How does political capital work in Canada? This paper will apply the working ideas of the Leadership Capital Index to Canada, highlighting areas of engagement and possible critiques.
Two preliminary themes of potential interest from the Canadian case are institutional security and regional/linguistic complexities. Canadian leaders (both national and provincial) enjoy strong institutional protections, almost completely insulated from party revolts and with comparatively docile Parliaments and even cabinets that pose limited constraints. Does this structural security substitute for other sources of political capital, like deft political skills, popular stances, enthusiastic supporters etc.? And does it encourage risk taking with capital, or cautious pragmatism to maintain it?
The second theme is the difficulty of accumulating and keeping political capital in a country that is both bilingual and geographically huge. While provincial premiers can accumulate considerable capital by voicing regional grievances, prime ministers face a difficult challenge of trying to appeal across regional and linguistic divides to acquire sufficient capital. Even when they are at first successful, the divisions inevitably resurface and capital must be heavily spent to repair the damage. In contrast, other leaders likely grow their overall political capital by writing off entire regions as unlikely to ever support them. Other themes of interest to the development of the LCI will also be pursued.
The paper will also highlight specific cases of political leadership in Canada, including a meteoric leader, Paul Martin, who came to power with enormous political capital yet quickly lost it, and “rock solid” leaders like Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper who slowly accumulated and carefully husbanded their capital (though Chretien’s atrophied in later years). The paper will also explore how to classify Brian Mulroney, perhaps the greatest accumulator, spender and squanderer of political capital in Canadian political history.
