University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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The 2015 Newfoundland and Labrador Election: Liberals Have a Ball as PC Party Suffers from Post-Williams Hangover
Full text linkFrom 2003 to 2010, Premier Danny Williams maintained a tight grip on the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party of Newfoundland and Labrador and the provincial government. His chosen successor Kathy Dunderdale carried the party to a third consecutive majority government in 2011. But the new energy of her leadership masked serious cracks in the PC Party foundation. Barely two years into her mandate, Premier Dunderdale resigned, setting in motion further political instability as the party fumbled to replace her. All the while, Dwight Ball and the Liberal Party won by-election after by-election, public opinion poll after poll. That the Liberals would form the government after the 2015 general election was a certainty; that the opposition won so many seats in a smaller legislature was the surprise. Early in his tenure, Premier Williams often remarked that he was responsible for cleaning up the economic mess left by the previous administration. With growing budget deficits stemming from overspending, coupled with declining offshore oil revenues, the economic problems and difficult decisions awaiting Premier Ball and the Liberal government are just as ominous
Nudging: How human behavior is affected by design
Full text linkA statement in this article expresses that there is no such thing as neutral design, and that the way something is designed will affect the person using it in one way or another. With a basis in this idea it becomes interesting to look at how design affects people in ways they do not necessarily recognize momentarily. Nudging, as a method, aims to create predictable behavioral outcomes through the premises of how the human brain perceives the world and makes decisions. This article presents this term and its theoretical background before placing it in a service design context. Alongside several different examples of public nudging, a case study is briefly mentioned to illustrate a project where nudging is beneficial to reach the intended goal. The article shows that there is an important ethical discussion related to this subject, and both the arguments criticizing and defending the method are presented before this is discussed further. The aim of the article is to highlight the importance of being aware of the effect design might have on people, and to encourage designers to reflect on their responsibility when designing new solutions
Applying Insights from Behavioral Economics to Policy Design
Full text linkThe premise of this article is that an understanding of psychology and other social science disciplines can inform the effectiveness of the eco- nomic tools traditionally deployed in carrying out the functions of government, which include remedying market failures, redistributing income, and collecting tax revenue. An understanding of psychology can also lead to the development of different policy tools that better motivate desired behavior change or that are more cost-effective than traditional policy tools. The article outlines a framework for thinking about the psychology of behavior change in the context of market fail- ures. It then describes the research on the effects of a variety of interven- tions rooted in an understanding of psychology that have policy-relevant applications. The article concludes by discussing how an understanding of psychology can also inform the use and design of traditional policy tools for behavior change, such as financial incentives
The Structure of Ill Structured Problems
Full text linkThe boundary between well structured and ill structured ~roblems is vague, fluid and not susceptible to formalization. Any problem solving process w'iii appear ill structured if the problem solver is a serial machine that has access to a ~w:-yiarge long-term memory of potentially relevant information, and]or access to a very large exterlm! memory that provides information about the actual real-world c~,sequences of problem-~olving actions. There is no reason to suppose that new and hitherto uaknown concepts or teckniques are needed to enable artificial intelligence systems to operate successfully in domains that have these characteristics
Evaluating the use and impact of Web 2.0 technologies in local government
Full text linkSecond generation web-based technologies (Web 2.0) such as social media and networking sites are increasingly being used by governments for activities ranging from open policy making to communication campaigns and customer service. However, this in turn has brought about additional challenges. By its very nature, Web 2.0 tech- nologies are more interactive than the traditional models of information provision or creation of digital services. Such technologies open up a new set of benefits, costs and risks to those government authorities who make use of these social and digital media to enhance their work. This study draws on the extant literature together with an in-depth qualitative case enquiry to propose an emergent framework for evaluating the intra-organisational use of Web 2.0 technologies and its impact on local government. The study findings identified additional four factors (i.e. benefits: intra-marketing, informal engagement, costs: workload constraints and risk: integration with other systems) as part of the evaluation criteria which have not previously been discussed in the existing literature surrounding the context of Web 2.0 use in local government. The study concludes that a combined analysis of the evaluation and impact assessment factors, rather than one particular approach would better assist decision makers when implementing Web 2.0 technologies for use by public administration employees
Bringing the provinces back in: Re-evaluating the relevance of province-building to theories of Canadian federalism and multi-level governance
Full text linkThree decades have passed since Canadian political scientists last seriously engaged with the concept of province-building. Popular in the 1970s as a means for explaining patterns of policy-making and constitutional politics in Canada, the currency of province-building met an abrupt end after its analytical use was questioned by Young, Faucher and Blais in 1984. Thirty years on, this discussion piece revisits their critique and, far from finding the idea void of empirical validity or theoretical utility, suggests that province-building continues to best capture the general structure of policy formulation and implementation in Canada and provides lessons for how to examine matters of authority and decision-making in multi-level settings
Going Negative: Campaigning in Canadian Provinces
Full text linkThe study of political communication in Canada’s provinces suffers from an absence of pan-Canadian information. This descriptive article bridges the gap by documenting some observable trends. It submits that negative advertising is more intense in larger provinces than in smaller jurisdictions. Permanent campaigning is the new normal as electioneering ramps up in anticipation of a fixed date election. Provincial parties and citizens avail themselves of new technology by communicating with digital video, which is not subject to the same financial, technical, content or regulatory constraints as television. Similarities of political communication across Canada are noted, including copycatting of federal-level practices
Public, Private, and Non-profit Sector Employees: Voting Behaviour and Ideology in the 2011-2012 Provincial Elections
Full text linkThis paper focuses attention on the political orientation and civic behaviour of people working in the non-profit, private, and public sectors. While considerable research has been completed to understand how variables such as age and gender influence voting patterns, one variable that remains understudied is employment by sector. To develop hypothesis statements for this research, this paper begins with the Bureau Voting Model which is rooted in rational choice theory. The hypothesis statements are tested using data from the SSHRC-funded Canadian Provincial Election Project (CPEP) Survey, conducted post-provincial election in 2011-2012 in eight provinces. The paper concludes that while there were diverging orientations amongst employees in the three sectors, there were also some areas of convergence to suggest that there may be substantial diversity within each sector
Rural, Suburban and Urban Voters: Dissecting Residence Based Voter Cleavages in Provincial Elections
Full text linkWe explore provincial-level cleavages by drawing on surveys administered during eight elections. More specifically, we examine rural-suburban-urban divisions in regards to party support within Canadian provinces. Our results show a clear division according to place of residence, even after controlling for a host of individual-level characteristics. We argue that recognition of this rural-suburban-urban division is an important and often overlooked aspect of understanding Canadian political preferences and political behaviour more generally