Negative Statesmanship

For decades, academics such as Donald Savoie and journalists such as Jeffrey Simpson have been documenting the concentration of power in the central structures of government around the prime minister. Some have attributed this centralization to political ambition, while others cite the more benign necessity of managing an increasingly fragmented and continuous news cycle. Invariably, however, this analysis has been accompanied by warnings that this trend poses a direct threat to our traditions of parliamentary democracy.

Now, with the publication of Harperland: The Politics of Control, Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin has entered this fray and one-upped past observers by claiming that Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has taken “the politics of control” to an entirely new level—and in this case, the intent is most emphatically personal. For Martin, this tendency is no mere response to a more fractured and frenzied media, but a...