Personalistic politics on Prince Edward Island : towards a subnational approach to personalism and democracy

Abstract

This paper engages with the scholarly discourse on the effects of size on democracy by exploring the applicability of small state personalism theory to subnational jurisdictions. Using Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, as a case study, this research attempts to determine whether personalism is strictly a feature of small states and whether it might also apply to small polities more generally. The study, which relies on secondary literature and some primary sources, shows that personalism works well to describe politics in the province. Implications of these findings are reviewed, including the effect of subnationality on personalism, the potential of personalism theory for other subnational jurisdictions, and a brief exploration of the potential effect of the stage of development and maturity of political institutions. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of possible future research directions.