Two Nations or Four Regions? A Test of Alternative Explanations of Value Differences Between Canada and the United States

ABSTRACT

Although Canada and the United States are among the most similar countries in the world, some scholars contend there are deep, enduring value differences separating Canadians from Americans. Lipset, for example, attributes this cultural “continental divide” principally to the origins of the two societies—respectively, the revolution in the United States and the resulting counter-revolution in the colonies to the north—and argues that value differences between Canadians and Americans have endured. Other scholars contend that Lipset’s focus on cross-national differences neglects important within-nation variation. Grabb and Curtis, for example, argue that cross-national differences are largely the product of wide divergence in the values of Francophone Québec and the American South, while English Canada and the northern United States display strong similarities. Using survey data drawn from university students in Grabb and Curtis’s four regions, our analysis tests these competing arguments.

KEYWORDS:

• Canadian-American
• continental divide
• Grabb and Curtis
• Lipset
• political values

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Erick Duchesne and Yannick Dufresne, both of Laval University, for their contributions to the wider research project of which this article is a part.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.