Comparativists will be happy to see two topics central to American political science—electoral behavior and American political development—approached from an explicitly comparative perspective in these books. The comparative referent is Canada, and both recognize important differences between the two polities. While Jason Kaufman explicitly considers the roots of these differences, Harold D. Clarke, Allan Kornberg, and Thomas J. Scotto cite the analytical leverage that such differences provide in order to justify the inclusion of Canada in their study. There is also an interesting underlying tension. Kaufman asserts that Americans and Canadians “think about politics quite differently” (p. 3), whereas Clarke, Kornberg, and Scotto contend that electoral behavior in both countries can be explained equally well with reference to a single model of electoral choice.

In The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences, Clarke, Kornberg and Scotto test four different models of voter behavior across seven elections in the two countries. Receiving central attention is the valence model in which “voters use leader images as guides to political decision-making because they are ‘smart enough to know that they are not smart enough’ to behave in accordance with the canons of classic rational choice theory” (p. 12). Of particular importance are valence issues—“issues where political debate focuses on ‘who’ and ‘how’ rather than ‘what’” and where “there is a strong public consensus on the goal, and competing parties try to convince voters that they are best able to do the job” (p. 12). Such issues magnify the importance of leadership images. Party identification matters, but only to the extent that “flexible party ties … are products of ongoing evaluations of the performance of parties and their leaders” (p. 12). This model is ranged against three alternatives: demographic models that focus on factors such as ethnicity, religion, gender, social class, and region; models that emphasize relatively fixed party identification; and models in which voters choose parties that are closest to their own positions on substantive issues (pp. 18–23).

The authors conclude that that the valence model of electoral behavior is the single most powerful explanatory model of voter choice in both countries (pp. 23–24). However, the valence model appears predestined to win this “tournament of models” (p. 18). What the authors refer to as their “pure” valence model (p. 91) is actually (depending on the specification of the model at different points in the book!) a composite that combines one valence model factor (party leader images) with factors central to other models—party identification and the party judged to be closest to individual voters on their self-identified most important issue (p. 55). That a model combining these three factors performs better than each individually is not particularly surprising.

Even considering the valence model only as applied in the United States, its central prediction as portrayed by the authors—that leadership images are more important than position issues in shaping individual voter choice—is not strongly supported. Position issues exert a greater effect than leadership images in two of the four presidential elections under consideration (1980 and 2004) despite the dominance of valence issues in both elections (pp. 120, 131, 215, 222). The results from the 2006 congressional election are no more impressive. That leadership images were an especially crucial element in an election in which the most important issue (the war in Iraq) was a position issue runs directly contrary to expectations generated by the valence model. The authors protest that 60% of public opposition to the war indicates “valence characteristics” (p. 180)—a claim that itself demonstrates the problems with elasticity in defining valence issues. The valence model also performs poorly in explaining variation between elections. For example, valence issues (as indicated by survey responses to the “most important issue” facing the country) were less relevant in the 2000 than in the 2004 presidential election (pp. 120, 145). Nevertheless, leadership images had a more powerful effect on voting behavior in 2000 and position issues were a much more powerful predictor of voting behavior in 2004 (pp. 131, 162).

Leadership images appear more consistently determinative of voting behavior in Canada even though, again, variation across elections does not fit easily with the predictions of the valence model. For example, a single position issue (free trade with the United States) overwhelmingly dominated the 1988 Canadian federal election (p. 225), while a single valence issue (the economy) dominated the 1993 election (p. 226). Nevertheless, leadership image was the strongest factor explaining behavior in both elections (p. 233). In Canada, leadership images mattered regardless of whether position or valence issues dominated. This points to the possibility that there might be important systemic differences between the two countries. However, while the introduction argues that “[s]imilarities and differences … make comparisons of voting behavior in Canada and the United States an interesting enterprise with potentially large payoffs” (p. 17), the authors never elaborate upon the analytical leverage gained by adding Canadian cases. Most notably, they do not consider the implications of cross-national differences for hypotheses generated by different models of electoral competition or whether the models predict different electoral behavior in the two countries given these differences.

Readers interested in considering for themselves whether the various models perform better in Canada or the United States will be left struggling. The book does not present a summary of the key statistics across various elections. Furthermore, the voting probability estimates are presented in different formats in different chapters and are sometimes even constructed differently. Most surprisingly, the chapters on the United States test a different specification of the valence model than the Canadian cases. The book is essentially a series of parallel but nonetheless individual case studies—each examining the ability of various models to explain the outcome of a given election. The authors might have also considered which model most powerfully explains patterns of variation over time within and between the two countries.

Such an examination would be interesting given Kaufman's contention that Americans and Canadians “think about politics quite differently” (p. 3). In The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences, Kaufman examines political development in both countries in an attempt to explain why “two peoples with so much in common have come to disagree so consistently” (p. 2). His central contribution is the interesting argument that such differences are the result of distinctive legal cultures rather than differences in political institutions, culture, demography, economic factors, or geography. Legal culture is defined broadly as “the network of values and attitudes relating to law, which determines when and why and where people turn to law or government or turn away,” and the focus is drawn to legal systems and “their connection to wider patterns of social behavior” (p. 23). Due to the peculiarities of political development in the United States and in contrast to Canada, a system was created in which “legal title and administrative oversight were unusually contentious” (p. 297).

Despite his many contributions, when it comes to considering the “evidence” (p. 11) regarding the absolute degree of similarity and difference between the United States and Canada, Kaufman unfortunately resuscitates a long-standing debate (whether the United States and Canada are more similar or more different) that is largely sterile and conceptually problematic. These terms only make sense when placed in a relative context. One might more usefully ask whether the differences between any two countries are greater or lesser than differences between either and some third country, between another pair of countries, or at one point in time relative to some other, or on one set of criteria than some other. Nowhere is the underlying conceptual problem illustrated more clearly than in the author's reference to the political cultures of the two countries being “miles apart” (p. 12).

A second challenge arises in the accurate portrayal of relatively complex patterns of similarity and difference. For example, Kaufman asserts that “Canadians support proactive state social programs … whereas welfare and taxes are anathema in the United States” (p. 12). However, reality is considerably more complex. Modern social assistance (in the form of mothers' allowances) developed earlier, more widely, and with more generous benefits in the American states than in Canada. Needy mother-headed families in Canada remained solely a provincial responsibility until 30 years after recognition of a federal responsibility for these families in the American New Deal. Needs-based social transfers as a percent of GDP were roughly the same in the United States and Canada in the mid-1970s, although they have since diverged significantly. As of the mid-1990s, public health expenditures per capita are higher in the United States than in Canada. A similar degree of complexity arises with the example of unionization rates. Kaufman states at the outset: “Unionization rates are far higher in Canada than in the United States” (p. 12). However, unionization rates were higher in the United States from the 1930s to the late 1950s (as Kaufman later notes). As of 1970, unionization rates were the same in both countries and began to diverge markedly only in the mid-1970s. Not only are these complex patterns difficult to capture with categorical depictions but they are also often difficult to explain with reference to distinctive legal cultures. For example, it is not immediately clear why, according to the legal culture approach, the United States initially led in unionization rates and the provision of needs-based social assistance and later lagged.

Perhaps the answer is to be found in the inherent tension in the argument that “though the legal systems of these two countries have converged in some important ways, basic differences in their jurisdictional makeup and legal culture will likely continue to drive them farther apart, politically speaking” (p. 11). This argument seems to imply that the initial factors driving development (legal culture) have been superseded by other causal factors (which differences in legal culture themselves may have set in motion). Without recourse to such an argument, it is difficult to understand how convergence in legal cultures can be reconciled with divergence in politics, public opinion, and public policy—if, in fact, such divergence is actually taking place.

These two works make an important contribution to crucial debates central to our understanding of electoral behavior and political development in both the United States and Canada. Taken together, they raise important questions about the nature of similarities and differences between the two countries and the value of studying the two together. Certainly, both books are to be lauded for taking the risk of moving beyond single-country case studies to engage interesting and challenging questions from a comparative, cross-country perspective. Both also illustrate just how challenging such scholarly work can be.