1. State Power, Representative Government, and the Canadian Political System
By Oleg Nekrassovski
What is the essence of politics? What is the key variable of political science? Common
sense gives us a clear answer: it is power. But as the earlier classical theorists knew: in
politics, first comes power, then the need to control it. “In framing a government . . . the
great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed;
and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Beginning with the ancient philosophers,
political thinkers have worried about how to keep power under control, how to
domesticate it, how to prevent its abuse, how to subject it to certain procedures and rules
of conduct. (Schedler, 1999, p. 13)
The present paper explores many of these questions, primarily through the process of refuting
two of Skogstad’s (2010, p. 109) statements, which roughly split the paper into two parts. Along
the way, where relevant, special attention is paid to democratic systems, in general, and
Canadian political system, in particular.
Skogstad (2010, p. 109) begins her article, “Who governs? Who should govern?”, with a
somewhat absurd statement: “Why do we obey the rules and decisions to which those in
authority collectively bind us? The answer is clear. We obey, first, because we believe that
those who make legally enforceable decisions have a right to do so; and second, because we
believe the decisions themselves – the public policies – are socially desirable.” The reality,
however, is considerably different:
The authority of the state rests on two important foundations. First, the state holds the
exclusive right to use force and physical coercion. Any act of violence not expressly
permitted by the state is illegal and, consequently, punishable by the state. Thus, state
governments make written laws, administer them through various levels of the
bureaucracy, and enforce them through mechanisms such as police forces, armies, and
national guards. The state needs to be continuously vigilant against threats both from
within and from without to usurp its power through rebellions and revolutions. Second,
the state maintains its authority by means of ideology. For the state to maintain its power
over the long run, there must be a philosophical understanding among the citizenry that
the state has the legitimate right to govern. In the absence of such an ideology, it is often
difficult for the state to maintain its authority by means of coercion alone. (Ferraro, 2006,
p. 295-296)
An interesting link between the state’s ability for physical coercion and its ideology is
that “State leaders attempt to create an aura of invincibility about the state. The more the state

2. seems all-powerful, the more likely are subjects to accept it in their ordinary lives and, in the
process, reduce the burden of enforcing all its dictates” (Migdal, 1994, p. 14). In this respect
We should also note the strong tradition which goes back at least as far as Karl Marx of
viewing the apparent coherence of the state as either an illusion or, in some versions, a
kind of confidence trick played on the public by those in charge who wish either to
increase their own power or to disguise the fact that this apparently mighty entity is much
less cohesive, much more the tool of competing factions and sectional interests, and, in
general, much more chaotic than they want outsiders to believe. (Owen, 2004, p. 2)
Thus, Skogstad’s above-quoted statement refers to a few narrow aspects of the second
(or secondary) foundation of state’s authority: ideology. And completely ignores the fact that
we obey the rules and decisions of the government, first and foremost, because we fear that
the government will use force against us, should we fail to obey.
This observation inevitably leads to a question: How do governments come to hold
monopoly on the use of force? The attempts to answer this question are numerous. But most
of them boil down to the idea that each government is formed by the strongest party in society,
i.e. that party which has overwhelming force on its side in the first place; using which it can
coerce everyone else to do what it wishes. A relatively recent expression of this idea can be
found in the work of John Stuart Mill:
The government of a country, it is affirmed, is, in all substantial respects, fixed and
determined beforehand by the state of the country in regard to the distribution of the
elements of social power. Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the
governing authority; and a change in the political constitution cannot be durable unless
preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself. A nation,
therefore, cannot choose its form of government. The mere details, and practical
organization, it may choose; but the essence of the whole, the seat of the supreme power,
is determined for it by social circumstances. (Mill, 1865, p.5)
A related question, specific to democratic forms of government, is why the minority
usually obeys the will of the majority. Classical thinkers offer a few insightful answers.
According to Herodotus, “If all men are equally strong and equally armed … then the reading of
votes tells everyone what would happen if things came to blows. A group of men gathered on
top of the hill shouts approval of particular candidates (or policies) and everyone can hear
which group is larger and therefore stronger” (Przeworski, 2004). More recently, Condorcet,
observed in a similar manner that
When the practice of submitting all individuals to the will of the greatest number
introduced itself into societies, and when people accepted to regard the decision of the
plurality as the will of all, they did not adopt this method as means to avoid errors and to

3. conduct themselves on the basis of decisions based on truth, but they found that, for the
good of peace and general welfare, it was necessary to place authority where the force
was. (Przeworski, 2004)
Skogstad’s (2010, p. 109) above-mentioned article continues with another, related, and
no less absurd statement: “In representative democracies, those who exercise authority do so
with public consent, having been freely chosen in elections and subject to mechanisms of
accountability that ensure that they roughly reflect the public’s will and preferences. This much
about the exercise of political authority in Canada is obvious.”
The problems inherent in representative democracies, and the consequent absurdity of
anything resembling Skogstad’s above statement, have been noted early, for example, by John
Stuart Mill:
When the time for that government has arrived, sufficient power for all needful purposes
is sure to reside in the sovereign assembly; and if enough of it is not entrusted to the
executive, this can only arise from a jealous feeling on the part of the assembly towards
the administration, never likely to exist but where the constitutional power of the
assembly to turn them out of office has not yet sufficiently established itself. Wherever
that constitutional right is admitted in principle, and fully operative in practice, there is no
fear that the assembly will not be willing to trust its own ministers with any amount of
power really desirable; the danger is, on the contrary, lest they should grant it too
ungrudgingly, and too indefinite in extent, since the power of the minister is the power of
the body who make and who keep him so. (Mill, 1865, p. 44)
And when it comes to the present day and the representative system of government
used in Canada, various experts mentioned by Mallory (2011) state that the British
parliamentary and cabinet system (the Westminster model) can be used to run the country
undemocratically, and is positively inferior to US political system when it comes to maintaining
rulership according to democratic principles. After all
The Westminster model is a product of nineteenth-century England, and as such it is not a
democratic constitution, but an oligarchic one. The centre of authority in the system was
not to be people, but the legislature, and the government which was able to control the
legislature could govern without serious interference between elections. … Furthermore,
in Canada the power of the executive has become excessive because of the weakness of
parliament and the failure of the public to understand how the system should work. … the
public sees politics only as a contest between leaders (that is, as presidential politics) and
is generally impatient with what seems to be parliamentary obstruction because the role
of the opposition is not understood. Furthermore we have the worst of both worlds by
having presidential politics without a presidential system – the written constitution, the
separation of powers, and other restraints which exist in the United States. … So effective

4. is the control which a majority government has over the operations of the House of
Commons that it can hardly be said to be a separate branch of the government at all in the
American sense. … Another cause of difficulty is the notion of ministerial responsibility.
In the theory of the constitution a minister whose department is in trouble may be
compelled to resign – for that is what political accountability means. But in fact no prime
minister will drop a minister in these circumstances, for that will be construed as a sign of
weakness. (Mallory, 2011, p. 22-23)
Similarly, Forsey and Eglinton (2011) state that in their view the Canadian political
system, while being superior (in pro-democratic qualities) to that of the United States in its
pure theoretical form, it is far more inferior in its “perverted,” currently practiced form. In fact,
“the Government of Canada must enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons, while the
President of the United States need not and often does not find his policies supported by one
or both Houses of the Congress” (Forsey & Eglinton, 2011, p. 34). In other words, in Canada, the
Government needs a majority support in the House of Commons (which the, all too common,
majority government always has) in order to stay in power and implement the policies of its
choice. While in the United States, the President cannot expect, and often does not receive
support for his policies from either of the Houses of the Congress. Forsey and Eglinton (2011)
go on to add that in the Canadian political system, as currently practiced,
… the Members [of the House of Commons] cannot even control the legislative policies
of their parties in their caucuses … the distinction between executive and legislative
powers has entirely disappeared, a reality reinforced in Canada by the vast delegated law-
making powers of the Executive, powers untrammeled by any general power of
disallowance in either House of Parliament. Both the legislative and executive functions
are exercised by the Leader of the majority party, the Prime Minister, and his closest
layer of supporters, his Ministers and his personal advisers and aides. Legislation agreed
to by this inner group almost invariably is passed by Parliament, (Forsey & Eglinton,
2011, p. 35)
When it comes to policy advice and analysis, “professional public service institutions
generally serve governing parties and their executives.” Consequently, and due to a strong
concentration of power in the hands of the same governing parties and their executives, in
Canada, prime ministers and premiers are usually unwilling “to grant autonomy and to fund
competing advice in legislations” (Howlett and Lindquist, 2007, p. 98). As a result, in Canada,
“for many years, governments and their public service institutions had analytic capabilities
rivalled only by the largest business firms and associations and, to a lesser extent, labour
organizations. This led to patterns of closed sectoral bargaining relationships between major
government, business and labour actors, not subject to great public scrutiny” (Howlett and
Lindquist, 2007, p. 98).

5. Moreover,
Ministerial and official intergovernmental committees are instruments of the executive
branches of each government, and usually work in camera without the direct scrutiny of
legislatures and the public. Citizens are typically only engaged if certain governments are
attempting to build public support for positions, usually at the agenda-setting stage of the
policy process, or if statements or decisions are communicated. (Howlett and Lindquist,
2007, p. 98-99)
Furthermore, “Within Canadian governments, the policy analysis capacity of
departments and ministries varies widely, and derives from the size of the government.” And
“since all ministers and deputy ministers are appointed directly by the prime minister and
premiers (in some provinces, they also appoint assistant deputy ministers), policy analysis in
Canadian governments, no matter how professional and non-partisan the public service in
question, tends to lack independence” (Howlett and Lindquist, 2007, p. 102).
The actual policy analysis performed by Canadian government agencies, also is often
either poor or superficial. And there are many reasons for this.
Lack of methodological sophistication is only one of them. In some cases political clients
foresee that they will dislike the recommendations of good analysis and deliberately
discourage it. Other politicians simply prefer more informal decision aids, including
discussion papers and (relatively) unstructured briefing papers. But at least some of the
deficiency in the supply of good analysis stems from lack of knowledge, or confusion,
about appropriate methods. (Vining & Boardman, 2007, p. 49)
Thus, we have seen that since ancient times, political thinkers have been trying to
answer a number of key questions about the sources of state’s authority and power, as well as
those dealing with why political power gets exercised the way it does, how it gets exercised,
and how it should be exercised. The modern consensus seems to be that the state maintains its
authority through physical coercion and ideology. While the state comes to hold monopoly on
the use of force because it is always formed by what happens to be the strongest power in
society. Similarly, in democracies, minority usually obeys the will of the majority because the
majority, in virtue of its greater numbers, is more powerful. Moreover, democratic systems of
government tend to have their own share of problems. And when it comes to the modern
Canadian political system, the executive controls the legislature (even though the reverse
should be the case), thus making the system undemocratic. Moreover, policy making and
analysis, in Canada, also lacks independence, input from the public, and tends to be of poor
quality.

6. References
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Wadsworth.
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Howlett, M. and Lindquist, E. (2007). Beyond Formal Policy Analysis: Governance Context,
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7. Vining, A. R. and Boardman, A. E. (2007). The Choice of Formal Policy Analysis Methods in
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The State of the Art (Pp. 48-85). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.