Of Passionate Intensity -OS

By Trevor Harrison

What can the rise of the Reform party tell us about the rise of populist parties and movements generally? Questions such as this lie at the heart of Trevor Harrison's book. What factors, for example, ensured the Reform party's emergence as a right-wing party? Was a left-wing alternative possible? What was the influence, in general, of economic factors in creating popular discontent in the West during the 1980s? What are the ideological roots of the Reform party? Is Reform merely a northern offshoot of American neo-conservatism? What was the structural, ideological, and political relationship between the Reformers and the fringe parties that sprang up in the West during the early 1980s? What are the structural locations of Reform party supporters? Why does the party's support appear to be greater in Alberta and British Columbia than in Saskatchewan and Manitoba? Is the Reform party supported by a particular class or elements of a particular class? Alternatively, are there aspects of nativism in the Reform party? What other social characteristics underlie Reform party support? What was the role of political-institutional and/or organizational factors in the rise of the Reform party? And, finally, what is the likely fate of Reform?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802072046
• ISBN13: 9780802072047
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 325 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good Critique

For sociologists who are usually transparently left-wing, Harrison does quite good. The research of the roots and formation of the party is quite through and his analysis of the its future have turned out to be surprisingly accurate. Harrison suggests the success of Reform will depend on the success of the neo-conservative Ralph Klein government of Alberta. He said it would also depend on whether the Chretien administration would continue with the excesses of the Trudeau and Mulroney administrations, which he predicted would be highly unlikely. Considering the book was published in 1995, Harrison was pretty dead on. The Liberals were moderate incrementalists while Klein's government was highly successful. These two contradicting results helped form the current situation of the expansion of Reform into the Canadian Alliance, but not without eventually having to cede to merging the Progressive Conservative Party. Harrison was also quite correct in his early assessment of the intentions of current leader Stephen Harper, by suggesting he is more interested in the economic issues, although he would accomodate social conservatism for electoral purposes. Harrison's left-wing bias does come through though when he suggests that Reform's belief in market fundamentalism is naive and unsustainable and that they would instead embrace an alignment with big business. The recent Klein government in Alberta has demonstrated by passing anti-business subsidy laws that such an approach is not impossible but desirable to obtain.