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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

Political Economy



G17 - Inequality and Austerity

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location:

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Florence Larocque (Université du Québec à Montréal / Universidad de Chile)

Inequality and the Case for Maximum Limits on Wealth: Tom Malleson (King's University College)
Abstract: It is commonly recognized that poverty – the poor having too little – is a problem of social injustice. Yet is it also a problem for the rich to have too much? This paper engages with Ingrid Robeyns’s limitarianism, and its critics, to argue that we do indeed require limits on wealth on the grounds of equality (of welfare and opportunities) as well as democracy. However, while calls for maximum wages are familiar, proposals for limiting total wealth are far less common. The paper therefore examines a number of the practical issues that would be involved in making the normative project institutionally feasible.


Canada’s Political Economy in Comparative Perspective: Christopher Abbott (Queen's University)
Abstract: In 2008, a group of Canadian political scientists gathered at the University of Toronto to analyze and asses the “comparative turn” in Canadian politics. Recognizing the introspective and insular nature of Canadian politics in previous generations, Vipond (2008) noted that “the extent to which Canadian political scientists have taken the comparative turn is variable and uneven across the subfields.” This phenomenon is perhaps most evident in the subfields of Canadian and comparative political economy. Canada, while often included in large-N comparative studies, has not be dealt with qualitatively by scholars using the dominant analytical frameworks of comparative political economy (CPE). Do these dominant frameworks accurately capture the dynamics of Canada’s political economy? Does the Canadian case offer novel insights into theories of comparative political economy? This paper aims to answer these questions by analyzing Canada’s political economy through the lens of two major analytical frameworks in CPE: Hall and Soskice’s (2001) Varieties of Capitalism, and Baccaro and Pontusson’s (2016) Growth Model Approach. How well does Canada fit the description of a Liberal Market Economy? To what degree can we say that Canada’s economic growth model is consumption-led? Ten years after the publication of The Comparative Turn in Canadian Political Science, Canada remains untheorized in CPE’s major research programs. Engaging with comparative approaches to political economy should shed light on under-acknowledged aspects of Canada’s political economy, as well as inconsistencies in existing theories of comparative capitalism.


Twenty-five Years Since Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution – Revisiting the Political Economy of Austerity: Paul Kellogg (Athabasca University)
Abstract: It is a quarter century since Ontario’s Mike Harris launched his austerity-oriented “Common Sense Revolution”. The Harris Tories were widely seen as a radical expression of “fiscal conservatism.” Others put Harris in the Thatcher-Reagan category of neoliberal restructuring. Some went as far as to call this part of a “counter-revolution” or “class war conservatism”. This paper will suggest that we have to revisit these analyses deploying the concept of “backlash” – defined by Abigail Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi as “an ideological current or policy platform that is based on conservative premises, but … distinct from conservatism generally because of its specifically reactive character.” The Harris Tories – whose election pushed out of office Ontario’s one-term NDP government – at their core represented a backlash against certain aspects of NDP governance, particularly NDP policies seeking to target systemic oppression. Employment Equity Legislation became, according to Brian Tanguay, “the target of most of the criticism and generated more controversy than almost any other NDP initiative”. Anthony Morgan has drawn our attention the Harris disbanding of the Ontario Anti-Racism Secretariat as another aspect of this politics of backlash. This approach has implications not just for our understanding of 1990’s era austerity politics, but for key questions confronting us today. Arguably: Donald Trump represents a racist backlash against eight years of an African-American family residing in the White House; Doug Ford came to office in large part as a misogynist homophobic backlash against the presence in the premier’s office of an openly lesbian grandmother.


The Experiences of Ontario Basic Income Recipients in Hamilton-Brantford: Tom McDowell (Ryerson University), Mohammad Ferdosi (McMaster University)
Abstract: As a result of the cancellation of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot and the disbanding of the team that was tasked with evaluating its impact, valuable insights into the C$150 million experiment risked being lost or abandoned. We partially fill this gap by providing an overview of the effects of basic income on the lives of recipients in the Hamilton and Brantford site. Utilizing survey and interview data, we show how basic income affected recipients in key areas of their lives, including their physical health, mental well-being, social participation, food security, housing stability, financial status and labour market participation. The self-reported outcomes of more than 200 participants help us shed light on basic income's potential to reduce poverty and raise the standard of living in today's dynamic labour market.




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