Summary Of The Origins Of Canadian And American Political Differences By Jason Kaufman

Lipset goes on to argue that while Americans rejoiced in the overthrowing of their oppressive European ties, Canadians took on a much different path, choosing instead to react against these liberal revolutions. Lipset observes that there was a conscious attempt to establish a conservative and monarchical society in Canada that vastly contrasted with the aims and attempts of their southern neighbors. So why does it appear that the loyalties held by Canada run significantly deeper than their geographical neighbor? He credits this phenomenon to the fact that Canada was not yet viable as a stand-alone nation and was heavily dependent on their mother country, Britain. Contrastingly, American colonies certainly were capable of being independent, …show more content…
Lipset broadly focuses on the political culture and how it relates to each countries respective development. Kaufman takes issue with Lipset’s “tautological reasoning” (27) directly engaging with him to argue that his methodology establishes national ideology as both the cause and the effect of the political differences. Kaufman takes a more nuanced stance, in his book, The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences, to instead argue that legal regimes, bounded by clear jurisdictional limits, are “largely the explanation we seek in asking why the political culture in one place differs from that in another” (299). He convincingly notes that legal regimes shape human action in ways that are “verifiable, common, explainable, and concrete” (6), and that the tangible evolution of the socio-legal development underlies the greatest contemporary differences between the …show more content…
He posits that the starting point for each countries divergence began in the way the countries engaged with the English legal systems. Americans, unlike Canadians, chose to hand-pick laws from British precedent as they saw fit, redesigning the original system as a whole. Kaufman establishes that “without clear legal title or administrative oversight, the American colonies grew restless with their imperial statures… [and] broke away from the Crown” (297). This experience pushed America towards a revolution, and it is here where Kaufman begins to align more with the views expressed by Lipset. Like Lipset, Kaufman expresses the rhetoric that American Revolution fostered an attitude of suspicion regarding central forms of government. This attitude carried into the drafting of the constitution where details and clauses were aimed at restricting the power of the national government, leaving the actual responsibilities to the states. To do so, Kaufman notes that the role of the federal government was very clearly described, while the function of the state governments was left contrastingly unclear. While the intent of this was to limit the role of federal governments (creating stricter guidelines for the government to