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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

Provincial and Territorial Politics in Canada and Beyond



J17 - Premiers, Cabinet and Fiscal Policy: The Impact of Neoliberalism

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location:

Concrete Floors and Backsliding: A Century of Cabinet Formation in Alberta and BC: David Stewart (University of Calgary), Brenda O'Neill (University of Calgary), Susan Franceschet (University of Calgary)
Abstract: The paper focuses on gender and cabinet construction in Alberta and BC. In 1921 the first women cabinet ministers in Canada were appointed in the two far western provinces. More than twenty other premiers have had the opportunity to select an initial cabinet, but the move from a single woman minister to three or more was a slow process and only twice was a parity cabinet constructed in which men and women were represented equally. Building on the comparative work of Annesley, Beckwith and Franceschet (2019) we present a case study of two provinces. The dominance of party leaders in Canada generally as well as the significance of cabinet in the Canadian system makes studies of cabinets important. As well, since there has yet to be a systematic investigation of gender and cabinet construction in the Canadian provinces, this examination of the cabinets formed in the last century breaks new ground. We utilize the framework developed by Annesley, Beckwith and Franceschet which highlights the importance of initial cabinet construction, identifies those eligible for appointment, provides an ordinal ranking of outcomes, and traces the evolution of ‘concrete floors’, the minimum proportion of women needed for cabinets to be considered “sufficiently representative and legitimate.” In addition, we will explore the gendered nature of cabinet positions by looking at the actual portfolios held.


Harris Redux? A Comparative Understanding of Neoliberalization in the First Year of the Mike Harris and Doug Ford Premierships: Ryan Kelpin (York University)
Abstract: This article details the similarities and differences between the historically-specific terrains of actually-existing neoliberalism in Ontario during the first year of the Progressive Conservative premierships of Mike Harris (1995-1996) and Doug Ford (2017-2018). While there have been many claims of Ford representing a type of ‘Harris-redux’, there are clear issues with portraying their policies and historical/institutional inheritances as a static form of neoliberalism. This article posits neoliberalization as an ongoing process, and seeks to understand the historical contingencies of these eras of Ontario through a variegated neoliberalization lens, which aims to contextualize actually-existing neoliberalisms through understanding previous policy consequences, institutional inheritances, multi-scale economic factors, and in this case, the differing types and roles of right-populism in Ontario’s politics.


Long-term Intergovernmental Dynamics in Parliamentary Federations: Australia, Austria, Canada & Switzerland 1945-Present.: Patrick Desjardins (York University)
Abstract: Scholars of comparative federalism have long suggested a link between intrastate representation and intergovernmental relations (Smiley 1971, Smiley & Watts 1985, Benz 2004), yet, there have been few systematic studies outlining the relationship between the two variables, particularly over the long-term. This paper argues that long-term trends in a federal country’s intergovernmental dynamics can by accounted for by the pre-electoral seat allocation between a federation’s subunits in the central legislature—here termed the structure of intrastate representation. Long-term intergovernmental dynamics are a function of the effective number of subunits represented (ENSUR) in central legislatures, and a subunit’s per capita ratio of seats in the federal legislature. By adapting Laakso & Taagepera’s (1979) effective number of parties index (ENP) for more specific application in the context of federal legislatures, the ENSUR index developed in this paper is used to present data on the effective number of subunits in four ideal-typical federations from 1945 onward; Australia (competitive-centralized), Austria (cooperative-centralized), Canada (competitive-decentralized) & Switzerland (cooperative-decentralized). Over the long-term, low ENSUR federations demonstrate greater tendency toward sub-central policy initiatives and solutions, whereas in high ENSUR federations, the central government’s policy priority is reinforced. Likewise, in federations where subunit’s per capita ratio of seats in the federal legislature varies significantly between subunits, intergovernmental relations are more likely to take on a competitive character. Ultimately, this paper finds strong evidence for a conjunctive link between the organization of intrastate representation in federal legislatures and long-term intergovernmental dynamics among developed, liberal democratic, parliamentary federations.


How Elections and Government Partisanship Shape and have been Shaped by Provincial Revenues and Expenditures in Canada since the 1980s: Anthony Sayers (Uniiversity of Calgary)
Abstract: Provincial governments account for about 80 percent of policy-making in Canada and offer a unique opportunity to test central claims regarding the link between electoral and fiscal politics in representative democracies. Using data drawn from the Canadian Elections Database and publicly available provincial government budgets, we open by exploring the effect of elections on gross levels of government revenues and expenditures in the Canadian provinces since the 1980s. This includes an account of how factors such as government partisanship, longevity, legislative dominance, and turnover shape the magnitude and dynamics of gross revenues and expenditures at the provincial level. We then move on to examine how these same factors influence the balance of spending across major policy areas such as health, education, and social services. With these models in hand, we test standard theories regarding how electoral and legislative dynamics shape fiscal politics in representative democracies, paying particular attention to the bidirectionality of this relationship.




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