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Political legitimacy and regime change : the 1972 British Columbia election

University of British Columbia

The 1972 British Columbia general election marked the end of the twenty-year dominance of the Social Credit Party and Premier W.A.C. Bennett. Dave Barrett led the New Democratic Party to its first majority government ushering in the first Social Democratic government in the province's history. The reversal of Social Credit fortunes in 1972 should not be seen, however, as a rejection of the core values of the Social Credit party, but rather as a crisis of legitimacy faced by the party and its aging leader. As a case study, the 1972 election provides an opportunity to examine the agenda-setting function of media during an election campaign and the effects of declining political legitimacy and trust on voter behaviour.

Text

2012-09-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43282

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University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/