The term “reconciliation” has become ubiquitous in Canada, underpinning divergent commitments as much as leading to wide-ranging critiques. It has been used frequently in constitutional politics, in relation to both Canada’s relationship with Québec and Canada’s relationships with Indigenous peoples. Reconciliation’s discursive prevalence in Canada presents an intriguing phenomenon given that it means many different things, has varying uses outside of politics, and is widely contested when applied to political relations. To explore the ways these characteristics have shaped uses of reconciliation and the paths by which the term attained its contemporary omnipresence, this dissertation investigates when, how, and with what effects discourses of reconciliation emerged and developed in Canadian constitutional politics. The dissertation uses a genealogical approach to study the conceptual and contextual features of reconciliation discourses and the interplay between them, enabling assessment of different uses and of their operation in relation to each other and to the broad constellation of constitutional power dynamics in Canada. It draws on the insights of genealogical theorists, particularly William Connolly, Michel Foucault, Dalie Giroux, Quentin Skinner, and James Tully, to develop an approach that attends to the role of both actors and events as it explores the intersections of time, space, and power that shape the emergence and development of reconciliation discourses. Informed by Adrian Little’s work on contextualizing concepts and Norman Fairclough and Isabela Fairclough’s work on discourse analysis, the dissertation employs a series of distinctions put forward by Mark Walters, Bert van Roermund, Catherine Lu, and Sara Ahmed and Anna Carastathis to conceptualize different types of reconciliation and analyze a wide-ranging array of uses of the term covering three decades of constitutional politics, concluding with the House of Commons’s recognition of Québec as a nation and the provision to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2006. The analysis explores a mix of government documents, commission reports, court decisions, hearing transcripts, interviews, (auto)biographical accounts, news media, parliamentary debates, press releases, and other records to identify the points of emergence of different discourses and examine their development over time and across contexts as reconciliation came to be adopted in jurisprudence, government policy, and the creation of institutions. The dissertation advances a three-part set of propositions regarding the emergence and development of reconciliation discourses. When: Though there were occasional earlier uses, the term began to emerge in earnest in Canadian constitutional politics in the 1980s and early 1990s. Discourses of reconciliation relating to Québec largely faded after the late 1990s, though they have made periodic reappearances around key events such as the 2006 House of Commons motion, while those regarding relations with Indigenous peoples have continued to proliferate. How: Reconciliation discourses have been used, to differing degrees, in relations between Canada and Québec and between Canada and Indigenous peoples. Their emergence in both contexts was significantly, though not exclusively, shaped by the patriation of the constitution. In the period studied, the term was used both to promote state policy and existing constitutional structures and to challenge them or express doubt about their capacity to achieve reconciliation. Occasionally, the appropriateness of using the term in these constitutional contexts was called into question. Multiple meanings and types of application to politics, a lack of clarity and specificity, and the influence of power relations have marked the use of reconciliation discourses from the outset. These trends are visible in both cases. However, there is also variation between the cases, and uses of the term in relation to Québec did not become institutionalized as those pertaining to Canada and Indigenous peoples did. With what effects: All of these varying uses of reconciliation have the cumulative effect of risking conveying a misleading impression that parties using the term share a common commitment to an agreed-upon undertaking. Such an impression obscures how power relations shape the implications of differing discourses and the interactions between parties in which they are used. The genealogy presented in the dissertation counters this impression by taking stock of what kinds of political work is done by reconciliation discourses. Highlighting how they are marked by conceptual complexities and intertwined with relations of power, it reveals the tensions at the core of contemporary conversations about reconciliation in Canada.

In response to competing group claims and the challenge to achieve pre-set triple national goals - recognising and accommodating ethnic diversity, achieving national unity and political stability, successive Nigerian governments from the colonial era to the present, have at various periods negotiated, constitutionalised and/or decreed state building strategies. This thesis offers detailed discussion and evaluation of some of these competing group claims and strategies using principles derived from the theoretical arguments of Michal Walzer, Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka, and prescriptions based on the empirical arguments of Crawford Young, Eric Nordlinger, Donald Horowitz and Donald Rothchild. The thesis argues that some of the strategies adopted in response to the competing group claims were defensible in the very circumstances in which they were introduced, but were either not deep enough to offer an adequate political inclusion, or lacked the appropriate instruments that would have minimised recurrence of ethno-political conflicts and institutional instabilities. There were some strategies that either generated tension among groups, or were purely driven by strategic considerations for national unity, but were defensible. There were other strategies that were pragmatic at the very period they were adopted, but not defensible. The core theoretical finding of the thesis is that, the normative and empirical prescriptions validate the country’s various strategies for coping with diversity. However, application of some elements of the prescriptions in the Nigerian multicultural society has the potential to generate tensions leading to ethno-political conflicts and institutional instabilities. The important empirical finding of the thesis is regarding the role the inherent tensions between the triple national goals and the state building strategies play in the generation and recurrence of ethno-political conflict and institutional instabilities. The thesis argues that the underlying factors responsible for the prevalence of ethno-political conflict and institutional instabilities in the country include among others, the ascension of the military to power and its costly dominance of the political scene for about thirty five years, the immediate post-civil war period which coincided with the era of petroleum boom that created a deepening crisis of corruption, the perpetuation of large scale electoral and financial corruption, and manipulation of ethnic loyalties. Given the above underlying factors, this work observes that state building and Constitutional politics in Nigeria’s multi-ethnic society is a difficult task, especially taking into account the ethno-political conflicts and institutional instabilities associated with the Armed Forces over the years. On the basis of a detailed and interdisciplinary analysis, the thesis recommends constitutional and institutional safeguards for mitigating ethno-political conflicts and institutional instabilities in the course of future political development of Nigeria.

The Canada Round was a period of megaconstitutional politics where many of the perennial topics of Canadian politics were viewed through a constitutional lens. This research analyzes the Canada Round of negotiations for its potential to act as a project in historical justice to address the state’s mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. By viewing constitutional change as a means of engaging in political redress, this research offers a corrective to understanding the dynamics of the Canada Round and provides an expanded understanding of redress to compensate for its limited and non-transformative nature in settler-colonial contexts by introducing the idea of redress constitutionalism. Through an analysis of the primary documents from the Canada Round, this research demonstrates that national Indigenous organizations—the Assembly of First Nations, the Métis National Council, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and the Native Council of Canada—sought to employ constitutional change for its reparative potential to address long-standing injustices against Indigenous peoples in Canada caused or worsened by the constitution. Therefore, the failure to significantly renew the constitution was also a failure to significantly engage in redress, remedy their historical exclusion from decision making, and respond to the suppression of their self-determination. / Graduate

En aquesta tesi s'estudia el federalisme executiu canadenc. Entenem per aquest concepte el model de relacions intergovernamentals caracteritzat pel fet que les relacions entre els diferentes nivells de poder a l'interior d'una federació estan monopolitzades pels respectius executius, en detriment d'altres institucions polítiques - parlaments, partits polítics. La hipòtesi que sostinc és que, al Canadà, aquest model de relacions intergovernamentals s'ha vist influenciat per la centralitat que històricament ha tingut en la dinàmica política interna, el debat entorn la qüestió nacional. Aquest debat sorgeix arran de la voluntat política d'una part de la societat quebequesa, i en conseqüència dels governs quebequesos, d'autogovernar-se i d'evitar el risc de la minorització. Això no obstant, els successius governs federals tracten el Quebec com "una província més", igual que la resta de províncies. La negativa d'Ottawa a reconèixer el Quebec com a nació ha reforçat els partidaris de l'accessió a la sobirania. / In this thesis it is studied Canadian Executive Federalism. We define this concept as an intergovernmental relation's model characterized by the fact that relations between different levels of power within a federation are monopolized by executives, rather than by other political institutions -such as parliaments or political parties. The hypothesis defended is that, in Canada, this intergovernmental relation's model has been influenced by the centrality that the national question debate has play historically. This debate starts as part of Quebec's society will, and consequently, of Quebec executives will, of self-government as a measure to avoid minorisation risks. However, successive federal governments treat Quebec as a province like the rest. The Ottawa opposition to recognize Quebec as a nation has reinforced those who prone for accession to sovereignty.