Constitutionalism, Citizenship, and Society in Canada

Constitutionalism, Citizenship, and Society in Canada PDF Author: Alan Cairns
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada

Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada PDF Author: Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada

Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada PDF Author: Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada

Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Citizenship, Diversity and Pluralism

Citizenship, Diversity and Pluralism PDF Author: Alan Cairns
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773518933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Citizenship has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. The vertical links individuals to the state by reinforcing the idea that it is "their" state – that they are full members of an ongoing association that is expected to survive the passing generations. Accordingly their relation to the state is not narrowly instrumental but is supported by a reservoir of loyalty and patriotism that gives legitimacy to the state. The horizontal relationship is the positive identification with fellow citizens as valued members of the same civic community. Here citizenship reinforces empathy and sustains solidarity through its official endorsement of who counts as "one of us." Citizenship, therefore, is a linking mechanism that in its most perfect expression binds the citizenry to the state and to each other. In Citizenship, Diversity, and Pluralism leading scholars assess the transformation of these two dimensions of citizenship in increasingly diverse and plural modern societies, both in Canada and internationally. Subjects addressed include the changing ethnic demography of states, social citizenship, multiculturalism, feminist perspectives on citizenship, aboriginal nationalism, identity politics, and the internationalisation of human rights. Alan C. Cairns is adjunct professor of political science at the University of Waterloo and author of Charter versus Federalism: The Dilemmas of Constitutional Reform. John C. Courtney is professor of political science at the University of Saskatchewan and author of Do Conventions Matter? Choosing National Party Leaders in Canada. Peter MacKinnon is president of the University of Saskatchewan and has served as president of both the Canadian Association of Law Teachers and the Council of Canadian Law Deans. Hans J. Michelmann is professor of political science and acting associate dean (Academic) of the College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan. David E. Smith is professor of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan.

Ethnicity and Citizenship

Ethnicity and Citizenship PDF Author: Jean Laponce
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135211337
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Examining past and present policies on immigration, current arguments regarding the evolution of the Canadian constitutional system and the continuing search for new definitions of citizenship; this book looks at the components of citizenship in Canada and the diversity of attitudes.

Charter versus Federalism

Charter versus Federalism PDF Author: Alan C. Cairns
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077356327X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Responding to the increasing diversity of the Canadian population -- and to an increasing sensitivity to historical diversities -- the 1982 Constitution Act amended the British North America Act and introduced the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, giving new powers to heterogeneous groups within the Canadian polity. These changes disturbed the equilibrium of an older, federalist Canada whose constitutional concerns were limited to the relative powers of federal and provincial governments and to French-English ethnic/linguistic questions. Cairns underlines the significance of international influences on the development of Canada's constitution, in particular the adoption of the Charter, and examines the constitution's role in shaping Canadians' civic identities and community conceptions. He argues that the constitution is a powerful mobilizing instrument that shapes the people subject to its authority. Canada is now populated by what Cairns calls "Charter Canadians," who see themselves as rights-bearers and tend to look to the federal government as the effective focus of political community. During the Meech Lake affair, the demands of Charter Canadians and politicized aboriginal peoples clashed with Quebec's constitutional aspirations as well as older élite accommodation politics. In addition to the Charter, the 1982 Constitution Act contained a new amending formula that contradicted the Charter's message that the rights of individuals precede those of governments. This formula gave a collective of federal and provincial governments a formal monopoly on constitutional change and encouraged the belief, refuted by the Meech Lake experience, that they could amend the constitution in terms of their own self-interest and announce the results as a fait accompli. The clash between the Charter and the amending formula is constitutionally destabilizing, Cairns argues, because these two parts of the same constitution are based on different understandings of the fundamental purpose of the constitution and for whose benefit it exists. The Meech Lake fiasco, having brought Canada to the brink of disaster, clearly indicates that Canada's future constitutional health depends not only on the reconciliation of Quebec with the rest of Canada but -- respectful of the Charter's message -- on a simultaneous constitutional rapprochement between citizens and governments in the process of constitutional reform.

Reconfigurations

Reconfigurations PDF Author: Alan Cairns
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Over the past thirty years, political scientist Alan Cairns has become recognized as perhaps the leading authority on the evolving Canadian constitution and its relationship to government actors (political leaders, the judiciary, the bureaucracy) and to ordinary citizens. In this third volumeof his essays, Cairns examines how Canada and Canadians have changed in recent years and why this change has been both traumatic and halting. As he writes in the Introduction, "In nearly every essay, the past is a brooding visitor, shaping the issues we confront, influencing the criteria andprocessess by which we respond, defining the communities that struggle for constitutional living space, or surviving as memories in the minds of the constitutional participants." And those participants have changed greatly in less than a generation from the eleven male political leaders of executivefederalism to include women, Aboriginals, the disabled, "third-force" ethnic Canadians, and yet others, such as gays and lesbians, who are knocking on the doors of the state for constitutional recognition. Divided into six parts - "The Past, Present, and Future of the Canadian State," "Where WeHave Come From," "The New Constitutional Culture," "Citizenship and the Constitution," "Constitutional Reform," and "The Constitutional Future" - the thirteen essays in Reconfigurations, while never veering too far away from the tremendous impact of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and of the tworecent failures at constitutional renewal (Meech Lake and Charlottetown), consider how constitutional change has affected and not affected the embedded state and its burgeoning bureaucracy, Aboriginal Canadians, third-force Canadians, and our political leaders. Also prominent in these extendeddiscussions is the inescapable fact of the English and French "founding peoples," and in the concluding chapter, written expecially for this volume, Cairns looks at Canada's constitutional future through the lens of the September, 1994, Quebec provincial election.

Insiders and Outsiders

Insiders and Outsiders PDF Author: Gerald Kernerman
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 9780774810692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Insiders and Outsiders celebrates the work of Alan Cairns, one of the most influential Canadian social scientists of the contemporary period. Few scholars have helped shape so many key debates in such a wide range of topics in Canadian politics, from the electoral system and federalism, to constitutional and Charter politics, to questions of Aboriginal citizenship. This volume contains engaging and critical analyses of Cairns' contributions by a diverse group of scholars--political scientists, legal scholars, historians, and policymakers, many of them leaders in their own fields. It includes assessments of his role as a public intellectual, his interpretation of Canada's electoral system, his views on federalism and on Canadian unity, his approach to Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations, and his writings on citizenship and diversity. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Canadian politics, history, and society, especially those examining issues such as the Charter of Rights, Aboriginal politics, federalism, multiculturalism, political institutions, and political change. It should also be of interest to a larger public that follows the Canadian political scene, and that shares Cairns' concerns with broad questions of citizenship, diversity, and national unity.

Constitutional Comparison

Constitutional Comparison PDF Author: François Venter
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004481400
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
In our globalized era it has become impossible to deal effectively with constitutional law and related subjects such as fundamental rights, administrative law and political science without knowledge of foreign systems. A wealth of literature is available on practically all constitutional systems and the intricacies of their application. This, however, presents the constitutionalist with a formidable problem: Which foreign systems should I explore in order to make relevant comparisons, and how should I go about it? This book addresses the core problems of comparability and appropriate comparative methodology in the realm of contemporary constitutionalism. The outcome is, however, not mere theorizing. Most of the text is devoted to an incisive application of the chosen comparative method to four geographically, historically, and culturally divergent, but thoroughly comparable, constitutional systems. In the course of the comparative exercise, contemporary constitutional dogma and constitutional mechanics are analyzed and explained, in many instances in their historical contexts, making the book itself a useful source of comparative and historical information.