Cross-border influences or parallel developments? A process-tracing approach to the development of social conservatism in Canada and the US

ABSTRACT

Social conservatism emerged in the 1960s in both Canada and the US as a variety of conservatism that emphasized opposition to feminism, liberalized abortion access, and the expansion of gay rights as critical political issues. Adopting Freeden’s framework for ideology analysis, the article examines how social conservatism differed from other varieties of conservatism when it emerged and how it evolved within religious institutions, social movements and political parties in the two countries. It then illustrates that adding a Multiple Streams Analysis approach and process tracing methodology (developed by scholars of public policy) allows for an improved engagement with two ‘how’ questions important to understanding social conservatism particularly and ideology more generally: how to trace the evolution of an ideology without a clear core of concepts or texts? and, how has Canadian social conservatism been influenced by its American counterpart? Offering short overviews of developments in the two countries, it deploys this framework to argue that American social conservatism directly influenced Canadian social movements and religious communities but not political parties. American social conservatism can, though, be shown to have an important indirect influence on Canadian politicians.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

2. For useful examples of such ‘textbook’ definitions see W. Christian and C. Campbell, Party Politics and Ideology in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1996); R. Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (New York: Regnery, 1953); and A. Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

3. For recent reviews of multiple streams analysis see P. Cairney and M. Jones, ‘Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach: What is the Empirical Impact of this Universal Theory?’, Policy Studies Journal, 44:1 (2016), pp. 37–58 and A. Kay and P. Baker, ‘What Can Causal Process Tracing Offer to Policy Studies? A Review of the Literature’, Policy Studies Journal, 43:1 (2015), pp. 1–21.

4. For overviews of process-tracing methodology see D. Beach and R. Pederson, Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); J. Checkel, ‘Tracing Causal Mechanisms’, International Studies Review, 8:2, pp. 362–370; B. Peters, Strategies for Comparative Research in Political Science (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer (Eds), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

5. A characteristic, of course, that it shares with conservatism generally. See Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 317.

6. The focus is more precisely on patterns of influence between English Canada and the US. Although Quebec had a link between a conservative Roman Catholic church establishment and conservative governing parties stronger than anywhere other than Ireland before the 1960s, the ‘Quiet Revolution’ of that decade swept this connection between religion and the state away. By the 1980s, social conservatism particularly and religion generally had almost entirely disappeared from the public space – a disappearance that occurred without seemingly much impact on the Anglophone version of social conservatism in Canada. See M. Noll, ‘What Happened to Christian Canada’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture’, 75:2 (2006), pp. 245–273.

7. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 384.

8. J. Farney, Social Conservatives and Party Politics in Canada and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012) and J. Farney and D. Rayside, ‘Introduction: The Meaning of Conservatism’, in J. Farney and D. Rayside (Eds) Conservatism in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), pp. 3–21.

9. In Canada, this can fairly be described as a process of secularization – a movement away from religious belief and religious practice as younger cohorts enter the population that hollows up previously establishment religious communities. See Noll, op cit., Ref. 6. In the US, secularization does not describe the situation as levels of religious belief have remained very high and rates of practice declined only slightly. What there has been is a qualitative change in the style of that practice that creates political pressures for something akin to a secularized public square, even if Americans continue to hold religious beliefs at very high rates. See R. Putnam and D. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012).

10. This article focuses on North America, but for an overview of analogous British developments see M. Jarvis, Conservative Governments: Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957–64 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

11. The literature on this movement is very large, but for a useful recent overview of this change see D. Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

12. G. Horowitz, ‘Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation’, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 32:2 (1964), pp. 143–171.

13. Born into a prominent Ontario family, George Grant (1918–1988) was educated at Queen’s University in Ontario and Oxford and taught philosophy and religion at a number of Canadian universities. Grant was a prominent and prolific public intellectual. See H. Forbes, George Grant: An Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007) for an overview of his thought. G. Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995) encapsulates his traditionalist and anti-American Canadian nationalism. G. Grant, English Speaking Justice (Toronto: Anansi, 1974) is a strong critique of Rawlsian liberalism that portrays abortion as the natural implication of contemporary liberalism.

14. Russell Kirk (1918–1994) was an American author and professor. His most famous book is Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (New York: Regnery, 2001). G. Nash’s classic The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1996) places Kirk in context of the post-war development of American conservatism.

15. Robert Stanfield was premier of Nova Scotia (1956–1967) and leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives (1967–1976). Usually seen as one of the last prominent Canadian politicians heavily influenced by British traditionalism, his understanding of conservatism was articulated in R. Stanfield, ‘Conservative Principles and Philosophy,’ in P. Fox and G. White (Eds) Politics: Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1987) pp. 376–381.

16. Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham (1907–2001) had a very long career as a British politician and writer, one of the last major proponents of traditional conservatism. See his The Case for Conservatism (London: Penguin, 1945).

17. See G. Grant, English Speaking Justice, op. cit., Ref. 13.

18. Freeden, op cit., Ref. 1, p. 48.

19. Freeden, ibid., pp. 33–37.

20. S. Berman, The Social Democratic Moment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 21.

21. For the comparative politics literature on ideas see classic works by S. Berman, ibid.; P. Hall and R. Taylor, ‘Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms’, Political Studies 44, (1996), pp. 836–857; B. Peters, Institutional Theory in Political Science (London and New York: Pinter, 1999); and M. Blythe, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See also the reviews contained in relevant chapters of R. Rhodes, S. Binder, and B. Rockman (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and O. Florets, T. Falleti, and A. Sheingate, The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

22. For recent reviews of this very large literature see P. Cairney and M. D. Jones, ‘Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach: What is the Empirical Impact of this Universal Theory,’ Policy Studies Journal, 44:1, (2016), pp. 37–58; N. Zahariadis ‘Ambiguity and Multiple Streams’, in P. Sabatier and C. Weible (Ed), Theories of the Policy Process, 3rd ed., (Boulder: Westview, 2014), and M. Jones et al. ‘A River Runs Through It: A Multiple Streams Meta-Review,’ Policy Studies Journal, 44(1) (2016), pp. 13–36.

23. J. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).

24. Kingdon, ibid., p. 159.

25. Beach and Pederson, op cit., Ref. 4, p. 159.

26. Beach and Pederson, ibid., p. 31.

27. G. Nash, op cit., Ref. 14, is the standard history of the conservative intellectual movement in the United States. M. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995) a very useful overview of events inside the Republican Party. R. Putnam and D. Campbell, op cit., Ref. 9, is an excellent overview of changes in American religion from both a sociological and institutional perspective that pays particular attention to contention over social issues. For the contrast with Canada, see Farney, Social Conservatives and Party Politics, op. cit., Ref. 8, and S. Reimer, Evangelicals and the Continental Divide: The Conservative Protestant Subculture in Canada and the United States, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2003).

28. W. Buckley, ‘National Review: Statement of Intentions’, in G. Schneider (Ed), Conservatism in America since 1930: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 195–201. For a fuller examination of fusionist principles see F. Meyer (Ed), What is Conservatism? (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964). For their articulation by a politician see B. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Sheperdsville: Victor, 1960).

29. For the history of the Republican Party in the electorate, see E. Black and M. Black, The Rise of the Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

30. For a history of the pro-life movement see R. Brown, For a Christian America: A History of the Religious Right, (Amherst: Prometheus, 2002) and R. Tatalovich, The Politics of Abortion in the United States and Canada: A Comparative Study (Armank: ME Sharpe, 1997).

31. D. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

32. On Falwell’s Moral Majority and other first generation religious right organizations see C. Wilcox, God’s Warrior’s: The Christian Right in Contemporary America, (Boulder: Westview, 1996).

33. Richard Viguerie (1933-) is an American political operative and one of the pioneers of direct mail fundraising. He played a particularly important role in forming the ‘New Right’ of the late 1970s and early 1980s. See his The New Right, We’re Ready to Lead (Mannassas: Viguerie Co., 1981).

34. See Putnam and Campbell American Grace, op cit., Ref. 9.

35. Conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants were sufficiently concerned with these changes that they emerged from the self-imposed withdrawal they had entered after the Scopes evolution trial of 1925 to form the core of the religious right.

36. Neuhaus, who was born in Canada but spent almost all his adult life in the United States, is perhaps the only example of noticeable ‘Canadian’ influence on American social conservatism. See R. Boyagoda, Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square (New York: Image, 2015).

37. See Pew Research Forum, ‘Canada’s Changing Religious Landscape,’ accessed at http://www.pewforum.org/2013/06/27/canadas-changing-religious-landscape/ October 27 2016.

38. S. Reimer, Evangelicals and the Continental Divide: The Conservative Protestant Subculture in Canada and the United States (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).

39. See D. Rayside and C. Wilcox, ‘The Difference that a Border Makes: The Political Intersection of Sexuality and Religion in Canada and the United States’, in Rayside and Wilcox, (Eds) Faith, Politics, and Sexual Diversity in Canada and the United States (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), pp. 3–29, and T. Fetner and C. Sanders, ‘The Pro-Family Movement in Canada and the United States: Institutional Histories and Barriers to Diffusion’, pp. 87–101 in the same volume.

40. M. Cuneo, Catholics Against the Church: Anti-Abortion Protest in Toronto, 1969–1985 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) and Farney, Social Conservatives and Party Politics, op. cit., Ref. 8.

41. On R.E.A.L. Women see B. Foster, ‘New Right, Old Canada: An Analysis of the Political Thought and Activities of Selected Contemporary Right-Wing Organizations’ PhD. Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2000.

42. For an evaluation of this discursive shift, see P. Saurette and K. Gordon, The Changing Voice of the Anti-Abortion Movement: The Rise of ‘Pro-Woman’ Rhetoric in Canada and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016).

43. See J. Malloy, ‘The Relationship between the Conservative Party of Canada and Evangelicals and Social Conservatives’, in Farney and Rayside, op cit., Ref. 8.

44. See Farney, Social Conservatives and Party Politics, op. cit., Ref. 8, chapter 5.

45. Two useful biographies of Harper are P. Wells, The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006- (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2013) and J. Ibbitson, Stephen Harper (Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 2015). For an attempt to assess the role of religion in Harper’s life see L. MacKey, The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper (Toronto: ECW Press, 2005).

46. On Reform Party ideology, see D. Laycock, The New Right and Democracy in Canada: Understanding Reform and the Canadian Alliance (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2001); T. Harrison, Of Passionate Intensity: Right Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995); P. Manning, Thinking Big (Toronto: MandS, 2002). For a PC perspective on the implications for conservative ideology, see H. Segal, In Defense of Civility: Reflections of a Recovering Politician (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000). For a history of the reunification between the two parties, see B. Plamondon, Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics (Toronto: Key Porter, 2006) and B. Carson, 14 Days: Making the Conservative Movement in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014).