“The years 2006 to 2009 were not pleasant for the Liberal Party of Canada,” writes political scientist Royce Koop. Had he only known how much worse it was to get by 2011 … But solving Liberal electoral woes is not the purpose of his new book, Grassroots Liberals: Organizing for Local and National Politics. Instead he aims to fill a gap in our understanding of how grassroots activism plays out in the Liberal Party. Why the focus on Liberals? Because of past organizational effectiveness, with the party having won over half of the 40 federal elections since Confederation, and more than two thirds since the extension of the franchise in 1918.
“One might think that political scientists would be intent on understanding the type of organization that the Liberal Party has evolved to attain such a record of electoral success,” Koop observes. Paradoxically up to the present there has been more academic attention paid to party organization within the NDP and several...
Martha Hall Findlay is an executive fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. She was elected twice as a member of Parliament and served in the Liberal Shadow Cabinet as Official Opposition Critic for International Trade; Associate Finance; Transport, Infrastructure and Communities; and Public Works and Government Services. She was a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada in 2006 and 2013.
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