Relatively few inquiries have been made into the section-ally-derived characteristics of Canadian political parties. The British Columbia Progressive Conservative Party had been exhibiting signs of stress between factions interested in attaining national power and those interested in provincial government objectives. The inquiry, which relied chiefly upon personal interviews and accounts in periodicals, examined the beginnings of partisanship in B.C. provincial politics. Party groups were organized along provincial lines and, when working toward electing federal representatives, they did so wholly under the provincial leader's control. Until the second world war the national party was a confederation of provincial parties loosely linked across the top. As an important force in B.C. the Conservatives died during the early thirties. When national leaders attempted reconstruction, they found provincial Conservatives in a coalition government dominated by the Liberal Party. Even after the second world war ended, the provincial leader refused to break with the Liberals and clung to sole control of a moribund provincial association. Attempts to revivify the association failed and personality clashes between the provincial leader and the national leader's personal representative brought into the open a bitter quarrel between the provincial and federal wings. A new federal party structure institutionalized the division of interests and labour between federal and provincial spheres. Acceptance of the changed structure came with the provincial group's realization of the extent of the damage done by the quarrel. Two groups promote Conservative interests in B.C., the Federal Council and the B.C. Progressive Conservative Association. The Council is the national association's chief agent in B.C. for federal matters although the association is also recognized. The latter group, which is left free to pursue provincial objectives, nominally claims but does not exercise authority in federal work. The leader of each group is not a member of the other group. The provincial leader enjoys much independence, accepts the division and seeks to heal', the rupture. Important power was not vested in the national leader's personal representatives although they performed important services. A survey indicates more co-operation existing at the grass roots level of federal and provincial wings than the leadership quarrels might suggest. Public policy issues have not divided party members, largely because ideology is not too important in the party and because there have been few periods when the party held office simultaneously at Ottawa and Victoria. National Conservative election victories eased financial difficulties for both groups and promoted reconciliation. Federalism in government and the diversity of Canada's major regions decided the organizational character of the Conservative party until about the second world war. Extra-parliamentary political associations were slow to develop. The growth of important inter-sectional interests and of feelings of nationhood was accelerated by urbanization, economic depression, war, technological advances and sociological evolution. The political party that used a Confederation framework was becoming obsolete. New forms of organization were needed that recognized the sociological changes and were equipped to handle techniques of influencing voters in the mass. Coalition government made the changes even more necessary in British Columbia and, perhaps, facilitated their realization in some ways. The B.C. Conservative organization appears to be evolving toward a new type of structure that reflects the crumbling of strong sectional feeling. Many problems remain to be examined, especially those involved in the inter-relationships of the various types of elected persons within the federally-organized political party. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Canadian political ideas are commonly accessed through traditional political culture or brokerage politics frames. This literature, while explaining certain political phenomenon in a robust way, fails to adequately appreciate the nuance in contemporary Canadian political ideas. A particularly fertile ground for an exploration of these ideas is in the study of contemporary Canadian conservatism. Through an examination of conservative scholars, pundits and political actors, four distinct strains of conservatism are identified and examined for axioms, core policy recommendations and affective appeals employed. Conservatism is demonstrated to be a multilayered and complex contemporary ideology displaying a remarkable diversity of ideas and understandings of the world. Despite these broad differences in core ideas and policy prescriptions and a number of key sites of disagreement, contemporary conservative ideologies remain bound by a core set of ideas and a common vernacular.

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About one-fourth of Americans claim a conservative Protestant (CP) religious affiliation, making conservative Protestantism the largest religious tradition in the United States. CPs lag behind other religious groups in average educational attainment. Despite notable government efforts to ensure that no young American is “left behind,” relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the CP educational gap. In this dissertation, I begin by using 30 years of data from the GSS to describe the CP gap, especially noting that the CP gap is largely driven by relatively lower rates of college attendance among CPs. After socio-demographic factors are taken into account, the CP gap in college attendance is larger than the more widely studied black-white gap in college attendance. Thus, the remainder of this dissertation focuses exclusively on the CP gap in college attendance. The most commonly offered explanation for the CP educational gap is that CPs resist schooling because of anti-educational elements in CP culture. I directly test several hypotheses related to the resistance theory, in addition to examining alternative hypotheses related to resource deficiencies, educational ambivalence, and demographic factors. Specifically, I analyze data from multiple waves of the Add Health study along with data from the companion AHAA study. In chapter 5, I find that White CPs are less likely to want to attend college than their non-CP peers. In chapter 6, I discover that CPs (regardless of race and gender) are less likely than non-CP peers to complete upper-level courses , but no more likely to post lower GPAs. Finally, in chapter 7, I directly investigate college matriculation and find that CPs are less likely than their non-CP peers to attend college, largely because of resource deficiencies but, to a lesser degree because of their lower aspirations and inadequate preparation. Ultimately, I find little evidence that CPs are directly resisting college attendance. Instead, they appear to be disadvantaged at fairly young ages due to relative resource deficiencies compared with non-CP peers. In light of these findings, future investigations would best be directed at understanding educationally related interactions between CPs and their parents. / text

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In the postwar era, there has been a change in the nature of the British Conservative Party caused by the adoption of classical liberal ideas antithetical to its principles. This trend rapidly accelerated during the leadership of the Party by Margaret Thatcher who appeared oblivious to the fundamental incompatibility of liberalism and conservatism. She attempted to weld them together in her economic and social policies creating strong internal tensions within what was dubbed "Thatcherism". This clash became more pronounced as her reign as British Prime Minister continued and was part of the reason for her eventual downfall at the hands of her own party. To illustrate the conversion of the Conservative Party to a more liberal standpoint we will consider two modern day political thinkers and the popularity of their positions. This approach is taken because their philosphies parallel the thinking of the postwar Conservative Party before Thatcher and under Thatcher's leadership. Michael Oakeshott, who fits into the conservative tradition and Friedrich Hayek, who embodies liberalism. Oakeshott's philosophy is in sharp contrast at important points to the ideas of Hayek, a self-confessed and proud liberal, whose ideas nevertheless found favour within the Conservative Party while many integral parts of conservatism, of which Oakeshott is a representative, were pushed aside. The stridency and harshness with which Thatcher preached the doctrine of economic liberalism and ideology and also tried to retain certain conservative ideals such as, authority, nationalism and militarism constituted a serious and damaging tension within her programme as well as demonstrating the depth of the change that had occurred in the Conservative Party. This thesis seeks to point out these changes and illustrate the adverse effects caused by attempting to turn the Conservative Party into a promoter of classical liberal ideology and thereby partially explain the increasing shakiness of Thatcherism in the 1980's. Even though its leader never lost faith in its convictions or her determination to translate them into concrete policies . / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate