Has feminism changed the Canadian Politics?

This article examines the impact of feminism on Canadian politics, including increased female participation and questioning of gender roles.

Running head: POLITICAL SCIENCE
Political Science
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Other Perspectives
a) Has feminism changed the Canadian Politics?
- The history of feminism in Canada has always been a gradual struggle that is aimed
towards the development and establishment of equal rights. As per Sangster (2018)
feminism is all about believing that men and women are equal. The very first wave of
feminism took place in the later 19th century in Canada. It was focused on empowering
women and increasing their role in the public life with the goals like increased property
rights, women’s suffrage, increased access of women to get education and giving women
recognition as “persons” under the Canadian law. Feminism indeed had changed the
Canadian Politics. Earlier, politics in Canada was a male-dominated discipline. The
thought of feminist potentially made a great impact on the Canadian politics and at the
same time, have redefined the Canadian politics and questioned the prevailing basic
assumptions upon which the power was based earlier (Sangster, 2015). Feminism has led
the Canadian people to question the roles of gender by means of drawing the attention to
the universal gender-based power relations that are otherwise overlooked. The
participation of females in the Canadian politics within the legislatures has increased as
many have condemned the male domination of the professional politics. The feminist
groups in Canada have very recently emphasised on including females in the formal
politics and have actively supported the female candidates. This has resulted in increase
in the number of Canadian women in the legislature. The success of feminist in Canada
relative to the United Kingdom is associated with its proportional representation instead
of the “first past the post”. This is because there were some barrier that were posed for the
minorities.
Political Culture

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a) Discuss how Canadian political culture is different from American culture.
- There are significant difference in the political culture of Canadian and America. The
main reason behind this difference lies in their respective history. According to Dagnino
(2018), the political culture of America operates on the basis of both Pragmatic and
Utopian levels and the same goes for the American parties as well. On the other hand, the
Canadian political parties, notwithstanding their ideological variety are basically
pragmatic, instead of Utopian. Furthermore, Canada is a constitutional monarchy that is
governed by a prime minister as well as a parliament (Russell, 2016) America on the
contrary, has a republic monarchy that is governed by Congress and President. It is to
note that the American Congress and the Canadian Parliament have same functions and
structures but they do operate in different manner. The American Congress is made of
two different bodies the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Canadian
Parliament is also divided in two bodies, namely, the House of Commons and Senate.
However, unlike the American Congress, the members of the House of Commons of
Canadian Parliament are elected publicly. In America, president is the head of the
government but in Canada, prime minister is the head. However, the most significant
difference in between the American and the Canadian political culture is that of the
division of power among the governing bodies. America divides the government into a
total of three equally powerful branches. On the other hand, Canada political system was
founded on the consolidation of power. Prime minister has the authority of overriding the
majority opinion and they decide the government policy personally.
Political Parties
a) Discuss the pros and cons of brokerage parties. Refer to a specific party in your
discussion.

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- The brokerage parties are centrist in the policy orientation and they take the positions that
bridge the gaps in between the political divides. The political parties in Canada are
generally described as the brokers. Liberal Party of Canada is the best example of
brokerage parties. The pros of this party is that the skill and job training for the Canadian
youths are provided by the party. There are wide spread range of values, interest and
races that the Canadians have. With the same, there are retirement security for the senior
citizens of Canada under the Liberal Party (McIntyre et al., 2016). It has crossed the
English or French language division and at the same time, the worker owner division as
well. The liberal part bring in together the different interests and the engineer
compromises, which allow the policies that are to be adopted as well as the positions that
are to be taken. On the other hand, there are several cons of this party as well. The
budgets do not get balances when the liberals get in. Also, they increase the marginal tax
by 1%.
Elections and Voting
a) What do you think is the most democratic electoral system?
- The Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system is considered to be the most
democratic electoral system. It contain several similarities to the Alternative Vote (AV)
system. It manager for improving upon several weaknesses that it contains and as per my
opinion, it is the most democratic one (Farrell, Suiter & Harris, 2017). In this system,
instead of voting for a particular party over the individuals, the voters indicates the
candidate that they prefer, instead of the preferred party. This simply means that different
representative from each and every part can run effectively. With the same, it is also to
note that in this system, the voters could choose the candidates who align with the closest
along with their beliefs within that particular party. Also, it is to mention that the margin
of winning basically depends on the total number of candidates (Andre, Depauw &

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Martin, 2016). For examples, if 8 candidate are running for a particular constituency then
the margin would be 1 out of 8 of the vote. However, unlike other political system, there
are some practical problems associated with this system. Along with the present number
of constituencies sitting at 650, it is not possible for the Parliament to accommodate extra
thousand MPs. Therefore, the constituencies would possibly to be lumped together. With
the same, the voting system and counting system is very complicated Single Transferable
Voting electoral system.
Political Influence
a) Discuss how the Tea Party movement influenced U.S. Politics.
- It is to note that the Tea Party movement is one of the American fiscally conservative
political movement present within the Republic Party (Klein & Rohlinger, 2016). Less
than one decade ago, Tea Party was emerged as one of the most effective and unified
oppositional forces in the politics of United States. After bursting onto the scene in the
year 2009, the Tea Party not only influenced the national politics but even the stage and
local governments as well along with most of administrators, experts and politicians. Its
primary focus was on the fiscal issues but it has also embraced a wide range of different
issues that are important to the conservatives. Just a few years ago, there were not many
Americans who knew about the Ted Cruz or the Sequestration. Today, each and every
one are familiar with the same in the political arena because of this movement. As per
Boatright and Moscardelli (2018), presence of Tea Party candidate could influence the
results of the general election, which are simply competitive. This movement helped in
convincing the citizens of U.S. that the election of 2010 was pivotal in the process of
determination of the upcoming future direction of the country that is possibly to cause the
voters to support the Republican Party to a large extent which was impossible without the
Tea Party movement. Furthermore, as per Greene (2016), with a powerful tea party

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support, O’Donnell was able to beat the Castle by 6% points along with the strong
backing from the conservative Southern Delaware.
Democracy
a) Is direct democracy possible?
- In my opinion, direct democracy is not possible. There are several decisions for this.
Firstly, it is to state that direct democrat comes with very high risks and high costs. This
many result in conflicts and can be emotional. Direct democracy requires worldwide
assemblies and votes and its social, political and economic costs will also be
considerable. This can give rise to a society that would be over-politicised and would
further be in dominance of the politics over several other things. Secondly, according to
Rozycka-Tran et al. (2018), direct democracy is a “zero-sum game”. It is an instrument
that aggravates to several different social conflicts and splits a society in between
minorities and majorities, where the minorities would find their positions, rights and
interests, all suppressed. Hence, it can be said that the direct democracy can ten to bring
in the condition and situation of unrest, injustice and intolerance in nations. Historically
speaking, when direct democracy once put into practise, it was either strangled by the
civil strife, the foreign aggression, and were crushed under the different hands of tyrant or
crumbled when it developed itself to become a vassal state of superpower. According to
Beath, Christia and Enikolopov (2017), the direct democracy lacks in procedures and at
the same time, promotes rigid uniformity in the community. Also, it causes despotism by
restraining the society. This type of democracy demands each and every citizen to have
unambiguous opinion that is quite often very extreme on every issues. Hence, it can be
said that direct democracy is not possible, especially in the modern societies.
b) Plato argued that democracy is the worst form of government. Discuss his argument.
Is it true?

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- According to Plato, democracy is not the best form of government. He criticised the
unchecked and direct democracy of his time due to its leading features. Firstly, although
Plato considered freedom to be a true value, democracy is something that involves the
dangers associated with extreme freedom and this can lead to anarchy. Secondly, the
concept of equality as per Plato, brings in all the types of power-seeking individuals in
politics and is motivated by the personal or individual gains instead of public benefits
(Hill, 2016). Hence, as per him, democracy is greatly corruptible. It opens the gate
towards potential dictators, demagogues and therefore, have high possibilities of tyranny
as well. Although the modern liberal democracies are different from that of in the times of
Plato, still, the main charge against democracy by Plato, that he known from the ancient
Greek political practise is that it is completely unstable and lead to anarchy to tyranny.
With the same, he argues that it also lack the proper morals and skills among the leaders.
Democracy is something that depends on the chance and it needs to be mixed with the
competent leadership. In absence of virtuous and able leaders like Pericles, democracy is
not the best form of government. Hence, in my opinion, I too consider democracy as not
the best but also, not the worst form of government.

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