In a May 21 National Post op-ed titled “Death of a Dynasty,” newly-elected Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt suggested that “we may see the [Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta] unofficially disintegrate.” To be sure, disintegration is one possible fate for the PCs. Equally conceivable is some form of merger with the Wildrose Party. A third possibility, though seemingly remote, is a PC rebound. However things unfold, a plausible alternative to Fildebrandt’s thesis is that Albertans have not only witnessed the death of a dynasty, but also the possible end of more than a century of dynastic politics.
In the 110 years since the birth of the province in 1905, Alberta has been governed by just four parties. The founding Liberal dynasty lasted 16 years, followed by the 14-year reign of the United Farmers. The subsequent Social Credit and Progressive Conservative dynasties lasted 35 and 44 years, respectively. In the technical language of political science, Alberta fit the description of a polity with a “dominant one-party system.”
This conclusion was famously disputed by Canadian political scientist C.B. MacPherson in his 1953 book Democracy in Alberta: The Theory and Practice of a Quasi-Party System. MacPherson argued that Alberta’s democratic system was an unprecedented species unto itself, which he called a “quasi-party” system. In his rather condescending and Marxist-influenced view, Alberta’s political culture was excessively homogenous and suffered from a “quasi-colonial” mentality.
Were he still around today MacPherson might find the election of an NDP government as positive evidence of a more diverse, less insular political system. Maybe so, but surely the more interesting and salient possibility is the sudden and dramatic emergence of a two-party system. To me, this is evidence of Alberta politics undergoing a significant developmental change, from dynasticism to a more natural state of democracy.
To invoke nature is to go beyond an ideological understanding of politics and the party system. MacPherson, like many of his contemporaries, analyzed politics through the Marxist lens of class division. As he wrote in Democracy in Alberta: “The party system characteristically performs a function that is indispensable for democracy within a mature capitalist economy: it moderates and contains the opposition of class interests.”
Materialistic arguments like MacPherson’s assume individuals and their political beliefs and actions are determined by their environment, in the broadest sense. They undervalue the individual’s ability to decide for themselves what is just, true, and good, in any political, economic or social context. That bias blinded MacPherson to the fact that Alberta was (and to a great extent still is) an exceptionally class-free society, certainly compared to his home province of Ontario. Alberta’s voters consistently supported populist parties that championed egalitarianism, and decisively dismissed them from office whenever the party was perceived to be too comfortably close to the elites. In this sense, the rejection of the Tories and the ascendance of the NDP and Wildrose parties was perfectly consistent with Alberta’s democratic history and tradition.
Anyone considering democracy in all its facets and forms is best served by turning to the great French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville. In his magisterial work, Democracy in America (analogously titled, but predating Macpherson’s work by over 200 years), Tocqueville has a great deal to say about parties. Rather than focusing on class interests, Tocqueville’s analysis of democratic parties points to a timeless truth about the nature of parties. In his view they are based upon “two opinions,” which are “as old as the world” and are found “over and over in different forms and reclothed with diverse names in all free societies.”
One opinion invariably seeks “to restrict popular power,” while the other wants “to extend it indefinitely.” These opinions, Tocqueville argues, reflect “immaterial interests of the first order, such as love of equality and of independence.” These immaterial interests – as opposed to the narrower material interests of classes – are arguably resurfacing in the Alberta political arena in the form of the two new dominant parties, with their opposing ideas about equality and liberty, that have emerged in the wake of the recent dynastic decline.
Among the cathartic effects of the political upheaval of 2015 is the end of the unnatural marriage of progressivism and conservatism. The confusion and blending of Tocqueville’s eternally competing opinions has been cleared. Assuming the right unites in some form, Albertans’ political choices will henceforth be starkly contrasted between a party of progressivism and a party of conservatism. There was a kind of genius in the PCs’ ability to accommodate these fundamentally conflicting opinions within a single party and government for so long. Egalitarianism was in large part the glue that held them together, but when too many Albertans – on the right and left – came to see the Tories as an oligarchic party of “corruption and entitlement”, the marriage collapsed.
For most of Canada’s history it has been the norm to find multi-party brokerage politics at the federal level, with two main centrist parties trading power while more ideological third and fourth parties remain on the sidelines. However, two-party systems have dominated in most provinces and the last decade has seen the old PC and Liberal brokerage parties in Ottawa eclipsed by the more ideologically-defined Conservative and NDP parties. If the results of this fall’s federal election confirm this trend, and the right unites in Alberta to compete against the NDP provincially, history may record that it took almost 150 years, but Tocqueville’s understanding of democracy finally took hold in all of Canada.
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Trevor Shelley recently returned to his native Alberta after completing his PhD in political theory at Louisiana State University, where his studies culminated in a dissertation titled, “Liberalism and Globalization: An Essay on Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Pierre Manent.”
