| Abstract: | This article evaluates the impact of partisanship on provincial fiscal policies over business- and electoral-cycles between 1981 and 2016. There were partisan differences between left-wing governments (the New Democratic Party and the Parti Québécois), on the one hand, and conservative ones, on the other. The evidence is particularly strong for business-cycles, where left-wing parties pursued much more countercyclical strategies than conservatives. In contrast, there was little difference between most Liberal administrations and conservative ones. Left-wing fiscal policies nevertheless lost their distinctiveness during the last third of the study period. The article concludes by discussing possible explanations for this change. |
