Plus ça change…: The Effects of Nationalism and Electoral Competition on Immigration and Integration Policy Proposals in Quebec, 1976-2014

This work is a comprehensive study of immigration and integration policy proposals made by the Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ) and the Parti Québécois (PQ) through the 11 elections that took place from 1976-2016. Where the PLQ is a federalist provincial party, the PQ is the PLQ’s primary opponent and represents the province’s sovereignist ambitions. However, this work posits that the PLQ and PQ propose similar immigration and integration policy proposals. Where one might expect to see a stark contrast between the parties’ proposed ethnocultural diversity management policies, we see periods of significant convergence—both parties, in fact, propose similar policies as a whole. Furthermore, this work examines the impact that nationalism and electoral competition maintained over the parties’ policy proposals. Simply put, this work argues that nationalism is incredibly important for both parties but both parties largely proposed inclusive and pluralist ethnocultural diversity management proposals. The theory of brokerage politics has been applied in order to explain this convergence, in effect demonstrating that the parties converge on this policy area in order to appeal to the greatest number of voters as possible by fundamentally limiting the ideological differences between the two parties