From Guardianism to Postmodernism: Historiography and the Interpretation of Canadian Political Culture

This article seeks to go some way toward shedding light on a certain dimension of Canadian intellectual history, specifically that dimension wherein the changing theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of Canadian political culture is the core subject matter.  Canadian political culture will be defined here as that collation of ideas, principles, thoughts and opinions which foster the establishment and continuation of a set of political structures and institutions which are liberal democratic at their foundations.  With this as a guiding definition the article examines the “paradigm shifts” in the study of English Canadian political culture that have taken place from the days of “The Makers of Canada,” through the ascendancy of the “Fragment Thesis,” to the more contemporary postmodernism of the “Liberal Order Framework.” The foundational assumption of the article is that debate and discussion about the Canadian experience in such fields as political philosophy, intellectual history, party ideology, constitutional structure, legislative procedure, executive power, judicial authority and local governance will tend to be shaped by the historiographical paradigm which has been most successful in making itself the accepted “orthodoxy” in the academic and intellectual circles of the period.