Hope and Fear Revisited: Did the Provincial Election of 2007 Mark the Transition to a Stable Two-Party System in Saskatchewan?

Abstract

The Saskatchewan provincial election of November 2007 brought the new Saskatchewan Party to power, ending 16 years of NDP rule. Observers have been divided over the significance of the rise of the Saskatchewan Party between those who see provincial politics as continuing on its course of ideological polarization between parties of the left and the right and those who detect a convergence on the political centre. Arguing that polarized politics is best understood by a historical approach to party systems, and convergence politics by an institutional approach, this paper examines the evidence for polarization and convergence in Saskatchewan politics. It concludes that there is evidence for a new party system based on convergence, a system that first appears in 2003 after a transitional period in the 1990s.