The Government Party: Organizing and Financing the Liberal Party of Canada 1930–58

The Liberal party has dominated Canadian politics for most of this century. From the 1930s to the late 1950s, under the leadership of Mackenzie King and Louis St Laurent, the Liberals were almost unchallenged in their hold on national office, and in their influence on the Canadian state and Canadian public life.

The Government Party traces the evolution of the party structure with special emphasis on organization both during and between elections, the relationship of the party organization to the parliamentary leadership, and the connections between the party and corporate capitalism through the mechanisms of party finance. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of political patronage and the linkages between government contracts and financial support for the party. The emergence of advertising agencies as publicity instruments of the party is examined in detail.

The second part of the study deals with federal-provincial relations within the Liberal party, especially the relationship between the national party and its provincial counterparts in Quebec and Ontario. Some implications of federal-provincial intraparty conflict for the role of the national party are considered in detail.

As a result of its long domination of politics, the Liberal party virtually fused with the state in the war and postwar period – with consequent bureaucratization of politics, a blurring of lines between party, state, and the corporate sector, and serious implications for Canadian liberal democracy. The Liberal party became less and less a ‘Liberal’ party and more and more simply the party of government.

This is the first account of the operations of one of Canada’s major political institutions. Professor Whitaker has unearthed a remarkable quantity of new material, mainly from primary sources, and woven it into a brilliant analysis – of the Liberal party in particular and, more generally, of the process of national government within the Canadian federal system.

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