Keeping Party Leaders Honest

Not a leader? Who looks like a leader? Where is the leadership today? Who do you know in the leader’s office?

Today leadership is what Canadian political culture amounts to; the rest is window dressing. So what could be more useful than a tough, data-driven analysis of how Canadian political leadership systems stand up to international benchmarks? Politics at the Centre: The Selection and Removal of Party Leaders in the Anglo Parliamentary World looks like the right book at the right time.

Its authors, both Canadians, are veteran scholars with impeccable credentials in political science: William Cross at Carleton University, André Blais at the Université de Montréal. As we might expect, Cross and Blais deliver lots of data. They compare leadership procedures in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom—a selection that may evoke the old idea of the “white commonwealth,” as if parliamentary democracy only functions in states...