Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada, Second Edition updates and expands its exploration of a wide range of organized group and social movement activity in Canadian politics. Particularly distinctive is the inclusion of Quebec nationalism and Aboriginal politics. Many other areas of collective activity are also included: the Occupy movement and anti-poverty organizing, ethnocultural political mobilization, disability, lesbian and gay politics, feminism, farmers and organized interests in agriculture, Christian evangelical groups, environment, and health movements. Contributors to the collection employ a number of theoretical perspectives from political science and sociology to describe the evolution of organized groups and movements and to evaluate successes in exercising influence on Canadian politics. Each chapter provides an overview of the group or movement along with an account of its main networks and organizations, strategies, goals, successes, and failures.

Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada provides a set of case studies that cover a wide range of organized group and social movement activity in Canadian politics. Particularly distinctive is the inclusion of Quebec nationalism and Aboriginal politics as fields of social movement politics. Newer groups that have become more important in recent years are also included: anti-poverty organizing; race, disability, and lesbian and gay politics; Christian evangelical groups; and health social movements. Contributors to the collection employ a number of theoretical perspectives from political science and sociology to describe the evolution of organized groups and movements and to evaluate successes in exercising influence on Canadian politics. The diversity of approaches is one of the strengths of the volume. Each chapter provides an overview of the group or movement along with an account of its main networks and organizations, strategies, goals, successes, and failures. Special Combined Price: Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada may be ordered together with A Civil Society? Collective Actors in Canadian Political Life at a special discounted price. In order to secure the package price, the following ISBN must be used when ordering: 978-1-55402-779-8.

The Tea Party. The Occupy Movement. Idle No More. Around the world, social movements have taken to new media and the streets to challenge the status quo. At the same time, most democracies have witnessed a sharp decline in voter turnout. Protest and Politics examines this seemingly contradictory shift in political participation, as well as the blurring of social movement and mainstream politics, through the lens of the social movement society (SMS) thesis. Drawing on the long history of social movements in Canada, in comparison to the US and the transnational sphere, the contributors revisit the SMS thesis to determine whether it still applies, to see what insights can be gleaned from Canadian social movements, and to clarify the relationships between movements and mainstream politics. They argue that the SMS thesis must be recalibrated to reflect changes in political participation, to embrace broader political and historical contexts, and to consider the emergence of social movement societies, plural, over a single polity within and across countries.

A Civil Society? surveys the main approaches to the study of group politics in Canada, with a strong comparative perspective. Unique to this brief and accessible text is a comprehensive theoretical framework that helps students evaluate policy areas surveyed in the book, while also pointing them toward future study. This new edition opens with a discussion of power, political institutions, and identity. It goes on to explore group and social movement activity across a range of institutions including the House of Commons, the bureaucracy, and the courts as well as mobilization through social media and the electoral system. Throughout, Smith systematically integrates consideration of the role of gender, racialization, and indigeneity in contemporary Canadian group and movement politics.

Using archival material that has largely been ignored, as well as interviews with Canadian activists, Smith investigates the ways in which the Canadian lesbian and gay movement has changed in response to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Canadian Politics in the 21st Century is a collection of readings that is recognized for its diverse and well-known group of expert contributors. This reader provides a thematic overview of current trends in Canadian Politics. Covering issues such as Interest Groups and Social Movements and the Political Culture in Canada, Canadian Politics in the 21st Century aims not only to explain the nature of politics today, but also to speculate about the trends that will prevail in the future. Changes to the seventh edition include one new chapter “The End of Brokerage? The Canadian Party in the Twenty First Century. The book has moved from 17 readings to 14 readings with updates made to all essays. Canadian Politics in the 21st Century is a great addition to your class.Politics is not a precise art and those that succeed in politics often excel at dealing in abstracts. The publishers would like to thank Osnat Tzadok for the piece that you see on the cover of Canadian Politics in the 21st Century. It is a wonderful compliment to the book.