Prize Watch: Lipset to Ajzenstat

The American Political Science Association has awarded its Seymour Martin Lipset Prize (for works on Canada) to Janet Ajzenstat's The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament, a study in the history of political ideas published in 2007. Much of it is intended as a refutation of

the reinterpretation of Canadian political history introduced in the mid-twentieth century and still in vogue (think of George Grant, Gad Horowitz, Louis Hartz, Seymour Martin Lipset), which ignores the story of responsible government and argues that our true Canadian heritage reveals a bent toward toward populism, communitarianism, and, for goodness sakes, oligarchy. 

But presumably Lipset would not want a prize named for him to be given only to scholars who agreed with him, so we trust all concerned are duly pleased!