University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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Support for Political Community: Evidence from Quebec and the Rest of Canada
Full text linkDespite its diverse makeup and deep divisions, Canada has a fairly solid reputation as a stable democracy and political community but we are repeatedly reminded how fragile this "community of communities" may in fact be. Using new data from the Comparative Provincial Election Project, we examine how Quebecers feel about Canada and Quebec and compare these perspectives to those of other Canadians. We find that support varies provincially, over time and across subnational political communities. And in Quebec, political performance has a strong bearing on support for political communities, even after controlling for other common cultural, structural or contextual explanations
Comparative Voter Turnout in the Canadian Provinces since 1965: The Importance of Context
Full text linkThe relationship between voter turnout and individual-level determinants are well known. So is the ongoing decline in turnout over time. Yet political participation is also shaped by local factors and election contexts. This is certainly true across the Canadian provinces, where there has been a broad spectrum of turnout levels ranging from Prince Edward Island at the top to Alberta at the bottom. Using data on all 134 provincial elections from 1965 to 2014, we find three additional core determinants of voter turnout across the provinces: the competitiveness and multipartism of their elections, the embeddedness (local identification) of their populations, and the progressiveness of their electorates
Nature As Ecology: Toward a More Constructive Ecocriticism
Full text linkCheryll Glotfelty's essay collection The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology was published in 1996, eighteen years after William Rueckert coined the term “ecocriticism,” and yet Glotfelty's main goal, through three hundred ninety-one pages and twenty-five essays, was still to answer the question “what is ecocriticism?”. Many of the essays included in the Reader are in direct conversation – if not outright argument – with one another and even today – sixteen years later still – “what is ecocriticism?” is a question with no easy answer.
This is as it should be. As a discipline that is connected to literary theory by the dual bridges of culture and science – a culture that is becoming increasingly aware of its culpability in worldwide environmental destruction through the work of science – ecocriticism would be worse than useless if it was unable to reinvent itself in the face of this growing environmental awareness. It continues – appropriately – to adapt, not unlike the ecosystems that it discusses.
But how does one define the parameters of a critical discourse that can't agree on its own tenets? I suggest that instead of searching for a definition of ecocriticism in the answers it provides, we look instead at the questions it asks. There are many, for certain, but a few stand out: the Big Questions that are the most repeated and that can often be glimpsed lurking behind many smaller inquiries. By enumerating these Big Questions and synthesizing some of the most important responses to them, I create an outline – a skeleton, if you will – upon which the muscles of ecocriticism can be seen to work. Extrapolating from this model, then, I critique the thesis of Timothy Morton's book Ecology Without Nature and through that critique suggest a constructive revision of Morton's idea of “ecology without nature,” a conceptual mode of responsible, ecological living that I label “nature as ecology.” Ultimately, this essay is both a critique of the current state of ecocritical discourse and an argument for a new, more constructive direction
From Social Theory to Policy Design
Full text linkLittle attention has been given in policy analysis to the creative process of designing solutions to public policy problems. There are a number of difficulties in applying macro-level theories - whether from economics, sociology, philosophy or macro-systems theory - in the policy process. Any macro-level theory will tend to provide inadequate guidance in one or more of three aspects of policy-making: a model of causation, a model for evaluating alternatives and outcomes, and a model of how interven- tions operate. Our current knowledge about which policy strategies work best under which conditions is at best rudimentary. Academic disciplin- ary perspectives focus on a narrow repertoireof policy instruments. What is required is a design focus which draws on instruments associated with a range of disciplines and professions. A design perspective involves both a systematic process for generating basic strategies and a framework for comparing them. Such an approach will require at least the following elements: (i) the characteristics of problems (scale, collectiveness, certainty, predictability, independence); (2) characteristics of goals (value-laden, operational, process of goal-setting); (3) characteristics of instruments (suitability of different instruments)
Designing Public Participation Processes
Full text linkThe purpose of this Theory to Practice article is to present a systematic, cross-disciplinary, and accessible synthesis of relevant research and to offer explicit evidence-based design guidelines to help practitioners design better participation processes. From the research literature, the authors glean suggestions for iteratively creating, managing, and evaluating public participation activities. The article takes an evidence-based and design science approach, suggesting that effective public participation processes are grounded in analyzing the context closely, identifying the purposes of the participation effort, and iteratively designing and redesigning the process accordingly
Reward or Punish? Understanding Preferences toward Economic or Regulatory Instruments in a Cross-National Perspective
Full text linkThis study is interested in cross-national differences in public preferences toward different forms of political steering. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme it was found that there is quite substantial variation between countries in policy preferences. It is suggested that this variation can be explained by the variation in the quality of public institutions (i.e. Quality of Government, QoG). Low QoG is associated with a preference for coercive regulatory instruments and an aversion toward reward-based instruments. The explanation provided is that low QoG is correlated with low social trust, which produces suspicion of defection and an urge to punish free-riders with strong or coercive instruments. Meanwhile, the aversion toward reward-based instruments decreases as the level of QoG increases. The public administration then has the bureaucratic capacity to deal with policies that demand bureaucratic discretion and actors are less likely to free-ride, generating a preference for reward-based incentives and less need for regulation
The Importance of Context: The Effect of the Market on the Framing of Elections at the Subnational Level in Canada
Full text linkIn Canadian media studies, very little research has been done on how elections at the subnational level are covered by newspapers. This paper analyzes the way major newspapers in six Canadian capitals covered provincial elections between 2011 and 2012. The findings were interesting in that they underscored the importance of context in news coverage. Rather than a formulaic game frame focus, with an adherence to who’s winning and who’s losing, our study determined that each newspaper had a distinct voice and focus in their news coverage. This adds a new and interesting dimension to the study of election coverage in Canada
Beyond nudges: Tools of a choice architecture
Full text linkThe way a choice is presented influences what a decision-maker chooses. This paper outlines the tools available to choice architects, that is anyone who present people with choices. We divide these tools into two categories: those used in structuring the choice task and those used in describing the choice options. Tools for structuring the choice task address the idea of what to present to decision-makers, and tools for describing the choice options address the idea of how to present it. We discuss implementation issues in using choice architecture tools, including individual differences and errors in evaluation of choice outcomes. Finally, this paper presents a few applications that illustrate the positive effect choice architecture can have on real- world decisions