Must Canadian political science be a miniature replica?*

32-33. 75. Ibid., Annual Report, 1906, pp. 101-107. 76. Ibid., Annual Report, 1908, pp. 128-129. Must Canadian political science be a miniature replica f * DONALD SMILEY The argument of this paper is that Canadian political science requires a high degree of intellectual autonomy from the American manifestations of that discipline. Economists have pointed out the inefficiencies of the "miniature replica" Canadian economy with too many firms making too wide a range of things in too short production runs. It will here be argued that a miniature replica Canadian political science is a formula for inadequate scholarship. Although this qualification is likely to be misunderstood, the focus of my analysis is academic rather than nationalistic. No consideration is given to the present or future employment of Canadian citizens in Canadian universities, the appropriate balance between courses with Canadian subject matter and other courses in the offerings of political science departments, or the obligations that political scientists in their individual and collective capacities may be said to have in respect to any other activity than the academic analysis of the political system. *I have been very much Influenced In this essay by two recent papers as yet unpublished: (1) C. B. Macpherson "After Strange Gods: Canadian Political Science 1973," Address delivered at the Convocation of University of Western Ontario In the spring of 1973 and (2) Alan C. Cairns, "Contlnentalism and/or Natlonalism In Canadian Politlcal Science. Is there a Problem?" Paper presented to the IXth-World Congress of the International Politlcal Science Association, Montreal, August 1973. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at staff-student seminars at the University of Windsor, the University of Waterloo , York University and Queen's University and I am grate-ful for the criticisms of my arguments on those occasions. Journal of Canadian Studies 77. Ibid., p. 126. 78. Ibid., p. 129. 79. Ibid., p. 130. Our credentials and our focus must thus be in the adequacy of our understanding of Canadian political institutions and processes. In this analysis I use the term "Canadian political science" to refer to the academic enterprise of studying Canadian government and politics in the English-language universities of the country. This somewhat unfortunate term is not employed with any sense of exclusivism. It includes perhaps a quarter to a third of the entire political science enterprise in Canada 1 and I make no argument that this part is inherently more crucial than the other. ( C.B. Macpherson has recently argued that although the number of political philosophers in Canadian political science departments is relatively small a high proportion of these scholars have significant international rep_utations.) 2 So far as the Francophone universities of Canada are concerned, Gilles Lalande in his 1971 Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association3 gave an account of the discipline in these universities which pointed up how different had been the developments in the two linguistic communities. For the most part, the senior political scientists of the French-language universities began their careers in other disciplines such as sociology and law and pursue scholarship according to the traditions of the academic world outside Quebec. The younger members of the discipline on the other hand have largely rejected such professionalism for political activism in a preoccupation with what they perceive to be the immediate needs of Quebec society. The generational gap is thus sharper and oriented around more fundamental options than in English Canada. 31 Canadian Political Science and the American Presence Any serious discussion of contemporary Canadian politicai science must deal with pervasive influences from the discipline in the United States. The size, wealth and vitality of this American community means that to a large extent political science in the non-communist world is an American derivative . These influences are indeed pervasive, perhaps most so among those nationalists in our universities who profess to have gone furthest in rejecting what they perceive as the prevailing currents in the United States, including those in its political science community . For example, in Close the 49th Parallel etc., published in 1970 under the auspices of the University League for Social Reform4 , there is an essay entitled "Canada and the American Science of Politics"5...