The double majority rule : estimating the impact of a supermajoritarian rule in pre-Confederation Canada
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Political Science, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Raddatz, Adrian
issued: 2017-10-12T15:28:59Z
issued: 2017
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This thesis uses a counterfactual simulation to estimate the impact that applying the double majority rule would have had on legislative productivity in the Province of Canada, 1840-1867. The double majority rule was supermajoritarian in nature, and if applied would have required two sectional majorities from the administrative regions within the province to pass legislation. The thesis compares a constructed dataset where votes could only pass with a double majority to the observed data, arguing that applying the double majority rule would have reduced legislative productivity. There is weak statistical evidence found supporting gridlock interval size as the causal explanation for the decreased productivity, but this is argued to be due to abnormal status quo points and the potential for voting patterns to collapse from two ideological dimensions to one. Finally, the introduction of responsible government is found to not influence whether votes were passed with a double majority. This is explained through the partisan capacity hypothesis, which argues that supermajoritarian rules are ignored when they would prevent a government from implementing its legislative agenda. These conclusions argue that the historical literature was correct that applying the double majority rule would have reduced productivity, but wrong about the impact of responsible government on passing votes with double majorities.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/63262
note: i THE DOUBLE MAJORITY RULE: ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF A SUPERMAJORITARIAN RULE IN PRE-CONFEDERATION CANADA by Adrian Raddatz B.A.(Hons.), The University of Calgary, 2016 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Political Science) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2017 © Adrian Raddatz, 2017 ii Abstract This thesis uses a counterfactual simulation to estimate the impact that applying the double majority rule would have had on legislative productivity in the Province of Canada, 1840-1867. The double majority rule was supermajoritarian in nature, and if applied would have required two sectional majorities from the administrative regions within the province to pass legislation. The thesis compares a constructed dataset where votes could only pass with a double majority to the observed data, arguing that applying the double majority rule would have reduced legislative productivity. There is weak statistical evidence found supporting gridlock interval size as the causal explanation for the decreased productivity, but this is argued to be due to abnormal status quo points and the potential for voting patterns to collapse from two ideological dimensions to one. Finally, the introduction of responsible government is found to not influence whether votes were passed with a double majority. This is explained through the partisan capacity hypothesis, which argues that supermajoritarian rules are ignored when they would prevent a government from implementing its legislative agenda. These conclusions argue that the historical literature was correct that applying the double majority rule would have reduced productivity, but wrong about the impact of responsible government on passing votes with double majorities. iii Lay Summary This thesis will estimate what would have happened if the double majority rule was applied to the legislature of the Province of …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2017-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0357029
language: eng
degree discipline: Political Science
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/63262