Quebec: Interest Groups and the Search for an Alternative Political System

Nearly fifteen years ago Quebec entered an active period of socio-political unrest. A people who had undergone considerable changes in their objective condi tions of living without a corresponding change in their social consciousness suddenly found themselves forced, by their political leaders, to realize the extent of their maladjustment to a predominately urban and highly industrialized society and pressured to readjust their position. The Union Nationale Party was thrown into temporary disarray by the sudden deaths of Maurice Duplessis—uncontested master of the province—on August 30, 1959 and of his successor, Paul Sauvé, scarcely four months after he came to power. The Liberal Party under Jean Lesage was thus able to win the provincial election in June 1960. This event precipi tated what has been labelled the quiet revolution. The Lesage program manifested a new desire to modernize the mechanisms of the state and to seize the initiative in policies of economic and social development. This set off a reform movement which, we can safely say, went beyond the ambitions of its initiators. The process of rationalizing the administrative mechanisms of a modern bureaucratic state created a wave of cultural shock which was felt at all levels of the society. Such changes could not occur without putting great pressures on the population or without having unex pected consequences, the most important being the rebirth of the Quebec nationalist ideology as a political movement and the formation of various kinds of popular movements.