Hermeneutic Continuity or Sovereign Performative? The Difference between Canadian and American Political Cultures Revisited Ian Angus Published in Karl Froshauer, Nadine Fabbi and Susan Pell (eds.) Convergence and Divergence in North America: Canada and the United States (Centre for Canadian Studies, Simon Fraser University, 2006). The attempt to define the difference between the political cultures of Canada and the United States has somewhat of a perennial character, continuously renewed in the light of both new political developments and new intellectual currents both within these two countries and also in dialogue with writers further afield. That is as it should be. National political traditions allow for, and depend upon, continuous renovation by re-interpretation and critique. Inability to settle finally the question is not the sign of a failure, but of success, insofar as the capacity of a national political tradition to provide a context for continuous debate determines its continuing vitality. Continuing debate does not invalidate the concept of a national political tradition nor its difference from its neighbour, but rather allows further evidence for a specification of the contextual assumptions that define an internal belonging and the alternatives rejected as absurd that define its outside. The concept of a national political tradition refers to this framework, or context, that cannot be elaborated outside of the various positions in the debate but is nevertheless not reducible to one or another of these positions themselves. Productive history depends upon logical undecidability. In the case of a comparison of national political cultures, some common denominator is necessary. The common origin of Canada and the United States in the English political tradition, combined with the difference in the manner in which each achieved a break with the British Empire, provides a relevant axis of comparison in this