Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791-1896

At the heart of social and economic structures in Ontario at the end of the eighteenth century was land. The relationships that centred around land who controlled it, who needed it, who got access to it developed along patron/client lines. Professor Noel argues that these relationships eventually became the basis of provincial party politics in post-Confederation Ontario. As the province evolved through various stages of agricultural, resource-based, and industrial development, so too did the patron-client bond. This bond became the cement holding together the decentralized, brokerage-based political formations of the mid-nineteenth century. Later, to meet the new exigencies of post-Confederation politics, it was brilliantly crafted into the structure of Ontario's first large-scale, cohesive, recognizably modern political party: the Liberals of Oliver Mowat. The primary focus of this study is on political practices rather than ideologies; political processes rather than institutions; political economy rather than the administrative organization of government; leaders, parties, and factions rather than legislatures or cabinets; and above all, after 1867, on Ontario politics rather than federal politics in Ontario. Noel develops a theory of clientelism to explain the gradual evolution of the key linkages in the political process from simple patron-client dyads to progressively more complex forms of brokerage and machine politics. He presents a revealing study of the nature of political relationships, the influences that shape them, and their consequences.