander Zalm himself offered a populist style and persona many delegates found attractive. Second, the party’s antiquated constitution provided only one delegate category, those selected directly by the membership. This not only prevented manipulation or control of delegate categories (as seen in other party contests), but ensured that several long-time party activists who were predisposed to the Vander Zalm candidacy would emerge as delegates. Third, Vander Zalm’s candidacy was boosted greatly by polls during the campaign showing him to be the party’s best hope to lead them to victory in the upcoming provincial election. And finally, many delegates saw a vote for Vander Zalm as a means to repudiate the modernization and isolation of the party and government seen during the last years of outgoing Premier W.R. Bennett, and return the party to its populist origins.

The traditional objectives of leadership conventions have been two-fold; First, the choice of a new party leader; second, the reaffirmation and renewal of party activists as well as unification of them behind the newly chosen leader. This thesis analyzes the Social Credit party leadership selection process with particular focus on the 1991 leadership convention. The study draws upon data and written material with respect to the 1986 leadership convention, but primarily information gathered from an extensive survey of behavior and attitudes of the nearly 1900 delegates to the 1991 leadership convention as well as newspapers and personal observation and interviews with attendees. It explores how the Social Credit party tried but failed to achieve both of the traditional objectives with their 1991 leadership convention. They chose a new party leader. However, entering the 1991 convention, the party was divided by numerous rifts which had developed during the 1986 leadership convention and since that event. Rather than heal the rifts, the 1991 leadership convention exacerbated them. Thus, as the 1991 leadership convention closed the party was more divided than when the year's leadership politics had begun.

The traditional objectives of leadership conventions have been two-fold; First, the choice of a new party leader; second, the reaffirmation and renewal of party activists as well as unification of them behind the newly chosen leader. This thesis analyzes the Social Credit party leadership selection process with particular focus on the 1991 leadership convention. The study draws upon data and written material with respect to the 1986 leadership convention, but primarily information gathered from an extensive survey of behavior and attitudes of the nearly 1900 delegates to the 1991 leadership convention as well as newspapers and personal observation and interviews with attendees. It explores how the Social Credit party tried but failed to achieve both of the traditional objectives with their 1991 leadership convention. They chose a new party leader. However, entering the 1991 convention, the party was divided by numerous rifts which had developed during the 1986 leadership convention and since that event. Rather than heal the rifts, the 1991 leadership convention exacerbated them. Thus, as the 1991 leadership convention closed the party was more divided than when the year's leadership politics had begun. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis is to posit an explanation for the rather spectacular reversal of Social Credit fortunes in British Columbia during the 1972-75 period and the concomitant creation of the province's present two-party system. A detailed examination of the political events of the period was undertaken in an attempt to determine what had taken place and in what order. The research involved analysis of electoral statistics and press clippings, personal interviews and the traditional review of available academic literature. The thesis rejected a monocausal explanation of Social Credit's 1975 electoral victory. Research indicates that Socred leader Bill Bennett was able to capitalize on "the widespread -and largely self-created - disenchantment with the NDP government and position his party to be seen by the public as the only credible alternative. Contrary to popular perception, the post-1972 version of Social Credit was not a "coalition" in the political sense. Rather, Liberal and Conservative elites recognized Bennett's success in projecting Social Credit as the only realistic alternative to the NDP and joined him to protect their legislative seats and further their respective political careers. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is a review and analysis of the selection of William N. Vander Zalm as the third leader of the British Columbia Social Credit party on July 30, 1986. It examines in detail the events and circumstances which allowed the last candidate to enter the most contested leadership race in Canadian history to win the convention. This thesis incorporates an overview of the British Columbia Social Credit party, its traditions, leaders, and criteria for selecting its leaders. The sixty-nine day campaign is chronicled and the other eleven candidates and their campaigns are examined. In addition to reviewing the public and private record on these matters, several interviews were conducted. This thesis also benefits greatly from the analysis and articles on the Social Credit leadership contests produced by the University of British Columbia’s Political Science department. Personal observations are also incorporated into this paper, as the writer was a voting delegate. (I have been a Social Credit party member since 1981. At the leadership convention I supported Vander Zalm on all four ballots. While I readily acknowledge my political biases, I nevertheless have endeavoured to write a balanced academic account of this event). The Vander Zalm victory contradicts much of the conventional wisdom on the organization and conduct of successful leadership campaigns. The Vander Zalm campaign effort was poorly organized with no real strategic planning. The campaign finances were modest. The candidate had little caucus support and no endorsements from the party elites. Furthermore, the candidate did not enter the contest until it was half over and eleven other candidates were already in the race. How then did he win? In this thesis, I argue that the Vander Zalm victory was the result of four factors, all linked and all essential to his success. First, Vander Zalm himself offered a populist style and persona many delegates found attractive. Second, the party’s antiquated constitution provided only one delegate category, those selected directly by the membership. This not only prevented manipulation or control of delegate categories (as seen in other party contests), but ensured that several long-time party activists who were predisposed to the Vander Zalm candidacy would emerge as delegates. Third, Vander Zalm’s candidacy was boosted greatly by polls during the campaign showing him to be the party’s best hope to lead them to victory in the upcoming provincial election. And finally, many delegates saw a vote for Vander Zalm as a means to repudiate the modernization and isolation of the party and government seen during the last years of outgoing Premier W.R. Bennett, and return the party to its populist origins. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

China has developed a technological Social Credit System that monitors, collects, and analyses behavioural data from citizens and enterprises. The system categorises them trustworthy or untrustworthy according to their behaviour. This paper aims to investigate the technological elements of China’s Social Credit System and analyse its social functions. In doing so, I will address the human rights implications following from the system. The thesis uses a content analysis method and draws on three theoretical studies, including, dataveillance, social sorting and neoliberalism and subjectivity. The study shows that China intends to continue investing in immoral technological elements; might succeed to govern citizens in self-governing; and prioritises the system in front of scarce human rights regulations. The conclusion holds that China intends to continue developing and strengthening the Social Credit System to enhance the behaviour of their society, regardless of some human rights implications, to reach their desired outcome.

The international governance discourse has seen radical changes in both trends and understandings in recent years, from the global dominance of liberal democracy after the Cold War, to the current movement towards authoritarianism. The modern autocracy has progressed its reach by the use of new applications in technology, which has resulted in a digital authoritarianism, also known as E-governance. In China, a system known as the “Social Credit System” represents these changes in modern governance. It aims to improve civic governance by incorporating the social contract into a digital platform. The system has been described as both a technological salvation and Orwellian Panopticon, with approximately 900 million individual records whilst assigning each user with a social credit score depending on how well they perform on different areas, such as education, prosocial behavior, financial services and much more. “Trustworthy” users are given opportunities in life such as improved; welfare, housing, social status, employment, and mobility in society. Meanwhile, “trust breakers” are placed on a blacklist and face a variety of sanctions and restrictions.   This qualitative case study analyzes the overall functioning of the system in terms of social control, in order to open up the (currently) rather dualistic debate on the system in current academic literature since the system is usually presented rather simplistically as either a threat or a benefit. The thesis, furthermore, analyses the domestic governance implications of the Social Credit System and the changes it suggests to how social control might be operationalized by other societies in the future. Lastly, the study will investigate the effect of social labelling in the “Blacklist” component and discuss the consequences for minority groups, polarization, governance advances, legal improvements, and rule of law.

No description available.

For all but thirteen years of the decades from 1952 to 2017, British Columbia was electorally dominated by the Social Credit Party and its ideological successor, the BC Liberal Party. These organizations represented the interests of business in opposition to the social democratic NDP, which has drawn a core support base from organized labour and the public sector middle class. This thesis frames the Social Credit-BC Liberal political formation as a ruling class bloc that maintained hegemony by switching between distinct rhetorical modes as the political situation required or allowed, with economic austerity, framed as objective necessity, on one hand, and populism, employing overt moralism and down-to-earth posturing, on the other. I posit that both modes operated to mask the class conflict at the heart of the neoliberal project of free markets, public sector reduction, and social atomization that has attained the status of political and economic “common sense” since its policies began to be widely adopted around the world in the late 1970s. After providing a background for the rise of Social Credit in British Columbia under W.A.C. Bennett (premier from 1952-1972), this thesis tracks the continuities and changes of the province’s hegemonic bloc, using welfare policies and poverty discourses as a focus. I consider the party’s transition from a populist one that appealed to the province’s evangelical Christian population to a modernized, neoliberal party under Bill Bennett’s leadership (1975-1986). Exploring the rationales surrounding the cuts to welfare funding enacted under the Social Credit governments of Bill Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm and the BC Liberal government of Gordon Campbell (2001-2011), I analyze how neoliberal and populist styles were employed, what the relationship between the two was, and the extent to which moralism was part of both styles/discourses regarding poverty. I also look at the extent to which the collective solidarity of anti-poverty activists and progressive religious groups was able to push back against neoliberal and populist policies, resisting the individualism that neoliberalism attempts to enforce. In these ways, this thesis seeks to contribute to making neoliberalism a topic of critical political analysis and deliberation at a time when its policies are often framed as non-ideological. / Graduate

This thesis examines the impact of Social Credit in North America during the Great Depression as a social philosophy and approach to government. By placing Social Credit in the context of interwar social movements for monetary reform, the events in Alberta from 1932 to 1938 are examined from the historical geographic iteration of what I call the Keynesian frontier of monetary macro-economic thought. This thesis shifts attention on this episode of Canadian history towards the lens of monetary neutrality. I argue that the Keynesian frontier was the intellectual environment for a worldwide English- speaking progressive underground which sought to find in macro-economic theory a vision of utopian society where money had no effect on material choices and interpersonal relations. During the 1930s, movements such as Social Credit transformed this underground into a collective effort to integrate the institutional channels of circulation with the mechanics of the modern monetary and fiscal state.