Understanding Alienation in Western Canada: Is “Western Alienation” the Problem?
(6) a relationship between a commitment to the democratic transformation of society and government and the appeal of technocratic modes of social engineering and production. As Laycock’s account indicates, populist protest and sentiment in the West are much more than a reactive response to a regionally unrepresentative federal government; populism is not itself a regional phenomenon. Indeed, it is perhaps more appropriately recognized as a social and political ideology normatively committed to a reconfiguration of both the system of representative government and a distribution of social power favouring any political and economic elites at the expense of the people. Of course, we can isolate prairie populism to the extent that it existed in the context of particular experiences in the Prairies; however, allegiances to populist ideas can plausibly apply to almost any community or regional community making similar appeals to or about the people, democracy, the state, and the “good society
