The decline of the New Democratic Party, the politics of postmaterialism or neo-liberalism?

grantor: University of TorontoThe New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada's social democratic party, suffered a precipitate decline during the 1990s. They received an average of almost 20% of the vote during the 1980s, but gained only 7% in the vote in 1993 and 11% in 1997. This dissertation considers Inglehart's postmaterialist thesis and Lipset's declining-significance-of-class thesis as possible explanations for the NDP's decline. Lipset focuses on the decline of materialist politics whereas Inglehart focuses on the rise of a new postmaterialist politics, however both scholars argue that due to a prolonged period of peace and prosperity in the postwar years, a growing share of the population have their material needs met. In the political realm, this segment of the population has turned its attention toward postmaterialist issues such as support for the environment, minority rights, and other quality-of-life issues. The postmaterialist thesis implies that the NDP has suffered because they remain wedded to a materialist politics. However, using data from the Canadian Election Studies (1984-1997), I found that postmaterialist issues have had a modest impact in shaping people's ideological outlooks. In addition, postmaterialist issues have played a minor role in structuring recent federal elections. I trace the NDP's decline to the shift in the balance of power in Canada toward the corporate class at the expense of organized labour and "working people". The neo-liberal ideology which champions the free market and legitimizes stark social inequalities, has become hegemonic in the past decade. This ideology portrays the NDP, which maintains that the state should play a key role in the redistribution of wealth, as passé and out of touch with the realities of the global economy. As a result of these economic and ideological shifts the NDP is increasingly disadvantaged in mustering resources with which to contest elections.Ph.D