YorkSpace

YorkSpace is York University's Institutional Repository. It supports York University's Senate Policy on Open Access by providing York community members with a place to preserve their research online in an institutional context.

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    Liberalism, Law and Social Rights: The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Era of Welfare State Restructuring
    (2022-03-29) Karimi, Sirvan
    Despite expanding the boundary of formal equality, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is conducive to rationalizing liberalism's conception of the role of the state. Contrary to the hasty expectation of social rights advocates who hoped that they can utilize the Charter to advance social rights in Canada, the Charter has in fact been interpreted by the courts in a manner that justifies the subordination of the social rights to the vicissitudes in the economic sphere, which has historically been ingrained as an overriding tenet of liberalism. In line with a long-held liberal principle that the real threat to individual liberty emanates from the state, not private property relations which are indeed the basis for socio-economic inequalities, the Charter interpretations by the courts have, in fact, reinforced a legal rationalization for the neoliberal-motivated forces of welfare state retrenchment which are reflected in the courts’ refusal from imposing any positive obligation on the state to provide the basic means of subsistence for citizens as a matter of right. Thus, judicial interpretation of the Charter reflects and reinforces the nineteenth-century liberal tenet that the judiciary can restrain but cannot compel the state to take positive actions.
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    Liberal Democracy, Citizenship and Class: Unresolved Contradictions of Capitalism
    (2009-07-14) Karimi, Sirvan
    With the post-war expansion of the welfare state, which provided a material basis for the adoption of social right as complementary to civil and political rights components of citizenship, there emerged an omnipresent conviction to assume that the institutionalization of citizenship in liberal democratic societies has not only deflected the threat of social instability but it has also eclipsed social class struggle from the plane of history. Contrary to this prevailing interpretation, which has failed to take into account the fragile nature of the social right component of citizenship, it will be demonstrated that the establishment of citizenship has not surmounted the inveterate contradictions of capitalist social relations.
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    Contradictions of Capitalism and Their Ideological Counterparts: The Neo-Liberal Project and the Concept of 'Social Capital'
    (2011-06-23) Karimi, Sirvan
    Even though the concept of social capital has been around for a long time, it has recently gained a growing currency in academic literature on social and economic development. Numerous theorists, policy analysts, government officials and even international institutions such as the World Bank have attempted to theorize social capital as an indispensable prelude to economic development and democratization. Contrary to this line of argumentation, there is in fact a weak positive correlation between social capital, economic development and a vibrant democracy. The ascendancy of social capital lies in its potential to facilitate the consolidation of neo-liberal project. Social capital is conducive to externalizing the inherent contradictions of capitalist market economy, blurring the unequal power relations, and re-personalizing social responsibilities for economic outcomes which are the main objectives of neo-liberalism.
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    Strikes in the Canadian Higher Education Sector: The Feasibility of Compulsory Binding Arbitration
    (Sciedu Press, 2019-12-27) Karimi, Sirvan
    The prevalence of labour disruptions in the Canadian education sector requires a comprehensive analysis of the adverse implications of strikes for stakeholders and Canadian society in general. Education is a kind of public good that generates positive externalities and strikes in Canadian universities and colleges engender negative externalities as manifested in the infliction of psychological and financial harms on students who become hostages to the hostility between unions and academic administrators. The overriding interests of students, families, faculty, educational institutions, and the broader community necessitate that impasses in collective bargaining negotiations be resolved without resorting to strike. Therefore, there are compelling, justifiable grounds to consider integrating compulsory binding arbitration in collective bargaining agreements as a mechanism to tackle and resolve impasses in collective bargaining negotiations in the higher education sector.
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    The Democratisation Failure in the Middle East: Causes and Prospects
    (2024-01-16) Karimi, Sirvan
    It has almost become conventional wisdom among analysts and experts on Middle Eastern politics to relate the fate of the democratisation process and its failure in the region to the foreign policy platforms of the USA and its Western allies. Contrary to the prevailing interpretations of democratisation failure in the Middle East, it will be argued that the historical proclivity of leftist organisations and parties to conflate anti-imperialism with fostering hostility towards liberal values, the limited scope of industrialisation, and culturally and religiously ingrained competing loyalties are factors that have cumulatively made a significant contribution to the cultivation of a socio-political environment that is not receptive to democracy.