At the heart of social and economic structures in Ontario at the end of the eighteenth century was land. The relationships that centred around land – who controlled it, who needed it, who got access to it – developed along patron/client lines. Professor Noel argues that these relationships eventually became the basis of provincial party politics in post-Confederation Ontario.
As the province evolved through various stages of agricultural, resource-based, and industrial development, so too did the patron-client bond. This bond became the cement holding together the decentralized, brokerage-based political formations of the mid-nineteenth century. Later, to meet the new exigencies of post-Confederation politics, it was brilliantly crafted into the structure of Ontario’s first large-scale, cohesive, recognizably modern political party: the Liberals of Oliver Mowat.
The primary focus of this study is on political practices rather than ideologies; political processes rather than institutions; political economy rather than the administrative organization of government; leaders, parties, and factions rather than legislatures or cabinets; and above all, after 1867, on Ontario politics rather than federal politics in Ontario.
Noel develops a theory of clientelism to explain the gradual evolution of the key linkages in the political process from simple patron-client dyads to progressively more complex forms of brokerage and machine politics. He presents a revealing study of the nature of political relationships, the influences that shape them, and their consequences.
