University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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The Right to Refuse First Ministers’ Advice as a Democratic Reform
Full text link Recent years have seen a rise in concern over excessive power of the Canadian Prime Minister Office. One area of note is the potential to abuse the prerogative power to advise the dissolution, prorogation, or summoning of parliament. This paper will review and evaluate two solutions – fixed election dates and codified conventions – before proposing and defending an alternative solution, namely strengthening the Crown’s right to refuse advice of First Ministers. This solution will be presented via Eugene Forsey’s Classic Theory of Parliamentary Government, which conceives of the Governor General as the guardian of parliament against the forces of centralization motivating the PM and cabinet. Such a conception, I will demonstrate, allows us to see how an empowered Governor General could serve as an effective check against the potential partisan misuse of the executive prerogative powers.The final section will reflect on the tension between strengthening the power of unelected Governors General and the project of democratic reform. I will conclude by suggesting that a proper conception of democratic reform in a Westminster system must balance responsiveness to voters with the ability of the House of Commons to hold the Prime Minister and Cabinet to account
No shots, no problem: The anti-vaccination movement on social media
No full textVaccine-hesitancy and vaccine rejection are huge problems facing global public health today. Diseases which were once considered to be virtually eliminated due to widespread vaccination are returning with a vengeance, as cases of measles, mumps and chickenpox pop up and spread throughout Europe and North America. As herd immunity diminishes, deadly infectious diseases spread more easily among vulnerable human hosts. This is all due to the growing trend of purposefully forgoing routine vaccinations. Anti-vaccine communities have been steadily growing online for years, and now wield a potent influence on social media. Widespread access to social media increases the ease with which misinformation about vaccines can spread and reach new audiences across the globe. In this paper, I will be seeking to answer the question: what is the anti-vaccine movement and how does this movement interact with social media? I will also examine what role identity plays in attracting new believers to the anti-vaccine community, if any
The 2019 Prince Edward Island Provincial Election
No full textPrince Edward Island’s 67th General Election was held 23 April 2019. The results were unprecedented, with the Progressive Conservative Party (PCs) winning 12 seats on election night, the Green Party of Prince Edward Island (Greens) winning eight, and the incumbent Liberal Party (Liberals) reduced to just six seats. The New Democratic Party (NDP) was shut out once again. This is PEI’s first minority government, and PEI is now the first province in Canada with a Green Party Official Opposition. Five of the Green’s eight MLAs are women, so this is also the first Official Opposition party in Canada with a majority of females. Liberal premier Wade MacLauchlan, credited with saving the Liberal Party from defeat in 2015, lost his own seat in 2019. The election was also marked by a tragedy: together with his young son Oliver, Green Party candidate Josh Underhay was killed in a canoe accident the Friday before the election. A deferred election was held on 15 July, and was won by the PC candidate, Natalie Jameson. A referendum asking Islanders whether they wanted to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional electoral system was held in conjunction with the general election. The No side won, with 52% of the vote, but winning just 13 of 27 ridings
Rethinking Design Thinking
Full text linkThe term design thinking has gained considerable attention over the past decade in a wide range of organizations and contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers. The main idea is that the ways professional designers problem solve is of value to firms trying to innovate and to societies trying to make change happen. This paper reviews the origins of the term design thinking in research on designers and its adoption by management educators and consultancies within a dynamic, global mediatized economy. Three main accounts are identified: design thinking as a cognitive style, as a general theory of design, and as a resource for organizations. The paper then argues there are several issues that undermine the claims made for design thinking. The first is how many of these accounts rely on a dualism between thinking and knowing, and acting in the world. Second, the idea of a generalized design thinking ignores the diversity of designers’ practices and institutions which are historically situated. The third is how design thinking rests on theories of design that privilege the designer as the main agent in designing. Instead the paper proposes that attending to the situated, embodied routines of designers and others offers a useful way to rethink design thinking
Analysing energy innovation portfolios from a systemic perspective
Full text linkA systemic perspective on energy innovation is required to design effective portfolios of directed innovation activity. We contribute a standardised set of technology-specific indicators which describe processes throughout the energy technology innovation system, ranging from patents and publications to policy mixes, collaborative activity, and market share. Using these indicators, we then conceptualise and develop benchmark tests for three portfolio design criteria: balance, consistency, and alignment. Portfolio balance refers to the relative emphasis on specific technologies. Portfolio consistency refers to the relative emphasis on related innovation system pro- cesses. Portfolio alignment refers to the relative emphasis on innovation system processes for delivering targeted outcomes. We demonstrate the application of these benchmark tests using data for the EU's Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan which spans six technology fields. We find the SET Plan portfolio generally performs well particularly in areas over which portfolio managers have direct influence such as RD&D funding. However we also identify potential areas of imbalance, inconsistency, and misalignment which warrant further attention and potential redress by portfolio managers. Overall, we show how energy innovation portfolios can be analysed from a systemic perspective using a replicable, standardised set of measures of diverse innovation system pro- cesses
Can the Power of Platforms be Harnessed for Governance?
Full text linkThe platform concept examines how strategic leadership and institutional and technological resources enable multiple distributed activities to innovate, adapt, and change. The central question addressed in this paper is: Can this potentially powerful organizing logic be harnessed for public purposes? Since governance platforms are still largely experimental, we cannot fully settle this question at present. However, we can begin to address the issue to help scholars and practitioners explore the potential of platforms. We start with a general statement about what governance platforms might offer to the public sector, before probing the concept more deeply. We then investigate the institutional mechanisms that purportedly make platforms powerful and propose a typology of governance platforms. Finally, we investigate the challenges and successes they have encountered
Policy Design: Just a Fad or a Fundamental Concept? (Or How to Deal with Policy Design in Interesting Times)
No full textThe conditions necessary and required to develop institutional, administrative, and policy capacity needed to conduct policy design (with all its caveats) are painfully absent from the mainstream literature. To a certain extent, it is logical because in the political-administrative contexts investigated by main- stream literature, they do exist and are arguably taken for granted. The transition and developing countries remain under-represented in mainstream literature. The sectorial literature on water management, natural disaster mitigation, or emergency response planning provides some answers to that need, and points out the blind spot that exists in the mainstream literature in public administration: how to build institutional capacity for policy design in the public sector. What are the institu- tional conditions specific for applying design in the public sector (in its diversity)? Glimpses at the (few) studies that exist suggest a high level of inequality and depen- dence on local context, a strong top-down approach, and – in the best case scenario – an opportune happy conjunction of resources, usually united under a visionary leader with strategic capacity
‘Rationalized incrementalism’. How behavior experts in government negotiate institutional logics
Full text linkPublic policy design takes place in a complex ‘policy swamp’ that is not easily analyzed, let alone controlled. Nonetheless, recent scientific advances in understanding human behavior have led some to believe there is a way out of this swamp. A ‘Behavioural Insights’ movement has emerged, pushing a seemingly neo- rationalist strategy that clashes with the hitherto incrementalist strategy of policy-making. This article investigates how upcoming behavior experts in Dutch government grapple with this clash, based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork. The article points out that these behavior experts, despite their clear-cut rationalist impression, in the backstage take on the challenge of negotiating competing institutional logics
Carbon Capital’s Political Reach: A Network Analysis Of Federal Lobbying By The Fossil Fuel Industry From Harper To Trudeau
Full text linkThis paper provides a network analysis of federal lobbying in Canada by the fossil fuel industry over a seven-year period from January 4, 2011 to January 30, 2018, enabling a comparative examination of lobbying under the Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals. The network we uncover amounts to ‘small world’ of intense interaction among relatively few lobbyists/firms that control much of this economic sector and the designated public office holders in select centres of state power, who are their targets. In comparing lobbying across the Harper and Trudeau administrations, we find a pattern of continuity-in-change: under Trudeau, the bulk of lobbying has been carried out by the same large firms as under Harper, while the lobbying network has become more focused on fewer state agencies. We argue that the strategic, organized, and sustained lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel sector help to explain the close coupling of federal policy to the needs of carbon extractive corporations
Electoral Parity or Protecting Minorities? Path Dependency and Consociational Districting in Nova Scotia
Full text linkAbstract: This article contributes to the study of electoral districting and minority group representation in Canada, Nova Scotia politics, and path dependency theory, through an analysis of electoral boundary commissions in Nova Scotia and relevant electoral boundaries jurisprudence. The concept of ‘protected ridings’ for historical minorities in Nova Scotia – specifically, Acadians and African Canadians – was introduced by the first provincial Electoral Boundaries Commission in 1992. This approach, referred to here as ‘consociational districting’, ran counter to the trend in electoral redistribution and apportionment exercises toward reducing the extent of population variance between electoral districts. When the continued application of this approach was rejected in 2012, its legality and validity were restored following a successful court challenge by the province’s Acadian federation. An analysis of this case study informed by historical institutionalism explores how path dependency has been a significant factor in the de facto constitutionalization of consociational representation for two historical minorities in Nova Scotia. In effect, history and institutions matter in the politics of redistricting, especially insofar as it concerns minority representation