Who Owns Democracy- Explaining the Long-Running Debate Over Canadian American Value Differences

8/13/2019 Who Owns Democracy- Explaining the Long-Running Debate Over Canadian American Value Differences

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Who Owns Democracy?Explaining the Long running Debateover Canad an/Ame r can Va ue DifferencesMICHAEL CARROLLniversity o Western ntario

Depuis un certain temps, Seymour Martin Lipset et bon nombre dethbr iciens canadiens anglais debattent de Ia question des Werencesentre les valeurs canadiennes et am6ricaines. Ce que personne na encorejamais demand6 est pourquoi ce debat se poursuit-il aprbs toutes cesannees. Lauteur propose ici que la lon vit6 de ce d6bat dckoule princi-palement du fait quil est alimente par des affirmations idblogiquesrivales et insolubles implicites dans les arguments avances de part etdautre. Comme premihre ape de la dkmonstration de cette id , il meten evidence les faGons selon lesquelles le debat entre Lipset et ses critiquesaurait pu se dbrouler vraiment differemment si les preoccupationsexprimees par les participants a comparaison des cultures canadienneet americaine et levaluation des effets qui se continuent de la r6volutionamericaine vaient veritablement 6tk celles suscitant le debat. Enfin,lauteur cerne la nature prki se de ces rmations idblogiques implicites.Dans les de w cas l soutient quelles reviennent a discuter de quidetient la meilleure forme de democratie >>.For some time now, Seymour Martin Lipset and a variety of English-Canadian academics have debated the issue of Canadia nlheri can valuedifferences. However, no one has yet asked why this debate is still ongoing.This article suggests that its longevityis mainly fuelled by competing andirresolvable ideological claims implicit in the arguments put forward byeach side. It points to the ways in which the debate between Lipset andhis critics might have proceeded quite differently if the participants statedconcerns-i.e., comparing the Canadian and American cultures; assessingthe continuing cultural effects of the American Revolution-had trulybeen those fuelling the debate. The final section identifies th e precisenature of the implicit ideological claims being advanced. In both cases, Iargue, these claims are about whoowns the best sort of democracy.

FOR MORE THAN FORTY YEARS, n a steady stream of articles andbooks, Seymour Martin Lipset 1963a:248-73; 1963c; 1965; 1986; 1990a;The research reported here was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada, for which I m grateful. I also want to thank the three CRS reviewers,as well as the Editor, for their thoughtful and informed comments on the original submission. Thismanuscript was first submitted in October2004 and accepted in May 2005.Contact [email protected].


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2 6 8 CRSAIRCSA, 42 .3 2 0 0 51990b; 2001) has argued tha t the American Revolution produced enduringcultural differences between Canada and the United States. In the firstinstance, he argues, this was because the United Empire Loyalists, who leftthe new Republic to settle in Upper Canada, had explicitly rejected the valuesof the American Revolution whereas the Americans left behind were morelikely to be committed to those values. In his own words (Lipset, 1996b: 23),

[Tlwo nations came ou t of the American Revolution: Canada the countryof the counterrevolution, and th e United Sta tes the country of the revo-lution. The nor ther n nation is much more statis t, Tory (noblesse oblige),communitarian, elitist, group oriented, and deferential. The southern ismuch more individualistic, antis tatis t, antiel ities t, supportive of laissez-faire, and less obedient.For Lipset, these initial cultural differences were subsequently reinforcedby other institutional patterns (most notably, by different religious tradtions).Lipsets work has generated a continuing series of articles by EdwardGrabb, James Curtis and a variety of co-investigators (hereafter: Grabb etal.) whose consistent message is tha t Lipsets core argument is wrong(Baer, Grabb and Johnston, 1990; Curtis, Grabb and Baer, 1992; Baer,Grabb and Johnston, 1993; Grabb, Baer and Curtis, 1999; Grabb, Curtisand Baer, 2000; Grabb, Curtis and Baer, 2001; Grabb and Curtis, 2004).Lipset himself (2001: 97) has called attention to t he fact that his critics are,for the most part, English-Canadian academics. What makes the English-Canadian background of Lipsets critics worth noting is that their critiqueof Lipset is not what someone familiar with Canadian popular culturemight expect.Thus, it has been common since the 1960s for many English-Canadiannationalists to emphasize the ways in which Canada is different from theUS. Lipset (1965) himself took note of this process by pointing out thatEnglish-Canadian nationalists were attempting to depict Canada asa morehumane and democratic society as compared to the US. Although todaythere is no shortage of commentators writing on the Americanization ofCanadian culture (a position, note, which itself presupposes that Canadaand the U.S. were once relatively distinct cultures), there are still a greatmany Canadians who continue to emphasize the cultural differencesbetween the two countries. Most recently, for example, this emphasis oncultural difference was central to pollster Michael Adamss Fire and Ice20031,which won the Giller Prize in the Canadian public-policy literaryfield. Against this backdrop, however, Grabb et al. have chosen to emphasizesimilarity, not difference.Basically, Grabb et al. have advanced two claims. First, they argue

tha t if we pay attention to ordinary people rather than elites, then there ismuch historical evidence suggesting tha t local English-speaking populationsin the U.S. and Canada around the time of the Revolution shared more orless the same cultural values. In particular, they argue that the United


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Who Owns Democracy? 269Empire Loyalists were little different (in terms of cultural values) from theAmericans who stayed behind. Second, Grabb et al. argue that survey datacollected in recent years fail to support the contention that there are sig-nificant differences between Canadians (outside Quebec) and Americans onattitudinal and behavioural measures relevant to the Lipset thesis.But perhaps the most curious feature of this long-running debate isprecisely that it has been so long-running. Even writing more tha n a decadeago, Baer, Grabb and Johnston (1990) could call the debate over the Lipsetthesis one of the most well-known and longstanding arguments in com-parative social analysis. This is all the more true today. What no one hasyet asked is why this debate is still ongoing after more than four decades.The participants themselves would likely give a two-part answer.First, I suspect that they would argue-as in fact both sides have arguedover the years-that studying Canada and the U.S. in comparative per-spective is the best way to gain insight into each society individually(Lipset, 1990a: xiii; Grabb, Curtis and Baer, 2000: 413; Grabb and Curtis,2004: 2-3). Second, I also imagine that both sides would explain thelongevity of th is debate by invoking modernist conventions suggesting thatthe pursuit of empirical truth is what social science is all about. In otherwords, I suspect they would argue that even in this postmodern age thereis some value in using data to decide if the Lipset thesis is right or wrong.What I want to do in this article is suggest tha t answers of thi s sort donot fully explain the durability of this ongoing debate and tha t in fact thedebate has been sustained mainly by unacknowledged ideological claimsimplicit in the arguments being advanced by each side. As a first step indemonstrating all this, i t will be useful to imagine the ways in which thedebate between Lipset and his critics might have proceeded differently ifthe stated concerns of the participants had truly been the concerns fuellingthe debate.Comparing National CulturesSuppose, for example, that the concerns were indeed with assessingwhether or not there were important cultural differences between Canadaand the United States: How might we proceed? Lipset has undertaken tofocus on the five political values that constitute his American Creed: liberty,egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez faire. Grabb et al. haveincreasingly come to focus on a list of four political values: liberty, legalequality, pluralism (tolerance of diversity) and popular sovereignty.Although there are differences between the two lists, even when the sameword (like liberty) is being used, what they have in common is that bothlists restrict our at tention to a relatively small number of political values.But why such a narrow range? Furthermore, why the exclusive focus onpolitical values?


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2 7 CRSAIRCSA, 42.3 2005The fact that Lipset peppers his work with terms like the AmericanCreed, national identity, American character, national character,etc. easily creates the impression that the values he is discussing are somehowcentral in American culture. Grabb et al. create the same impression forthe values on their list. Not only do they also use terms like nationalcharacter (see, for example, Baer, Grabb and Johnston, 19931, but in factsay quite explicitly that the four values they identify are core principles[that] were crucial to the social-structural and cultural development ofCanada and the United States (Grabb and Curtis, 2004: 57) . The fact is,however, that neither Lipset nor Grabb et al. have ever established the cen-trality of the particular values they discuss to either American or Canadianculture, or presented any evidence establishing that the values on which

they focus are more central than other values in the culture (Canadian orAmerican) being studied. Some idea as to how things might have been donedifferently, f the goal were truly to compare and contrast Canadian cultureand American culture, can be had by considering David Hackett FischersAlbions Seed (1989).Fischer studied four waves of emigration from the British Isles tocolonial America over the period 1629 to 1775. Each wave, he argues, wasassociated with a distinct region of the British Isles and with a distinctiveregional subculture. His thesis is that the regional subculture associatedwith these four emigrant groups-in each case-came to shape continuingaspects of American culture. What is most relevant to the Lipset/Grabb etal. debate, however, is that Fischer compares these four subcultures usingtwenty-four different cultural categories, as opposed to the four or so usedby Lipset and Grabb et al. So the question remains: given the wide varietyof values that might have served as the conceptual framework for comparingCanadian culture and American culture, why have Lipset and Grabb/Curtiseach chosen to focus on a relatively narrow range of political values?Lipset might presumably justify his focus by suggesting 1 that thefive values constituting his American Creed were central to the rhetoric ofthe American Revolution, and 2) that his original goal was not really toassess CanadianIAmerica cultural difference generally but rather to assessthe continuing influence of the American Revolution on American culture.Fair enough, but if, in fact, the concern driving the debate were indeed toestablish the continuing effects (or, in the case of Grabb/Curtis, the non-effects) of the American Revolution, then it is still the case that t he debatemight have proceeded quite differently. This can be demonstrated by con-sidering a body of literature, very visible among American historians butgenerally ignored both by Lipset and by Grabb et al., that is directly rele-vant to the matter of the Revolutions continuing cultural impact.Revolutionary ReligionLipset has always argued that the cultural values which came into force asa result of the Revolution were subsequently reinforced by the particular


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Who Owns Democracy? 271Protestant sects that have predominated in the U S . Lipset, 1986: 124-28;Lipset 1990a: 74-89) For some time now, however, a number of historiansMathews, 1969; Hatch, 1989; Schneider, 1991) have advanced a muchstronger argument: the success of the Revolution created a cultural climatein the U S . in which people were encouraged to make the values associatedwith the Revolution central to their religious experience. Nathan 0.Hatchs1989) version of this argument has been particularly influential on Hatchsinfluence, see Albanese, 2002: 13-14). Hatchs argument, in a nutsheI1, isthat the tremendous success of the Revolution1 eroded traditional authority,2) empowered ordinary people to think for themselves independently ofestablished authority, and 3) generated a passion for equality. Carried intothe religious realm, mainly by the Methodists and Baptists, Hatch argues,this led people 1 o reject the traditional view tha t the clergy were a specialclass set apart from other believers, 2 to take their deepest emotionalimpulses at face value, and 3) to believe that they could create a quite dif-ferent and much better world in which to live. Concretely, this means th atMethodists and Baptists were more likely than, say, Presbyterians,Congregationalists and others, to grant local congregations a great deal ofautonomy and to not make formal education a requirement for the min-istry. The great success of the Methodists and Baptists in the aftermath ofthe Revolution, in other words, which was always at the expense of otherProtestant groups Finke and Sta rk, 1992), derived from the fact that theMethodists and Baptists embodied the values associated with the AmericanRevolution in a way that these other groups did not.So, what happens if we do what neither Lipset nor Grabb et al. havedone and bring the Hatch thesis, that is, the contention that populist andanti-elitist impulses of the Revolution hereafter: the Revolutionary Ethos)were incorporated into evangelical Christianity, to bear on the issue of theRevolutions continuing effect on American culture? It seems to me thatdoing this leads to a fairly straightforward prediction: We are most likely tof ind a l ingering commitment to the Revolut ionary Ethos i n those U S . con-texts where th e influence of euangelical Chris tianity has been greatest-andthis in tu rn brings us to an interesting feature of the work by Grabb et al.On Ignoring the Cases That Are Most RelevantLipsets 1963a, 1965) early work suggested that Americans were morelikely to participate in voluntary associations on account of the individualismand distrust of th e sta te th at were among the legacies of the Revolution.Grabb et al. have regularly cited Curt is 1971) as falsifying Lipset, since thedata presented in Curtis article suggest tha t Canada and the U S . differedlittle in regard to participation in voluntary organizations. Unfortunately,Curtis did not include religious organizations in his study, and yet theHatch thesis leads us to expect that religious contexts are precisely wherewe are most likely to find a lingering commitment to the Revolutionary


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W h o Owns Democracy? 273Americansmost likely to express a commitment to equality (on this seemingparadox, see Oakes, 1995). One result of all this is that residents of, say,Virginia, can identify with the Revolution both as Virginians and asAmericans; this sort of dual and mutually reinforcing identification s just notpossible for Americans living in states like California, Oregon, Wyoming, etc.This alone might lead to the prediction that if the Revolution shapedAmerican culture, then any lingering remnants of that shaping should bemore evident in the U.S. South than in the U.S. West.Still, the strongest grounds for expecting that the Revolutions culturaleffects might be especially apparent in the U S . South derives from theHatch thesis, given that the forms of evangelical Christianity thatembraced and perpetuated the Revolutionary Ethos have always been pre-dominant in the South in a way that has never been true of the rest ofEnglish-speakingNorth America. The historical data presented by Finke andStark (1992: 282-88), for example, make it clear that by 1850 Methodistsand Baptists outnumbered all other religious groups (combined) in almostall areas of the South and that this sort of Methodist/Baptist predominancewas not characteristic of other areas in the U.S.Finke and Starks data also make it clear that, after 1850, Baptists inthe South gained adherents at the expense of the Methodists. This is relevantto the Hatch thesis because this exodus seems to have been related to thefact that Methodists-but not Baptists-became increasingly tolerant ofprivilege; more receptive to the idea of a trained clergy; and less tolerant oflocal autonomy. In the period after 1850, in other words, Methodists-butnot Baptists-increasingly abandoned the elements that both evangelicaltraditions had initially inherited from the Revolution. The fact thatBaptists gained as Methodists lost, plus the fact that the South w s far lessaffected (as compared to the North) by the immigration from Catholiccountries in the period 1880-1920, meant that Baptists have come to pre-dominate in the South.All in all then, if the Revolutionary Ethos was incorporated into evan-gelical Christianity (which is the Hatch thesis), then we should be mostlikely to encounter the continuing effects of th is Revolutionary heritage inthe one area, the South, where the sort of evangelical Christianity thatemerged in the wake of the Revolution has been in place the longest-andin fact we do.The Persistence of the RevolutionaryEthos in the SouthLipset has made clear (Lipset, 1996a: 275-80) that by individualism hemeans that type of individualism that leads people to maintain the civilorder through voluntary associations and self-made decisions rather thanby relying on the s tate and hierarchical authority. In fact, this emphasis onthe right of individuals to decide for themselves how to engage and shapethe civil order, and a corresponding disdain for rules imposed top down by


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2 74 CRSAIRCSA 4 2 . 3 2 0 0 5the state, seems to be the common thread tha t underlies at least four of thefive elements in his American Creed namely, individualism, liberty, populism,and laissez faire). These four elements, in other words, might profitably becollapsed into a single cultural category called laissez-faire individualism.Using Hatchs formulation, laissez-faire individualism is thus the valuethat derives from the Revolutionary belief that ordinary citizens can andshould shape both their own destiny and the nature of th e community i nwhich they live without need of guidance by elites.All this is relevant to the matter of the South because studies of whitemale) Southern culture routinely mention that precisely this sort of individu-alism, tightly linked as it is to notions of community and civic responsibility,has been a continuing theme in t ha t culture see, for example, Reed, 1992;Genovese, 1994: 14-15; Wyatt-Brown, 2001: 209). Moreover, historians ofthe South have themselves qui te explicitly traced the origins of this laissez-faire individualism to th e influence of the Revolution. David Carlton 1995:41-42) provides a succinct account of this view:

As we have seen, white southerners had inserted the notion of naturalrights in to the Declaration of Independence and had been largely respon-sible for giving them legal force through the Bill of Rights. Antebellumwhite southerners defended their right to hold human property [slaves]with arguments drawn largely from Locke and the Founding Fathers.With slaverys end . . the conservatism of the modern southern elitehas been th e conservatism of laissez faire, and its language of naturalrights and liberties. States rights and the rights of individuals to chosethei r associates-such was th e language used to defend segregation inthe 1950sand 1960s. Such also has been the basic vocabulary with whichwhite southerners have understood their broader social relationships.The South, in other words, can plausibly be regarded as providing strongevidence in support of the contention that the Revolution and theRevolutionary Ethos has had does have) a continuing effect on Americanculture. And yet, neither side in t he debate over the Lipset thesis has reallyever taken the work by Hatch and others) on the links between theRevolutionary Ethos and evangelical Christianity to heart, and examinedwhat we know about southern culture in light of this thesis. Lipset himself,for example, though sensitive to the matter of regional culture in Canadaevidenced in his discussions of Quebec) has generally ignored regionalculture within the U.S. Grabb et al., by contrast , have taken the South intoaccount, but in an odd way.Explaining Away) the SouthBaer, Grabb and Johnston 1993) used survey data from a multi-nationclass structure and class consciousness study to argue that there are, infact, three distinct regional subcultures in North America: 1)Quebec;


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Who Owns Democracy? 2 7 52 the U.S. South; and 3 the U.S. outside the South combined with Canadaoutside Quebec. Their evidence for singling out the South as a distinctregional subculture consists mainly in demonstrating that Southerners areless committed to gender equality in the workplace and more committed tofamily discipline. Although the authors cite this as evidence that Lipset iswrong (since there seems to be little difference between Americans outsidethe South and Canadians outside Quebec), the fact is that thesegenderifamily measures bear only a tenuous relationship to the strongemphasis on local autonomy, anti-elitism, laissez-faire individualism, etc.that (if Lipset and Hatch are correct) is the main cultural heritage of theRevolution,

In their most recent work, Grabb and Curtis (2004) continue the sortof analysis used earlier in Baer, Grabb and Johnston (19931, i.e., they showthat if you exclude Quebec and the American South, then EnglishCanadians and Americans outside the South appear similar on a variety ofattitudinal and behavioural measures. I must add that, in doing so, theyquite inadvertently call attention to da ta that can be read as supporting theLipset/Hatch thesis. For example, a central part of Lipsets original argu-ment was that the disdain for hierarchical authority that flowed from theAmerican Creed produced higher rates of crime in the U.S. Given this, theHatch thesis, suggesting as it does that the Revolutionary Ethos is mostentrenched in the U.S. South, would lead us to expect that crime ratesshould be especially high in the U.S. South. And indeed, as Grabb andCurtis (160) themselves point out, this is true: the South exceeds all otherregions of the US . with regard to crime rates.To be sure, Grabb and Curtis (2004: 109) do mention that the Southcame to be influenced by some of the same liberal core principles thatTocqueville, Hartz, and others have ascribed to the rest of Anglo-America.They quickly go on to discount this, however, by suggesting tha t the factthat these principles were only seen as applying to whites means that theSouths commitment to these values cannot be regarded as core values inthe way they were core values in the North. Notice, by the way, tha t theyfail to apply the implicit standard being used here (values cannot be con-sidered core values if they are not extended to all groups) in the case ofEnglish Canadians or Americans outside the South. They nowhere suggest,for example, that the failure to extend notions of liberty or popular sover-eignty to women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries constitutesgrounds for doubting the alleged centrality of these values to EnglishCanadian or Northern American culture.On the other hand, it is true that in this latest work there is (finally)an explicit reference to the Hatch thesis. This occurs in a single paragraph(109-10) toward the end of their discussion of the American South. Thatparagraph notes that Hatchs Revolutionary Ethos theory suggests thatMethodists and Baptists were among those most likely to embrace the central


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2 76 CRSAIRCSA 42.3 2005principles of the Revolution and-as I have done herel-calls attention tothe predominance of these religions in the South. Unfortunately, this oneparagraph notwithstanding, there is little engagement with the Hatch thesisin the rest of the book-so that , for example, in the section on voluntaryassociations 234-2381, religious associations continue to be excluded inorder to minimize CanadianiAmerican differences. The South, in otherwords, continues to be more explained away than explained.Nevertheless, th e main point to be kept in mind here is this: the oneparagraph just mentioned notwithstanding, both sides in the debate overthe Lipset thesis-despite any number of passing references to religion inAmerica-have for decades now ignored the clear implications of a veryvisible body of scholarly literature on American religion the Hatch thesis)tha t easily leads to predictions tha t are directly relevant to the matter ofthe Revolutions continuing cultural impact. A parsimonious way toexplain this is on the hypothesis that the goal has never really been, foreither Grabb et al. or Lipset, to assess the lingering cultural effects of th eRevolution, just as it has never been to assess whether Canadian cultureand American culture differ in important ways. So then: What has driventhe debate?Lipset on the Best ort of DemocracyAs most readers will know, Lipsets work on CanadidAmerican value differ-ences is one thread in a larger body of work concerned with democracy-anda second thread i n th is same body of work is concerned with th e social pre-requisites of democracy. In regard to this second issue, Lipset 1963b3early on argued that stable and continuing democratic traditions were fos-tered most of all by economic development which muted discontent in thelower classes); by Protestantism; by legislatures based on geographicalrather than proportional) representation; and by two-party rather tha nmulti-party) systems. Thir ty years later, in his presidential address to theAmerican Sociological Association, Lipset (1994)was still making this sameargument using th e same list of characteristics.Reviewing the various attempts to assess the empirical adequacy ofLipsets argument on democracy is beyond the scope of this article andindeed not relevant to my concern, which is simply to determine howLipsets theory functions ideologically. Clearly,it functions to legitimize theideological claim th at English-speaking democracies which are associatedwith high levels of economic development, Protestantism, two-party sys-tems, geographic representation, etc.) represent the form of democracy1. The fit between the issues raised in this one paragraph and th e concerns of this art icle is not coinci-dental. Professor Grahb graciously provided me with a draft copy of the CurtisiGrabb book (and it istestament to his professionalism that he did this even though I told him I was developing a critique ofthe LipsetiGrabb et al. debate) and I in turn provided him with an early version of this article beforehe had sent off the final draft of his book.


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Who Owns Democracy? 277that is to be preferred over other forms of democracy (assuming that sta-bility and continuity are desired).

If we now fold Lipsets work on the social prerequisites of democracyinto his work on political values, then the full ideological message legit-imized by Lipsets theoretical work would seem to consist of three elements:democracy is good, the democracy found in English-speaking countries isbest, and American democracy is the best of the best. This last statement(that American democracy is the best of the best) flows easily from Lipsetsanalysis, given that the United States not only has all the struc tural pre-requisites for a stable and continuing democracy but also the additionaladvantage of a democracy reinforced by the cultural heritage of a Revolutionthat did not occur in England, Canada or Australia.As an aside, I might note that Lipset himself does little to hide the wayin which his vision of American democracy has shaped his view of thebest sort of democracy. Thus, for example, in his 1993 PresidentialAddress to the American Sociological Association, he (1994:2) ays:In discussing democracy, I want to clarify my biases and assumptions atthe outset. I agree with the basic concerns of the founding fath ers of theUnited States-that government, a powerful state, is to be feared (orsuspected, to use the lawyers term), and that it is necessary to findmeans to control governments though checks and balances.

Given that he so clearly bases his view of the ideal democracy on the Americanexperience, it hardly seems surprising that he finds the American experienceto be ideal.On the Other Hand. . .But if the ideological claim implicit in Lipsets analysis seems clear, what isthe ideological claim implicit in the work of Grabb e t al.? Initially, I suspect,it was simply a rejection of the final element in Lipsets claim (thatAmerican democracy is the best of the best). Over time, however, the ideo-logical underpinnings of the Grabb et al. argument have become morepositive. The shift seems to have come with Baer, Grabb and Johnston(1993), who argued, remember, that on a number of attitudinal measures,having mainly to do with family and gender issues, there is little differencebetween Canadians living outside Quebec and Americans living outside theSouth. At the time, these findings were presented simply as falsifying theLipset thesis. In their recent book, however, Grabb and Curtis (2004) pro-vide a theoretical rationale for the three-region model that contains a moreprecise ideological claim.Grabb and Curtis develop what they call a deep structures ap-proach, the main thrust of which is that the English regions of NorthAmerica, particularly the sub-societies tha t now form English Canada andthe northern United States, were imbued historically with a similar set of


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270 CRSAIRCSA, 42.3 2 5core values, or deep-structuralprinciples, that are traceable to thei r commonorigins as colonies of Britain 248). These core values, they argue, origi-nated in England during the Middle Ages and include things like equalityunder the law; an independent judiciary; secret ballots; free elections; theright to choose from among different political parties; an emphasis on politicalchecks and balances; and, more generally, a love of personal freedom andliberty. It is thei r contention-and here they draw heavily on the writingsof Winston Churchill, Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, and RalfDahrendorf-that these cultural deep structures have made the democratictraditions of the English-speaking world distinctive.Unfortunately, just what deep structures are to the extent th at theterm is not synonymous with tradition) s unclear. Grabb and Curtis tell us,for example, that the term has been used both in linguistics and anthro-pology-and here they cite the work of Noam Chomsky and Claude Uvi -St raws,respectively. Unfortunately, in both Chomskys work on language andLevi-Strausss work on myth, deep structures refers to innate qualitiesof the human mind, which is clearly not what Grabb and Curtis intend.What is clear about their deep structures approach, however, is that itimplies that the four values they identify are yoked and so expected tounfold in unison over time, something that Grabb and Curtis seem clearlyto believe has happened see, in particular, thei r discussion, 46-50). Yethere again, this position can be maintained only by ignoring some impor-tan t historical patterns.For example, the deep structures argument would lead us to believetha t over the long term an increased commitment to liberty one of theirfour core values) should proceed hand in hand with a n increased respect fordiversity another core value). Yet the facts of British history provide atleast one very visible and continuing) example ofjust the reverse happening.Thus, as Lawrence McCaffry (1997: 92) has pointed out, there is a longProtestant) radition in Britain of seeing the Glorious Revolution of 1688as a victory for Liberty over Tyranny. Why? Because British Protestantsdefined the Catholic Church and Catholics as an alien threat t o British con-stitutionalism. Being anti-Catholic, in other words, was experienced byEnglish Protestants as being pro-liberty and pro-democracy. Further, what-ever the current status of this view in England itself is, it i s alive and wellin Ulster. As Livingstone and Wells 1999) make clear, Ulster Protes tantscontinue-very sincerely-to see the ir opposition to the Catholic Church asan affirmation of British Liberty. Grabb and Curtis deep structures argumentsimply cannot account for historical patterns like this, just as they cannotaccount for the intense Southern commitment to the Revolutionary Ethosand slavery.

Still, my main concern here is not really with the empirical adequacyof th e Grabb/Curtis theory but rather-as in the case of Lipsets theory-with th e ideological claim that the GrabbiCurtis deep structures theorylegitimizes. And here again, the ideological claim being made seems clear:


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28 CRSAIRCSA 4 2 . 3 2005Thus, for example, under the argument offered here Lipset is predis-posed to ignore the evidence from the South because his ideological goal isto establish the superiority of the form of democratic government in placeat the national level in the U.S.; calling attention to the survival of theRevolutionary Ethos in one sub-region of the US. would not aid that goal.The fact that the sub-region in question (the South) rose in rebellionagainst the national government that Lipset identifies as the best formof democracy only makes it t hat much easier to ignore the South.Grabb et al. have also been predisposed to ignore the Hatch thesis,and so the South, but for different reasons. First, as a purely practical matter,splitting the South off from the rest of the U.S. allows them to say thatthere is no difference between English Canadians and Americans outside

the South on a variety of attitudinal measures-something they can (anddo) then bring forward as evidence that both falsifies the Lipset thesis andsupports their claim that English Canadians and Americans are culturallysimilar as a result of a common English heritage. More importantly, how-ever, the Souths association with slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. isinconsistent with the gradual but inexorable unfolding of the four coreprinciples that are part of our great English heritage vision that pervadestheir work. Given this, the South must be explained away-which, as Ihave suggested, is what they do. Calling attention to the Hatch thesis, andso to evidence that t he Revolutionary Ethos is alive and well in the Southas a result of evangelical Christianity, would only make that harder to do.There is obviously nothing novel in the general contention that socio-logical theorizing can be influenced by ideology. Quite the contrary, it is acontention central to a long tradition in the sociology of knowledge, and-ifanything-gained renewed currency with the rise of postmodernism andfeminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, it is a contention tha thas increasingly come to be applied to sociological theorizing of times past.R.W Connell(1997), for instance, has argued that European social theorizingin the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was shaped by theimperialist vision guiding European politics at the time; Jean Pederson(2001) has suggested that both Comte and Durkheim wrote in reaction tothe claims being advanced by French feminists in the nineteenth century;Immanuel Wallerstein 2004: 151-65) has linked American sociologys fas-cination in the first two thirds of the twentieth century with urban socialproblems to self-serving interests of privileged intellectual elites; and so on.Nevertheless, while the idea of a possible link between ideology and theo-rizing might seem entirely unproblematic in the abstract , o r in the case oftheorizing in times past, I suggest that a lingering commitment to positivistideals in mainstream sociology often prevents us from seeing ideologicalinfluence in sociological arguments close at hand. Here again, of course, thegeneral point is not original.Some time ago Judith Stacy and Barrie Thorne (1985) argued thatmainstream sociologys commitment to positivism made sociology moreresistant to the influence of feminist theory than was the case for other dis-


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Who Owns Democracy- Explaining the Long-Running Debate Over Canadian American Value Differences

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