Legislative Experiences, Ideology, and Socio-Demographic Background: The "Orange Wave" New Democratic Party Members of Parliament. Issue 4 (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McGrane, David; Desbaillets, David
• Is Part Of: American review of Canadian studies. Volume 48:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 387
• Page End: 414
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: New Democratic Party of Canada -- Canadian House of Commons -- gender -- visible minorities -- Quebec; Comparative civilization -- Periodicals; Canada -- Civilization -- Periodicals; Canada -- Periodicals; United States -- Periodicals; 971
• DOI: 10.1080/02722011.2018.1540495
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0272-2011

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The "Orange Wave" in the 2011 federal election produced the largest and most diverse federal NDP caucus in Canadian history. This article uses interviews with members of this caucus to study their legislative experiences. It finds that a shared commitment to creating social democratic change generated an overarching similarity in the experiences of these MPs across sociodemographic groups. NDP MPs that were young, visible minorities, and from Quebec were not found to have significantly different legislative experiences when compared to the NDP MPs not from those groups. Female NDP MPs did report different legislative experiences compared to male NDP MPs, but these differences were limited and more present among younger female NDP MPs. The conclusion argues that ideology shapes legislative experiences, interviewing method affects the results of legislative experiences studies, the intersectionality of MPs' identities could be important, and gathering large cross-party interview samples of Canadian MPs is a challenge.