Political Science

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Open Access
Conflict And Solidarity Between Anti-Colonial Environmentalism, Indigenous Anti-Pipeline Resistance, And The Labour
(2025-04-10) Golkar, Niloofar; McNally, David
Climate change has reached crisis mode, and confronting it requires confronting corporations, economic planning, policies that exacerbate this process, and social relations that enable such policies and economic paths. This dissertation shows how settler colonialism in Canada revolves today around extractivism. This fact makes the struggle for land critical and highlights how Canadian nationalism is an obstacle to Indigenous solidarity and environmentalism. In 2020, the Shut Down Canada movement that started from Wet'suwet'en territories against building the CGL pipeline on their land, which was a scale-up from the Idle No More movement, underscored the importance of the Land Back movement for environmental justice. Its tactic of shutting down critical infrastructures was the largest scale in Canada's recent history of Indigenous resistance at the time. The well-documented militarized attacks on Wet'suwet'en unceded territories creates a dilemma that should concern every activist. At the same time, the impressive organizing efforts that started from Unist'ot'en as a space of resistance provide lessons for every movement. The case of the CGL pipeline and Wet'suwet'en resistance puts us at the conjuncture of three movements: the issue of solidarity between labour, anti-capitalist Environmentalists and the Indigenous movement. In this dissertation, I strategically explore possibilities for building strong Indigenous-environmentalist-labour solidarity. Through extensive policy analysis of the critical infrastructure risk management approach and media analysis of the CIRG task force, I explore a hidden link between the security arm of one of the largest global investment corporations, KKR, RCMP, and TC Energy executives. The government's risk management approach has enabled such a link, which facilitates and encourages conversations between the involved actors. The state's claim to the so-called public/Canadian interest in pipelines is of utmost importance to this dissertation. The concept of Canadian interest works as a settler colonial and national ideology of governing; historically and presently, the concept creates an umbrella that includes the Canadian working class as it excludes Indigenous communities, along with the processes of reproducing nature and non-capitalist forms of economy that many radical environmentalists try to create through commons. A lack of land-based analysis of the situation of working-class people in Canadian labour has turned the labour movement into a more economistic version of trade unionism, one that does not actively oppose Canadian nationalism.
Open Access
"A Nurse is not a Nurse is not a Nurse": The Social Construction of Skill Among Internationally Educated Nurses Through the Lens of Feminist Economy and Disablement
(2025-04-10) Vega, Temoc Thania; Vosko, Leah F.
This dissertation examines policies from 2000 to 2024 regarding the assessment of internationally educated nurses' (IENs) skills, including credentials and work experience needed to enter Canadian nursing. I show that federal and provincial initiatives, like the National Nurses Assessment Service and fair access legislation, have made the process stricter, longer, and more expensive. As a result, many IENs are pushed into lower-tiered healthcare jobs, such as personal support work, characterized by high job insecurity, low wages, and increased risks of disability, including injuries, illnesses, and mental health distress. I argue that IENs' downward occupational mobility extends beyond a policy failure or racial biases; it is intricately connected to the racialized and feminized segmentation of care work, underpinning Canada’s development as a settler-colonial capitalist state. It is a continuation of a gatekeeping mechanism where (a) white nurses enhance their power and privilege—like better pay, benefits, and social status—by upholding masculinist and colonial beliefs about skill, often marginalizing labour associated with poor, non-white women, and (b) settlers access a pool of easily exploitable labour to fulfill the nation’s social reproductive demands. Unlike past racially explicit exclusions, the current policy uses “managed” integration, marked by selectivity (higher scrutiny) and assimilation (limited to those who approximate Canadian nursing standards). This segmentation is masked by race-neutral policies focusing on public safety and upholding international applicants' rights to fairness. Despite the advantages of racial segmentation processes, I illustrate how the downward occupational mobility of IENs adversely affects their health and the welfare of impoverished communities in their home countries, particularly the Philippines, and is closely linked to neoliberal privatization and declining care standards in Canada. By integrating insights from critical policy analysis, feminist political economy, critical race theory, and critical disability studies, I develop a framework to (a) examine the ideological and socioeconomic interests integration policy supports and (b) advocate for a fundamentally different approach to healthcare organization, specifically, one that challenges the hierarchical classification of skills (i.e., distinguishing between high-skilled and low-skilled jobs) as the mechanism that determines workers' unequal access to compensation, benefits, job security, legal protections, and social status.
Open Access
The Creatures of the Province Doctrine and the Neoliberalization and De-Democratization of Local Governance in Toronto from 1996-2023
(2025-04-10) Kelpin, Ryan Justin; Murray, Karen
In 2022, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced new legislation, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. The Act enshrined something once unthinkable to people living in the City of Toronto: granting the mayor the power to veto decisions made by the City Council while requiring the council to summon a super-majority (two-thirds) of votes to overrule the mayor. Any new local bylaw passed seen as clashing with “provincial priorities” could be vetoed by the mayor, creating a direct political link on all local issues between the municipal mayor’s and provincial government premier’s offices. This dissertation questions broad assumptions about, and examines and theorizes to what degree, this type of governing was a stark break from, or a continuation of, the longstanding norms pertaining to liberal democratic institutions and intergovernmental governance between the Government of Ontario and the City of Toronto. Using three case studies over the period from 1996 to 2023, the dissertation focuses on three Ontario premiers: Mike Harris (1996-2002), Dalton McGuinty (2003-2006), and Doug Ford (2018-2023). The argument put forth is that in the neoliberal era, the provincial government has routinely utilized the creatures of the province doctrine to restructure liberal democratic institutions and undercut democratic decision-making processes within the City of Toronto. This was done in the name of the neoliberalized notion of “efficiency” through centralizing power and insulating neoliberal austerity measures from critique.
Open Access
Plant-Based Contraceptives and Bioprospecting in the Americas: A Genealogy of Petiveria alliacea
(2025-04-10) O'Donnell, Rachel Tucker; Whitworth, Sandra L.
This doctoral dissertation examines Petiveria alliacea, an overlooked but politically significant plant used for contraception throughout the Americas. Plant materials are often referred to as the ‘raw materials’ for development and biotechnology, but they are in fact the products of local innovation by individual communities. The science of botany frequently disregards the questions of historical and cultural process, as well as the social, political, and economic relationships involved in the creation of pharmaceutical contraceptives and their connection to natural knowledge. This dissertation seeks to redress this. Rarely do we see the concepts in the field of Feminist Science Studies brought into conversation with imperial political processes. By using Foucault’s concept of genealogy alongside key works in Feminist Science Studies, we see how gender is collapsed, both symbolically and materially, onto the process of knowledge production. I draw on Sandra Harding’s concepts of knowledge (2011), as varied and specific to geographic space and culture. This analytical framework is used to explore the political history of Petiveria alliacea in the Americas, from early modern exploration among European physician-botanists and the plant’s ‘discovery’ in the Caribbean to its contemporary use as a menstrual regulator in a highland Mayan community in Guatemala. This dissertation argues that what is now known as Petiveria alliacea in the field and the laboratory has been constituted through the gendered knowledge, discourses, and practices of local communities, as well as the Western development of ‘botany’ as a field of study and ‘science’ as a category and a method. It analyzes primary sources related to Petiveria alliacea and botanical research on abortifacient plants throughout the Americas, including USDA expeditions in the twentieth century and original documents related to the development of the birth control pill. The concluding study of a particular region’s knowledge about Petiveria demonstrates a local resistance to Western forms of health care and pharmaceutical application, and opens up a new line of inquiry in the study of gender and politics.
Open Access
Innovation Network Policy in Canada: Federal and Provincial Differences
(2024-07-18) Rasky, Elia Daniel; Cohn, Daniel
Innovation network policy is a type of industrial policy that first emerged in the 1980s. The goal of innovation network policy is to establish connections between private enterprises, universities, public research institutions, and other innovative organizations, thereby stimulating collaborative innovative activity. In Canada, both federal and provincial governments have fully embraced this form of industrial policy, forging inter-organizational connections through a variety of policy tools and programs. Some of these programs fund collaborative research projects and research consortia that bring together innovative organizations across the country. Others create and fund physical innovation spaces, such as innovation hubs, technology incubators, and science parks. Although many Canadian scholars have examined federal and provincial innovation network programs, none have ever compared them in a rigorous and systematic way. This dissertation seeks to conduct such a comparison; using qualitative research methods, it aims to determine whether federal and provincial innovation network programs are different from each other and, if so, why. The main finding is that federal and provincial programs are, in fact, different in two key ways. First, they target innovative organizations in different industries or areas of technology. Second, they both fund physical innovation spaces, but do so in different ways; federal programs provide these spaces with capital funding, while provincial programs provide them with operational funding. These differences in policy approach reflect the different geopolitical and historical-institutional realities facing federal and provincial governments.
Open Access
Martin Heidegger's Critiques of Metaphysics
(2024-07-18) Matalon, Raan Michael; Bell, Shannon
Martin Heidegger’s Critiques of Metaphysics and Humanist-Political Critiques of Heidegger introduces the reader to the work and controversies of renowned German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). The dissertation aims to situate the critique of Heidegger in his writings as well the impactful meaning of his original and widely acknowledged contribution to philosophy. Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics is of the linear-temporal-causality of metaphysical-doctrinal mindsets denoting an undynamic thinking of the spatial-temporal, all too narrowly conceiving the ontological question resulting in a templated use of force which is violent nihilistic, abrupt, and impacts all spheres of life: philosophical-cultural-social-political. Heidegger took part in the political nihilism of his day. The thinking of the abrupt-end as well as the political crisis of his time also led Heidegger to radicalize the meaning of Unter-gang as thinking the tragic-ruin, nihilistic desolation, an apocalyptic end. Heidegger sought to think anew, ‘telos’ and ‘peras’ as casual-ends-and enclosed-limits, key-core terms that structure metaphysical thought. Heidegger names the event of appropriation: [Ereignis], in the realm of the immediate, as the eschatological utter-most-point-limit-edged-stand, a “step-back” [Schritt zurück], a new thinking of phronesis, an embodied intuitive thinking. As an original contribution, the dissertation offers a dynamic engagement with Heidegger through a new body-rhythm thinking hermeneutic-phenomenology with the following: Unter-scheidung (as separating or dissociating), a re-orientation of directionality by Wider-spruch (opposite in nature, direction in meaning), towards a Grund-mittle-punkt (ground negotiated, as a medium-middle-range-as point hold-footing), rethinking the subject in space-time. The dissertation offers an original perspective on Heidegger’s reading of the German Idealist poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymn “The Ister.” The dissertation reviews intertwinings of Heidegger and ancient East-Asian thinking: Heidegger’s one-stroke-folding-resonance with East-Asian calligraphy. The dissertation reviews thinkers who were influenced by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical enclosures and the phenomenological meaning of otherness, outlining critiques of metaphysics and of Heidegger by a humanist-person-centered approach. The notable thinkers are Herbert Marcuse, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and Jacques Lacan. The work of these thinkers, the dissertation concludes, lead to the unthought terrain of peripheral thinking, a corporeal engagement, rethinking locality-temporality as situated-otherness, as a new praxis.
Open Access
The Reconstitution of Emotions in Political Life: A Critique
(2024-07-18) Reichert, Veronika Shay Helena; McNally, David J.
This dissertation begins with the query: how can the exclusion of emotions, and the presence of a dichotomy of reason and emotion, be accounted for in political life? Using the social history method of political theory—a method premised upon the interdisciplinary and socially-embedded character of political ideas and theoretical works—I investigate the premises of the notion of the reason-emotion dichotomy through a historical, philosophical, and political examination of the passions/emotions and rationality within the framework of the divide between the private realm and the political realm, or the public-private dichotomy. Working through Jürgen Habermas’s influential conceptualisation of the bourgeois public sphere, and placing it in dialogue with the history of the “countervailing passions” theory of early modern moral and political philosophy, I discovered a historical tendency by which the conception of reason is narrowed to comprise self-interested calculative behaviour, set against that which is irrational or passionate. A deep historical investigation into the origins of the concept of “emotions” reveals a second related tendency, by which what is deemed “emotion” is reduced through the broadening of the category to be divorced from and oppositional to the rational. My work demonstrated that these two tendencies are intertwined with the foundational public-private dichotomy of modern politics, by which the political is deemed wholly rational, and the irrational/passionate/emotional must remain outside of politics, in the private realm. These two dichotomies, of reason and emotion and the public and the private, are fundamental tenets of liberal political philosophy, thus posing an insurmountable challenge for contemporary political philosophy which seeks to include emotions in liberal politics. I demonstrate that the exclusion of the emotions, the crux of the reason-emotion dichotomy, is not based on a general exclusion of emotions in themselves, but is actually based upon the social exclusion which is a necessary determinant of liberal politics. My analysis of emotion in liberal politics, and critique of contemporary projects of political emotions, challenges dominant understandings of democracy and of inclusionary versus exclusionary political ideas, theories, structures, and institutions.
Open Access
"Sexual Context Collapse” on TikTok: Platform Politics, Content Moderation, and User Agency in Platform Governance
(2024-07-18) Palombo, Nicholas Gerry; Pybus, Jennifer
This dissertation investigates the mechanisms of governance and political interaction on TikTok, focusing on the intricate processes governing the creation and regulation of sexual content. It scrutinizes the interconnections of user agency, performative acts, and the dominant power frameworks that shape the terrain of sexual politics and corporeal rights on the platform. By integrating insights from Digital Media Studies, Socio-Technical Studies, and Political Science, the dissertation situates the production, mediation, and regulation of public social media content within the nexus of sexuality, performance, and technology. Utilizing a multi- method qualitative approach, the study intertwines prolonged observation spanning two years, video content analysis of one thousand TikTok videos, and semi-structured interviews with seventeen creators of sexual content. The findings reveal a tension between individual creativity and platform governance, shedding light on the intricate balance between digital autonomy and censorship in the contemporary domain of human sexuality and social media. Another key contribution of the study is the development of the "sexual content" typology and the "sexual context collapse framework," which can be instrumental theoretical frameworks for dissecting sexual content and its contextual nuances on platforms like TikTok. The dissertation enriches our comprehension of content creation and moderation as facets of social media platform governance, underscoring the urgency for transparent and equitable moderation practices amidst the rapidly evolving technological landscape and changing socio-sexual paradigms.
Open Access
Planetary Antimicrobial Resistance Regimes and Collective Action
(2024-03-16) Weldon, Isaac Stewart; Hoffman, Steven
This dissertation considers how the enduring phenomenon of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) challenges us to reconsider the way we ask questions about and govern global issues. AMR occurs when disease-causing microbes develop resistance to the antimicrobial agents and medicines that are designed to treat, prevent, and stop the spread of deadly infections. AMR, which this dissertation understands as a primarily social issue, was associated with 4.95 million deaths in 2019. The introduction to this dissertation presents AMR as a defining problem of the Anthropocene. It proceeds to outline the research inquiries and methodologies adopted, the causes and consequences of AMR, and the main arguments and narrative arc across the dissertation’s five chapters. The second chapter explores how the problem of AMR is understood as a series of global collective action problems. It develops a framework to systematically identify the various collective action problems that arise around public and common goods. Applying the framework to AMR, Chapter 2 articulates eight interdependent collective action problems for AMR governance. Chapter 3 then investigates how AMR is governed in today’s interconnected world. It identifies and outlines the emerging ‘regime complex for AMR governance’, which is defined as the array of principles, norms, rules, and procedures that collectively guide human behavior around the challenge. It examines how the complexity of AMR, including its many interlinked collective action problems, has contributed to the rise and evolution of this decentralized global governance structure. Chapter 4 reframes AMR as a socio-ecological problem arising from deep tensions in the relationship between human societies and invisible microbial worlds. It adopts the concept of ecological fit, defined as the alignment between human social systems and biological ecosystems, to diagnose 18 misfits between the social institutions that govern AMR and the ecological nature of the problem. Chapter 4 proposes three principles for designing global health institutions that better fit the problems they are meant to govern. Finally, Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by distilling cross-cutting insights and implications for the future of global AMR policy. This final chapter defines a safe antimicrobial operating space for humanity.
Open Access
The Question of Ethical Leadership
(2024-03-16) Levitin, Maor; Maley, Terry
This dissertation explores the salience of the question of ethical leadership for the radical activist left. It opens with a critique of horizontalism, an outlook that enjoys currency in activist and academic circles, and proceeds to make the case that hierarchies need not be authoritarian and can indeed be beneficial, both from democratic and ethical vantage points. I demonstrate that horizontalism is flawed by examining both its theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of it. In making the case for the desirability of leadership on the left, I draw on facets of Critical Theory, with an emphasis on the ideas of Erich Fromm. Engaging aspects of the famous Fromm-Marcuse debate, I argue that Fromm provides a more robust foundation for a theory of the transition from capitalism to socialism than does Marcuse. I then show that Fromm’s distinction between rational and irrational authority, in conjunction with his psychological ideal of productiveness, lays the groundwork for a theory of ethical leadership. While articulating a theory of ethical leadership, I take to task extant, mainstream theories of leadership for circumscribing the potentialities inherent to ethical leadership. I argue that ethical leadership can find its most authentic expression only in the domain of radical activism and politics. I then delve into the psychoanalytic problematic of identification, with an eye to demonstrating that certain interpretations of the process of identification encourage an understanding of authority that dovetails with the imperatives of ethical leadership. I conclude by providing two real life examples of ethical leadership, Errico Malatesta and Herbert Marcuse, and by discussing the possibility that charisma can be ethical. I contrast ethical charisma with authoritarian charisma and the manufactured celebrity charisma of the culture industry.
Open Access
The Costs of Inclusion: Debt, Migration, and the Privatization of Post-Secondary Education in Canada
(2024-03-16) Spring, Cynthia J.; Vosko, Leah F.
This dissertation explores how the benefits of post-secondary education are affected by constrained public spending, wherein a growing burden of associated costs are transferred onto students. In pursuit of this investigation, I engage a feminist political economy approach to develop and apply the notion “predatory inclusion”—or the racialized, gendered, and classed processes through which the extension of opportunities for socio-economic advancement to formerly excluded social groups undermine the benefits of access and reinforce privileges of more powerful actors. Informed by this approach, which highlights the expropriative character of the financialization and internationalization of social reproduction, my central contention is that the normalization of student debt and the growth of educational migration—each cast by governments and institutions as key to expanding student access—foster predatory inclusion. This dissertation unfolds in 5 substantive parts. Chapter 1 provides an overview of my theoretical and methodological approach to comparing outcomes among domestic and international students. Next, Chapter 2 sketches the roots of post-secondary education’s role in addressing private-sector interests and constructing criteria for national belonging within the settler colonial capitalist Canadian state. Chapter 3 then evaluates the distinct approaches to privatization, adopted by four Ontario-based post-secondary institutions, that reallocate a disproportionate burden of the costs of education onto students. Against this backdrop, Chapters 4 and 5 highlight how two different groups of post-secondary graduates—domestic students reliant on government-sponsored loans and international students with insecure residency status—face higher odds of filling precarious jobs that more socioeconomically secure graduates, including debt-free domestic students, do not wish to take on. Challenging the foremost assumptions of the social investment policy framework, which aims to balance neoliberal austerity measures with labour market activation strategies and demands for greater socioeconomic equality, this dissertation documents the significance of predatory inclusion in Canada’s public universities and colleges and its effects. In revealing how contemporary terms of inclusion in post-secondary education serve to reproduce social inequality on the basis of citizenship status, race, country of origin, socioeconomic class, and gender, my findings underscore the need for alternative policy directions designed to better serve low-income, migrant, and otherwise marginalized students.
Open Access
The Political Life of Anxiety: Market Psychopathologies and the Production of Subjectivity
(2023-12-08) Kingsmith, Adam Taylor; Latham, Robert E.
This dissertation critically examines the phenomenon of increasing anxiety in the context of modern capitalist societies, or what is termed ‘anxio-capitalism.’ The research starts by analysing the historical and conceptual trajectory of anxiety, exploring the development of its definitions, perceptions, and instrumental function in the production of subjectivity under capitalism, feeding a perception of humans as self-interested market actors. Through a survey of market psycho-pathologies that looks at shifts from ‘laissez-faire misery’ and ‘Fordist boredom’ to ‘neoliberal anxiety’ it illuminates how the dynamics of mental and emotional health evolved alongside new forms of economic and socio-technical management termed ‘social factories.’ Subsequently, the dissertation focuses on the rising influence of the biomedical industry, laying out its tendency to commodify and pathologize mental health and wellbeing. The discussion then delves into the intersection of biomedical practices and machine intelligence, revealing a system that fosters a culture of normalized anxiety and self-quantification that is perpetuating the mental health crisis. It argues that a deep-set paradox of dis/empowerment underpins this mental health crisis, as the social factory of anxio-capitalism simultaneously promotes the idea of the sovereign, rational individual yet imperceptibly structures people’s experiences and perceptions of anxiety within a market-driven framework. This pathologizing of unproductive behaviours and emotions leads to their medicalization, leveraging human suffering as a market for pharmaceuticals and therapeutic services. The resultant effect is the formation of disoriented epistemologies that draw people into isolating reactionary fantasies and conspiratorial ‘hypercultures.’ The dissertation examines both the personalizing and de-personalizing impacts of these pathologies on the potentials for collective consciousness and communal politics, proposing a reframing of anxiety through ‘trans-diagnostic praxis’ and ‘anxious solidarity.’ In essence, this project offers an in-depth critique of the systemic structures that produce and manage the proliferation of anxiety, simultaneously probing strategies for responding to escalating mental health challenges in the context of anxio-capitalism.
Open Access
Left Universalism: Towards a Muslim Feminist Ethics
(2023-12-08) Khurshid, Nuzhat Salma; Bell, Shannon M.
How can we understand Muslim women’s agency? Is it possible to see such agency through the rubric of feminist universalism rather than through the standpoint of religious difference? This project presents a critical examination of the creative capacity of Muslim women to contribute to feminist and political goals, not as women who are Muslims, but through their religious identities. My objective is to build a theoretical grounding for a feminist ethic espoused by Muslim women that is not based on difference. Furthermore, I argue that this ethic can be politically engaged, and can articulate meaningful interventions for universal expressions of feminist struggle. As such, it is a critique of current literature on Muslim women’s agency which focuses on their particularity as the only site of legitimate knowledge production. I will argue that an exclusive focus on difference prevents these women from being understood as agentive through their religious identities and serves to isolate them from inclusion in larger feminist political discussions. As the title of this proposal shows, I rely on the concept of ‘left universalism’ as articulated by Sekyi-Otu. He presents a strong argument for the use of universalism as a tool in the hands of non-Western cultures to bring out organic and generative theoretical ideals that lead to progressive social and political change. Within poststructural and postcolonial studies, universalism has (rightfully) been deemed suspect in projects of Western cultural and political domination. However, Sekyi-Otu points out that condemning universalism as an imposition ultimately prevents non-Westerners from reclaiming parts of their tradition that overlap with Western values. Left universalism provides a theoretical methodology to better theorize religious women’s agency, ultimately highlighting universal aspects of feminist agency, such as multidimensionality and relationality.
Open Access
The Pure Heart: A Medieval Japanese Buddhist Political Theory of Legitimacy
(2023-12-08) Bouthillier, Maxime Marcotte; Bell, Shannon M.
Due to narratives stemming from the currently-dominant Eurocentric belief-system, contemporary works on legitimacy generally avoid the inclusion of ‘belief’ as a core analytical tool. However, pioneer of social science studies Max Webber clarified in The Profession and Vocation of Politics (1919) the necessary relationship between beliefs and legitimacy when he demonstrated that structures of authority/power can never be legitimate based only on their existence alone; rather, they find their legitimacy through the belief system which sustains them. This means that to understand catalyzers of political change – even more so the legitimizing of new political dynamics – political theorists need to set aside their Eurocentric assumptions and start engaging with beliefs seriously again. Translating and applying an East-Asian commentary methodology to texts written in the Heian 平安 (794-1185) and Kamakura 鎌倉 (1185-1333) era of Japanese history, this work excavates key beliefs that play a central role in discussions surrounding politics. More specifically, this work focuses on passages found in the works of Buddhist authors, namely Eisai 栄西 (1141-1215), Dōgen 道元 (1200-1253), and Nichiren 日蓮 (1222-1282). Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to systematize these passages into a coherent medieval Japanese Buddhist political theory of legitimacy, while clarifying the core beliefs in which this theory is anchored. This work first establishes that the medieval Japanese Buddhist political theory of legitimacy places at its core beliefs in the heart (kokoro 心), purity (shōjō 淸淨) and karma (gō 業), and proposes political analyses of and solutions to legitimate leadership stemming from such beliefs.
Open Access
Rethinking the Anglo-American Road to Neoliberalism: Public Finance and Welfare from the Gold Standard to the 2008 Crisis and Beyond
(2023-08-04) Wamsley, Dillon Bruce Michael; Gill, Stephen R.
This dissertation seeks to contribute to a new understanding of the American and British roads to neoliberalism. It develops a novel theoretical framework that combines Gramscian political economy with critical literature on the welfare state and social reproduction to provide a more integrated approach to the study of international and comparative political economy. This framework is applied to examine two interconnected themes in the developmental histories of the US and Britain that are typically studied independently. First, this thesis explores the emergence of depoliticization as a model of liberal economic governance predicated on the insulation of economic policymaking from popular political contestation. Against a backdrop of uneven patterns of state formation and capitalist development, the origins of this approach to economic governance are traced in the US and Britain from the gold standard through the post-World War II period. I then examine its role in the emergence and consolidation of Anglo-American neoliberalism. Despite institutional variegation between the US and Britain, I argue that depoliticization has remained a cornerstone of macroeconomic governance in both countries since the late 1970s. Second, this dissertation analyzes the political coalitions associated with the welfare state in each country, focusing on the social antagonisms and class divisions generated between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. I contend that the politics of anti-welfarism, and the historical blocs mobilized around welfare reform since the 1980s, have been deployed as a divide-and-rule hegemonic strategy to generate political support for Anglo-American neoliberalism. By examining these themes concurrently, this study offers an original analysis of how policies and practices that have eroded democratic control over economic policymaking in the US and Britain have nonetheless continued to generate popular political support. Finally, this dissertation examines these themes amidst the re-emergence of crisis management, austerity, and welfare restructuring in the decade after the 2008 global financial crisis. It argues that both countries have experienced an ongoing crisis of social reproduction, which has contributed to an unfolding crisis of legitimacy within Anglo-American neoliberalism.
Open Access
Public Financial Institutions, Industrial Policies, and Quebec Capitalist Development, 1960-2018.
(2023-08-04) Pepin, Christian; Albo, Greg
This thesis analyzes the role of public financial institutions and industrial policies in Quebec capitalist development between 1960 and 2018. This study is informed by a Marxist analysis articulating the transformations in public financial institutions and industrial policies to the systemic shifts in private finance and business organization during different phases of the uneven capitalist development in Quebec. Quebec’s public financial institutions evolved in response to the weaknesses and “short-termism” of private finance. The dissertation argues these policy instruments became disciplined by market imperatives, enabled by class conflicts that made public financial institutions and industrial policies subservient to capitalist “catch-up” and internationalization. Documentary analysis tracks the main regulatory changes of these policies and institutions and the political struggles waged by business associations and unions over their goals. Multiple firm-level cases reveal that Quebec’s public financial institutions shared features with “patient capital” at odds with financialization, but they still accommodated neoliberal corporate restructurings. This process is captured by the concept of “neoliberal loyalty”. While these institutions protected the province’s businesses from predatory rentiers, these firms still faced intensifying capitalist competition in the world market. A case study of Bombardier analyzes if the company’s accumulation practices were consistent or in contradiction with Quebec’s industrial policies. Bombardier became involved in financial activities distinct from its core manufacturing operations, but it still remained predominantly an industrial conglomerate. The case study supports a conception of financialization intensifying financial discipline upon “real” production, and as compatible with the province’s neoliberal industrial policies. In contrast to the institutionalists depicting the “Quebec model of development” as a policy regime divergent from neoliberalism, this thesis contributes to a literature locating Quebec’s economic policies, labour market trends, and overall policy regime as a variety of neoliberalism. A conclusion of this thesis is that public banking should not be considered as a ready-made “progressive” alternative to financialization. This conclusion challenges the assumptions of institutional perspectives on “patient capital”.
Open Access
Speech, Law and Civil Society: Liberal Thought Against Democratic Politics
(2023-08-04) Andersen, Grant Taylor; Maley, Terry
Historically-informed reflection on democracy reminds us of a curious fact: representative government, supposedly the modern form of democracy, was not originally envisioned as a technical solution to the difficulty of assembling the citizen body of an extensive nation state, but rather as a qualitatively different political form. The first thinkers to dedicate their attention to representative government in a systematic way were perfectly candid in contrasting this type of regime with democracy, which they viewed as an archaic form of politics that was at worst anarchic and at best inappropriate to modern conditions. Much of twentieth century democratic theory has been staged as a dispute between the advocates of a normative model of participatory democracy and an empiricist research program that takes the identification of democracy with representative institutions for granted. This project does not attempt to relitigate this dispute, but rather to widen its stakes. Political representation is only one facet of the modern anti-democratic project. The fact that modern democratic institutions are composed of anti-democratic political forms raises a more extensive set of problems than an exclusive focus on representation would permit us to see. Behind the debate concerning participatory and representative democracy lies an older and more extensive field of conflict: the dispute between liberalism and democracy. Whether one considers the norm of popular sovereignty, the use of elections, or the practice of parliamentary government by discussion, a cursory historical investigation reveals that the political forms which today are considered inseparable from democracy originate in a struggle waged by hereditary aristocracies against monarchical power, or a struggle waged by the “natural aristocracy” of civil society against democracy itself. The following study has two stages. The first is a history of liberal thought written with an emphasis on this tradition’s responses to the threat of democracy. This history is divided into three moments, each of which outlines a distinct family of political reflection: juridical liberalism, empiricist liberalism, and parliamentarism. The second stage is an attempt to identify the contribution of each family of liberal reflection to the modern understanding of democracy. In the final chapters, this is extended to contemporary democratic theory, which is correctly understood as the inheritor of liberal, not democratic, political forms, and which renews many aspects of the liberal tradition’s critique of democracy despite its avowed acceptance of democracy.
Open Access
Sovereignty Through Security? Canada's Arctic Defence in the Surveillance Age
(2023-03-28) Johnson, Benjamin Tyler; Slowey, Gabrielle A.
This project considers how materials, practices and semiotics align and structure the development and use of security technologies in the Canadian Arctic. The dissertation asks: does the development of new technologies geared towards surveillance of the Canadian Arctic represent a new approach to security in the North? It is argued that current technological developments are grounded in a particular sociotechnical imaginary that is at once predicated on historical state practices while drawing from a more comprehensive assemblage of modern state strategies that are refracted through a lens of futurity. Notably, how the Arctic is understood and rationalized as a space of social and political life is dependent on a uniquely securitized image of the future. Within this imaginary, the Canadian state's rhetorical claims to sovereignty are threatened by the potential for competing expressions of power enabled by climate change, technological diffusion, and other trends at the international scale. Consequently, technologies developed for surveillance, intelligence, and Arctic security more broadly are designed to support practices of pre-emption as techniques of state power. Canada is prioritizing technological innovation as a governance strategy designed to rationalize and consolidate its power over its Arctic territory. Broadly, this strategy is predicated on illuminating the Arctic using the visible and non-visible spectrums, which contributes to sovereignty as a rhetorical, material, and symbolic signifier of state power and control. In order to demonstrate the interplay between this imaginary and material expressions of state sovereignty, the concept of full-spectral dominance is deployed as a technique of power that captures the state's security ambitions through the joint practices of surveillance and intelligence (sensing). This concept is illustrated through an examination of current technological developments being pursued by the Canadian state through the All Domain Situational Awareness (ADSA) Program led by National Defence along with related programs and developments. In sum, these developments exhibit how increasingly imaginative views of the Arctic’s future contour state-led practices in the present.
Open Access
Conflicting Visions: Political Struggle Over Urban Space in Lawrence Heights
(2023-03-28) Careless, Jon Robert; Latham, Robert E.
This dissertation is a case-study of a public housing district in North York, Toronto known as Lawrence Heights, a so-called “priority neighborhood” undergoing the largest “urban revitalization” project in Canada. Typically, a revitalization is formed through a public-private partnership between a government and private developers, which together direct the razing of a disinvested area, followed by the building of new residential developments, commercial businesses, and public amenities in its place. It happens that government officials, planners, architects, and developers are employing enormous resources towards a revitalization project unfolding in the context of late neoliberalism (as a once revolutionary paradigm) undergoing fracturing since the crisis of 2008. In this situation, however, people continue struggling against, and are actively resisting, the long-standing and increasingly visible consequences of neoliberalism as a market-driven de-democratizing force that has leveled social service provision while also driving up living costs. The research uncovers forms of political conflict that have arisen during the Lawrence Heights revitalization. In so doing, I map out a chronological narrative detailing the past and present of this district as it continues transforming. To this end, I address the following questions: What do ongoing relations between interested parties involved in remaking Lawrence Heights tell us about the capacity for late neoliberalism to absorb and modify the multiple visions put forward for the neighbourhood’s future that align with its principles? What political outcomes arise in the deliberations over the use and distribution of resources associated with the revitalization? How do these interactions in this localized case study fit into larger struggles between different groups to leverage the state to institute certain policies in an environment where neoliberalism’s negative impacts on poorer communities have fueled energetic counter-pressures? Borrowing from Gramscian thought, this dissertation argues that the early stages of the Lawrence Heights revitalization suggests the potential unfolding of a localized passive revolution with grassroots anti-systemic organizers seizing meaningful levels of control over the direction of revitalization planning, as evidenced by their securement of resources for resident-led programs, employment opportunities, and decision making power, while struggling against the prevailing limits and power enforced by neoliberal policy regimes.
Open Access
SECULARISM, FEMINISM, AND ISLAMOPHOBIA: A STUDY OF ANTI-VEILING LAWS IN FRANCE AND QUEBEC
(2022-12-14) Jahangeer, Roshan Arah; Agathangelou, Anna M.
Anti-veiling laws require Muslim women to un-cover parts of their bodies in order to work, go to school, or even walk in public space. Since 2004, French-style anti-veiling laws have been debated and enacted globally, including in Quebec, Canada. My research asks: How and why have anti-veiling laws been enacted in both France and Quebec? How have anti-veiling laws circulated transnationally between these two sites? What are the impacts of anti-veiling laws on Muslim women who practice veiling in France and Quebec? Using a qualitative approach, I spent nine-months conducting fieldwork research in Paris and Montreal between 2012 and 2014. I interviewed 47 Muslim women who currently, previously, or periodically wore a headscarf or face-veil, and/or who identified as activists who opposed anti-veiling laws. To analyse my data, I used Saidian citational analysis alongside a transnational feminist and critical race theoretical framework. The dissertation shows that political leaders in both France and Quebec used anti-veiling laws as a legal-political strategy to solidify their national identities around “la nouvelle laïcité,” an identity-based secularism that takes Islam, rather than Catholicism, as its main interlocutor. It also shows how a number of politicians, feminists, and media purveyors facilitated the circulation of anti-veiling laws between France and Quebec by sharing common assumption, lexicons, knowledge, and expertise, and by forming powerful networks through traveling, organizing conferences, and writing books. My findings also demonstrate that anti-veiling laws increased Islamophobia in both France and Quebec, prompting veiled Muslim women to develop survival strategies to mitigate its impacts on their everyday lives. Survival strategies included changing the way they dressed; changing their jobs or studies; starting their own associations or businesses; withdrawing from society; engaging in political/feminist activism; and finally, migration (hijra). My findings suggest that instead of promoting secularism and gender equality, anti-veiling laws negatively impact Muslim women’s education and employment—forcing them to choose between their religion and their daily survival. Their migration away from France/Quebec may also exacerbate labour shortages in sectors that require highly-skilled workers. Finally, I discuss threats to democratic minority rights that anti-veiling laws enable, including ongoing legal challenges to them.