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AMONG ACADEMICS, ESPECIALLY IN AMERICAA, PSEUDO-THEORY OF stable democracies has recently been developed and there is keen competition to invent indices which grade countries according to a scale which runs from the highest possible degree of stability to the greatest instability. And yet our stable democracies are only a hundred to a hundred and fifty years old – a mere moment in the long history of mankind.
The title-deeds upon which the claims to greatness of contemporary liberal democracies are based are many and genuine; they are advanced industrial economies, which promise, if mankind so desires, opportunities for productivity which will give a completely new meaning to the ideas of ‘scarcity’, of the distribution of economic wealth and services and to the idea of work itself; allegiance to lofty, humanist values founded on the affirmation of the primacy of the individual as a citizen; pride of place given to individual rights as contrasted with the corporatist rights of anciens régimes, which oppressed the individual and paralysed social and economic growth; toleration of non-conformist ideas and movements; flexibility in dealing with conflicts between individuals and groups.
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References
1 The United States generally heads the list, although in a study based on the ‘index of democratic performance’ the United States came only sixteenth, Great Britain being first, followed by France which is usually thought to be an unstable democracy. See: Neubauer, Deane E., ‘Some Conditions of Democracy’, The American Political Review, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1967, pp. 1002–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 See on this subject my explanation in Société et politique: la vie des groupes. Volume 1: Fondements de la société libérate; Volume 2; Dynamique de la société libérale, Presses de l ’ Université Laval, 1971, 1972 and, with particular reference to Quebec, La procbaine révolution, Editions Leméac, Montreal, 1973.
3 Note, however, that contrary to Michel Crozier who says that French society is blocked, I merely say of liberal democracies that if things go on as they are, they will become blocked. Between these two ways of looking at the question, there is more than a mere nuance; there is the indication of a different approach to the analysis of societies.
4 Société et politique: la vie des groupes, Volume 2, Dynamique de la société libérate, op. cit., pp. 469–70.
5 On this point, see: Léon Dion and Micheline de Sève, Cultures politiques au Québec, Document de travail théorique, 1972 (mimeographed).
6 See: Société et politique: la vie des groupes, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 252.
7 A similar bill had been tabled, the previous autumn, but it had to be with-drawn, after a wave of protests during the debates of the parliamentary commission set up to discuss the project, and also among the general public.
8 On this question, see my book: Le bill 60 et la société québécoise, HMH, Montreal, 1967.
9 One of the conditions demanded by the kidnappers of James Cross was that before he was released, the Manifesto should be read over Radio Canada. This was the only condition which the Canadian government, for clear ‘humanitarian’ reasons, accepted. In June of the same year the Front de libération de Quebec had sent the text of a similar communication to the radio and television stations, but to our knowledge, it was only printed in one newspaper, Québec-Presse and did not give rise to any comment.
10 Léon Dion and Micheline de Sève, Les cultures politlques au Québec (Document théorique), pp. 81–2.
11 I have tried to point out the extent of the necessary readjustments in the conclusions to Société et politique: la vie des groupes, PUL, Quebec, Volume 2, pp. 457–89.