Samara Parties and Democracy Project: Project Scoping Roundtable

Background/Vision

Political parties are private institutions that perform central responsibilities in Canadian democracy, and yet many Canadians do not know enough about how parties work in practice. With this project, the Samara Centre for Democracy aims to identify party practices that contribute to a healthier democracy, gather new data that can replace the largely anecdotal picture of political parties and, we hope, foster improvement—policy-based or otherwise—where needed.

Meeting Objectives

By bringing together a small group of individuals with experience working inside parties as well as those who study political parties, we seek to inform the frame, scope and execution of this project. We do not have unlimited time and resources for this initiative, so your help in providing focus will be invaluable.

Agenda

9:00 a.m. - WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

• Introduce Roundtable Participants and Samara Centre team members
• Quick overview of Party Democracy Project aspirations and plan
   

9:15 a.m. - PARTIES AND CANADIAN DEMOCRACY - A DISCUSSION IN THREE PARTS:

• Questions for participants:
  • What do parties do well?
  • What do parties do poorly?
  • How best can we measure parties’ impact on democracy?
  • Are some areas more important than others right now?
     

9:30 a.m. - Part 1: Parties and the grassroots, including:

• Openness and attractiveness to citizens
• Constituency association operations
• Policy development
• Accountability to members
   

10:00 a.m. - Part 2: Parties and representation, including:

• Legislative debates and voting
• MP communications
• Committee work
   

10:30 a.m. - BREAK
 

10:45 a.m. - Part 3: Party campaigning and communications, including:

• Candidate recruitment and nominations
• Leadership selection
• Fundraising
• Pre-writ campaigning
• Election campaigning
   

11:40 a.m. - NEXT STEPS

• Questions for participants:
  • Future outreach: who might be interested in helping us and give good advice?
  • Best strategies for engaging party executive and party members?

11:50 a.m. - SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING COMMENTS
 

12:00 p.m. - CONCLUDED

Registration

This will be a closed meeting and participation will be by invitation only.

Publications