University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
Not a member yet
560 research outputs found
Sort by
Assessing Policy Design and Interpretation: An Institutions-Based Analysis in the Context of Aquaculture in Florida and Virginia, United States
Full text linkRecently in the field of policy studies, there has been a renewed interest in research that connects policy design with broader governance outcomes. As opposed to past studies of policy design that have characterized policies along broad categories of variables, however, recent studies have sought to systematically assess the language of public policies and resultant outcomes. This paper contributes to the existing and emerging literature on policy design by coupling a content analysis of polices governing the aquaculture industry in two U.S. states and interviews with aquaculture commu- nity members to understand policy design and perceptions of policy legitimacy, coerciveness, and enforcement
The 2012 Provincial Election in Quebec
Full text linkThe 2012 provincial election in Quebec marked a change in government, and the election of Quebec’s first woman as Premier. The campaign was held in a dramatic context characterized by nearly three years of allegations of corruption, the apparent decline of the sovereignty movement, and the events of the famous “maple spring” which pitted students against the Liberal government on the issue of tuition fee hikes. Two significant new political parties, the Coalition Avenir Québec and Option Nationale, also took part in this election. The outcome was a minority government led by Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois, with stronger than expected support for the incumbent Liberal Party of Quebec who finished second with only four seats less than the PQ
Gaard, Greta, Simon C. Estok, and Serpil Opperman, eds. International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.
No full textVellum, Visions and Pastoral Transpositions
Full text linkBringing together the visual, the literary and the material, ‘pastoral’ is a complex concept. It has idyllic and labour-intensive connotations, alludes to the religious and the agricultural, and has specific generic traditions as well as often less clearly articulated quotidian uses. The analyses of Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth and J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K trace the transposition of pastoral into the Australian and South African contexts respectively, showing the ways in which various interpretations and uses of the pastoral inform and is informed by the politics of the novels. In particular, attention is paid to the paradigm of visuality, of seeing and of being seen, of landscape and landscaping, and of the power positions entailed by these practices. Pastoral, anti-pastoral, post-pastoral; as legal term, landscape tradition, land-use practice: The metaphor of vellum picks up on all of these characteristics as a leitmotif for reading postcolonial pastoral as deference to as well as difference from pastoral traditions
Constitutional Peace, Political Order, or Good Government? Organizing and Assessing Scholarly Views on the 2008 Prorogation
No full textIn this paper, I report the views of 25 constitutional scholars on the 2008 prorogation. Using a mixed methods approach, support within the sample for propositions published between 2008 and 2012 is presented. A large majority agree that the governor general had discretion in 2008 to refuse the prime minister. Most hold the 2008 prorogation harmed principles of responsible government, and a majority favour the development of a cabinet manual to outline roles and responsibilities to avoid future crises. Based on the survey data, I propose 4 unique schools of thought on this event, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and consider how the method I model can be used in future research
Policy design: who, what, how
Full text linkWhat can help students designing? What brings them beyond merely experiencing complexity and building up frustration tolerance? How to pave the road for policy design without dodging its inalienable messy practice? I address these questions by summarizing policy design literature and synthesizing its main ideas. First I describe common ground in this broad literature, to see the forest through the trees. Second I point at differences and controversies in the same literature. These debates urge designers to take a position. In conclusion, I show how these two cross‐sections of the literature help students to see who policy designers are, what makes ‘good’ policy design and how to organize the design process
Tall-fins and tale-ends in Taiwan: cetacean exploitation, oil refineries and Moby-Dick
Full text linkThis paper addresses the nineteenth-century novel Moby-Dick (1851) as a “cetacean text” and as a text that can be taught to question the animal/human binary that both separates and draws attention to bonds between humans and cetaceans. Herman Melville’s novel, belonging to the period of American literature that F. O. Matthiessen first famously distinguished as the “American Renaissance” in a study so-titled published in 1941, is being reevaluated today by ecocritics as well as posthumanism and animal studies scholars as a writing that is a cultural record of the North American whaling industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and raises questions about understandings of and assumptions about cetacean slaughter. I tie these concerns to an industry today that threatens cetaceans: the fossil fuel industry, the industry that largely replaced the whaling industry after the twentieth century. I focus mostly on environmental efforts in Taiwan to raise awareness about the fossil fuel industry in Taiwan, namely its petrochemical plants or so called naphtha cracker plants and the deleterious impact these plants have on coastal wetland areas that are home to many species of cetaceans including the endangered species of humpback whale or pink dolphin. Moby-Dick ties to ecocriticism in the eastern regions of the globe not the least by reason of the final scenes of the novel, set in the far western waters of the Pacific
Timon of Ashes
Full text linkIn his Religio Medici, Sir Thomas Browne writes, "to call our selves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgment...told me there was a reall truth therein. For first we are a rude mass...next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits." This blurring of the boundaries between life forms, coupled with a disavowal of the notion that humans exist apart from other life forms, is what I wish to explore in Shakespeare's oft-overlooked tragedy, Timon of Athens. More specifically, this paper argues that, in terms of how Timon describes himself (or is described by others), we see a clear progression from man to beast to plant to dirt. As such, the play essentially reverses the sequence proposed by Sir Thomas Browne. The reason behind the reversal is straightforward enough: Timon wants to position himself as "Misanthropos" (IV.iii.52). But hating mankind proves insufficient for Timon and his anger eventually leads to a rejection of the mammalian system as a whole
Which policy first? A network-centric approach for the analysis and ranking of policy measures
Full text linkIn addressing various policy problems, deciding which policy measure to start with given the range of measures available is challenging and essentially involves a process of ranking the alternatives, commonly done using multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques. In this paper a new methodology for analysis and ranking of policy measures is introduced which combines network analysis and MCDA tools. This methodology not only considers the internal properties of the measures but also their interactions with other potential measures. Consideration of such interactions provides additional insights into the process of policy formulation and can help domain experts and policy makers to better assess the policy measures and to understand the complexities involved. This new methodology is applied in this paper to the formulation of a policy to increase walking and cycling
Referendum Resource Officers in the 2007 Ontario Referendum on Electoral Reform
Full text linkOn October 10th, 2007, Ontarians overwhelmingly rejected a proposed change to their electoral system in a province-wide referendum on a new mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Many commentators and academics blamed this failure of MMP on the quality of Election Ontario’s public education campaign, which was comprised of advertisements, an information hotline, a website, and public outreach activities. Elections Ontario’s public outreach element contained a unique program of grassroots education through local liaison officers. Elections Ontario chose to hire one Referendum Resource Officer (RRO) for each electoral district, who was tasked with providing referendum information through presentations and public meetings in their communities.
This paper examines the feedback of one-third of these RROs collected through telephone and email interviews. Many of these RROs felt that the referendum education program fell short of its aim to provide local education on the referendum question and made suggestions as to the reasons behind the shortcomings of Elections Ontario’s referendum education campaign. They commented that their work was not supported by appropriate timelines, budgets and materials. In addition, many were displeased with the restrictions placed on RROs in efforts of keep the Elections Ontario campaign neutral. This case study supports previous referendum education and voting research that demonstrates that referendum education campaigns should not only provide timely and accessible information, but also encourage debate in order to provide citizens with the competence needed to make their “big decision.