The Life and Death of an Issue: Canadian Political Science and Quebec Politics

Abstract

How has English-speaking Canadian political science conceived of the relationship between Quebec and Canada? Why has an issue that has been considered central for more than three decades become less attractive, if not marginal, within the discipline? The aim is to examine, from this example, the overlapping relationship between science and politics. The intent is also to show that Canadian political science has examined the Quebec/Canada relationship from four different angles: 1) its interest in Quebec politics was part of the urgency of the moment, based on a crisis that challenged the foundations of the political system; 2) it questioned the legitimacy of the sources of the dispute, namely the compatibility between the new expressions of Quebec nationalism with the presumed principles on which the Canadian political community had been founded; 3) Quebec nationalism also encouraged a reflection on the existence (or not) of English Canada as a sociological and political reality; 4) the combination of the first three factors caused the prescriptions for getting out of, or resolving, the crisis to evolve over time, to the point of rendering research on this issue obsolete.