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Membership Participation in Policy-Making in the C.C.F.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) claims to open all its policy-making agencies and channels to its dues-paying membership. This very claim runs counter to what is usually considered the proper operation of political parties. Most groups of active supporters, if they enrol in a party at all, do so primarily for the purpose of closer identification and to lend more substance to their support, but not in order to determine the party's affairs. Even in the case of the major U.S. parties where voters enrol as members with the purpose of helping to nominate candidates, and of those interest-based parties such as the British Labour party and the Mouvement Republicain Populaire, where the party consists of constituent organizations with dues-paying members, the claims of the members to participate in the direction of party affairs receive little support from party theorists. And even where the legitimacy of an assertion by members of a right to participate in policy-making receives consideration, we find at once an insistence that apathy toward public affairs on the part of most people renders widespread membership participation in policy-making nugatory, and that parties, engaged as they are in a struggle for political power, demand in their operations secrecy, flexibility, and unity, none of which permits the kind of open policy-making in which lay members can freely participate.
Policy-making in the two major parties in Canada follows the traditional parliamentary pattern. The parliamentary leader is responsible for the initiation and execution of policy, which he discusses with advisers of his own choosing.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , May 1956 , pp. 161 - 173
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1956
References
1 See, among others, Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York, 1942)Google Scholar; Finer, Herman, The Theory and Practice of Modern Government (rev. ed., New York, 1949)Google Scholar; Michels, Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies, tr. Eden, and Paul, Cedar (Glencoe, Ill., 1949).Google Scholar
2 For a discussion of policy-making in the Liberal and Conservative parties, see Dawson, R. Mac-Gregor, The Government of Canada (Toronto, 1947), 517–59.Google Scholar
3 For an excellent discussion of lay participaiton in some of the agrarian antecedents of the C.C.F., see Lipset, S. M., Agrarian Socialism (Berkeley, Calif., 1950), 37–87.Google Scholar
4 Lewis, David and Scott, F. R., Make This your Canada (Toronto, 1943), vi–vii.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 144.
6 See, among others, Reports of the 1946 and 1948 C.C.F. national convention; and the C.C.F. pamphlets It's Up To You! (Ottawa, n. d.) and What Is It? Who Is It? What Will It Do? (Toronto, n. d.).
7 The exception is Ontario, where the federal constituency is the basic unit.
8 Such full-membership meetings are also authorized for urban constituencies in Saskatchewan.
9 Annual national conventions were held until 1938.
10 In most provinces, both council and executive are important bodies. The Saskatchewan provincial council, with equal representation from all provincial constituencies, is at all times in close touch with the various constituency organizations. In British Columbia, the important agency of party government between conventions is the provincial executive.
11 The national movement and the Ontario C.C.F. use both these modes of selection. All Saskatchewan councillors are elected by their constituencies.
12 The British Columbia executive is elected by the provincial convention.
13 By breaking up into panels for the purpose of discussing resolutions and by voting, in plenary session, on the recommendations of these panels, provincial conventions in Saskatchewan can deal with more than 200 resolutions.
14 The figures in this table are membership ratios, introduced by Maurice Duverger in his Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, tr. Barbara, and North, Robert (New York, 1954), 92–101.Google Scholar The membership ratio is the ratio of the number of party members to the number of votes obtained by the party. The use of these ratios allows comparisons among ridings without consideration to C.C.F. strength in those ridings.
15 Lipset, , Agrarian Socialism, 199–219.Google Scholar
16 These proportions were estimated by various C.C.F. members, mostly in Saskatchewan.
17 Minutes of the C.C.F. Interprovincial Conference, Winnipeg, Dec. 29, 1944, to Jan. 1, 1945, 26.
18 The Government of Canada, 590–4.
19 See his Political Parties, 390, 401.
20 Reports of the 1946, 1948, 1950, and 1952 C.C.F. national convention.
21 Figures compiled from Minutes of the C.C.F. national executive.
22 Figures compiled from Minutes of the provincial executive, C.C.F. (Saskatchewan section).
23 It is part of Michels', thesis (Political Parties, 185–201)Google Scholar that those who devote their full time to a movement influence it most, and that these bureaucrats stifle vital participation on the part of party members.
24 Lipset, , Agrarian Socialism, 104.Google Scholar
25 Report of the 1952 C.C.F. national convention.
26 National Constitution, C.C.F., art. VI, sec. 3(c).
27 Canadian Congress of Labour, Proceedings of the 4th Annual Convention (Ottawa, 1943).Google Scholar
28 It should be noted, however, that the 1942 provincial convention set aside J. H. Brockelbank, M.L.A., as provincial leader, and selected T. C. Douglas, then an M.P. and thus not even a member of the provincial Legislature.
29 Constitution, C.C.F. (Saskatchewan section), art. XVI, sec. 12.
30 Report of the 1948 C.C.F. national convention.