The Opinion-Policy Relationship in Canada

Abstract

This note examines the consistency between Canadian public opinion and public policy over the period 1968-93 by matching responses to national survey questions on 348 issues with enacted public policy proposals on the same issues. Multivariate tests are used to explore the opinion-policy relationship in regard to the impact of issue salience, the extent of majority opinion, the type of issues (redistributive vs nonredistributive), various policy domains, and the partisan composition of government. There is little evidence of direct influence of public opinion on policy. Unlike previous results on the opinion-policy relationship in European countries, there is no evidence that organized elite groups and "bourgeois" political parties have been an obstacle to government enactment of mass preferences on redistributive issues. However, the findings strongly suggest that the change of government from Trudeau to Mulroney had an impact on consistency in regard to the economy.

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