North America is steering a new course, with the United States, Canada, and Mexico moving toward continental economic, integration. This book examines basic value changes that are' transforming economic, social, and political life in these three countries, demonstrating that they are gradually adopting an increasingly compatible cultural perspective. A narrow nationalism, dominant since the 19th century, has slowly been giving way to a more cosmopolitan sense of identity. As old economic boundaries become outmoded, a North American perspective makes greater sense. To what extent, then, do the three North American publics - I each with its own heterogeneities and tensions - share a common culture? That question can only be answered if we have some yardstick by which to measure their cultural similarity. These societies are far from identical. But data from the 1990- 1991 World Values survey, drawn from 43 societies around the world, show that on crucial topics, the core values of the American public are significantly closer to those of the Canadians and (to a somewhat lesser extent) to those of the Mexicans, than they are to those of most other peoples in the world. Furthermore, time series evidence indicates that the values of the three North American publics have been converging. This book draws on a unique body of directly comparable cross-national and cross-temporal survey evidence to show that what Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans want out of life is changing in analogous ways. These changes, coupled with sociostructural transformations, are reshaping peoples' feelings about national identity, about trusting each other, and about the balance between economic and non-economic goals. North American economic integration is being reinforced by the gradual emergence of increasingly similar cultural values.

"Anatomy of a Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the Vote in the 2000 Canadian Election" provides a compressive account of the factors that led Canadians to vote the way they did in the Fall 2000 Canadian election, which resulted in a third consecutive Liberal majority government. The book explains the overall impact that these factors had on how well or poorly each of the parties did in the election. The authors address in particular the following questions: Why was turnout so low? What were Canadians' perceptions of the economy and how much impact did these perceptions have on vote choice? What were voters' opinions on the major issues of the day and did these opinions affect their decision on election day? What did voters think of the leaders and how much weight did these evaluations have on their choice?

The study is based on mass surveys, involving more than 3,000 respondents, conducted both during the campaign and after the election. It also draws on a detailed content analysis of the parties' messages and nightly news broadcasts throughout the campaign and its aftermath.

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This study of contemporary political culture examines belief systems among youth elites in five countries that share not only roughly comparable economies, social structures, and cultural environments, but also the same political tradition: Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Based on a survey of over 3,000 senior undergraduates conducted between 1980 and 1987, it focuses on attitudes towards government, feminism, minority rights, and equality in an effort to determine whether there are significant differences in the political cultures of the five Anglo-American democracies. The youth elites studied here are part of a generation that now wields substantial economic power and that has succeeded in fundamentally altering and expanding the political agendas of all the advanced industrial democracies. Nevitte and Gibbins argue that the attitudinal structures of these youth elites have far-reaching consequences.

Citizens are at the heart of any meaningful definition of democracy. So what does it say about the health of Canadian democracy when fewer citizens are exercising their right to vote and party membership rolls are shrinking? Is an increasingly well-educated citizenry turning away from traditional electoral politics in search of more meaningful forms of democratic engagement? Or is an ever-wider swathe of Canadian society simply disengaging from politics altogether? This volume draws on a rich array of public opinion data to determine how engaged Canadians are in the country's democratic life and which Canadians are most - and least - engaged. Comparisons are made across generations and educational levels, between women and men, and haves and have-nots in Canadian society. Today's Canadians are compared with earlier generations and with the citizens of other established western democracies. volume raises challenging questions, not just about the interests and capabilities of Canadians as democratic citizens, but also about the performance of our democratic institutions. This is essential reading for politicians and policy-makers, students and scholars of Canadian politics, and all Canadians who care about the quality of Canadian democracy. A comprehensive assessment of how engaged Canadian citizens are in the nation's democratic life.