Populism and brokerage politics: an examination of the Cooperative-Commonwealth Federation-New Democratic Party and the Reform Party of Canada

The concepts of populism and brokerage politics have been applied to many different settings, movements, and political parties. Their definitions, culled from a critical analysis of relevant books, scholarly journals, and newspaper and magazine articles, are applied to two different Canadian political parties, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation-New Democratic Party (CCF-NDP) and the Reform Party of Canada. This application provides an interesting comparative examination of the organization, policies and Constitutions of both parties. It highlights the relationship between the two concepts concerning how a populist party can become a brokerage party due to pressures such as those experienced when in power. The application also displays the limitations with the definitions of populism and brokerage politics that make it difficult to characterize definitively any political party as populist or brokerage. The CCF-NDP and the Reform Party are neither completely populist nor brokerage. From this finding emerge several options for the CCF-NDP and the Reform Party to consider regarding their future.