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Articles

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2025)

Electoral Redistricting in New Brunswick: A Contemporized Historical Institutionalist Analysis

Submitted
October 21, 2025
Published
2025-10-21

Abstract

Before the 1950s, electoral districting in Canada was prone to gerrymandering. Since then, beginning with Manitoba, legislatures across Canada began to transfer the recurrent redistricting responsibility to independent bodies, commonly known as electoral boundaries commissions. In the Canadian provincial context, New Brunswick was a late adopter of this innovation. To explain this situation, we employ a holistic approach that derives from historical institutionalism — using its concepts of path dependency, translation, context, and bricolage — to analyze public policy and map out the developments in electoral redistricting in New Brunswick, which culminated in the province’s 2022–23 redistribution.