Can I fake/mock the type of my mock objects in python unittests

This is more-or-less exactly why you shouldn't enforce strict typechecking! You should remove that line from the code entirely.

If you don't want to do that, write an abstract base class with the properties you want to have (.connect(), .cursor(), ...?) and check isinstance of that.

_{Also <> has been obsolete for aaages. Use !=.}

With all due respect, It looks like you guys are not quite right!

I can use duck typing as said, but there is a way to do what I intended to do in the first place:

from http://docs.python.org/dev/library/unittest.mock.html

Mock objects that use a class or an instance as a spec or spec_set are able to pass isintance tests:

>>>
>>> mock = Mock(spec=SomeClass)
>>> isinstance(mock, SomeClass)
True
>>> mock = Mock(spec_set=SomeClass())
>>> isinstance(mock, SomeClass)
True

so my example code would be like:

m = mock.MagicMock(spec=bpgsql.Connection)
isinstance(m, bpgsql.Connection) 

this returns True

All that said, I am not arguing for strict type checking in python, I say if you need to check it you can do it and it works with testing and mocking too.