• darkblurbg
    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

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

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

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

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
  • darkblurbg
    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
  • darkblurbg
    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



G19 - Finance, Rentierism and Crises

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 01:30pm to 03:00pm | Location:

The Political Economy of “Indigenous Genocide” in Canada: Neotribal Rentierism and Conceptual Transformation: Frances Widdowson (Mount Royal University)
Abstract: In 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its report. One of the main findings was that the violence being experienced by indigenous women and girls constituted “race-based genocide”. Use of the word genocide is now commonplace in discussing indigenous-non-indigenous relations historically, but this is a relatively recent development. This paper will trace how the use of the word genocide has changed – from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and MMIWG reports. It will be shown that, 20 years ago, the word “genocide” was rarely used in the context of Canadian colonization. With the TRC, however, “cultural genocide” became the terminology used, only to have the word “cultural” dropped by the MMIWG. After documenting this transformation, the historical and material circumstances for the reconceptualization will be investigated. It will be shown that one of the reasons for the recent popularity of the word genocide is the process of neotribal rentierism – the political and economic relations whereby a legal case is made to extract transfers from the government. As the accusation of “genocide” is the most serious charge that can be made against a state, there is an incentive to use this allegation to increase compensation from the government. The reconceptualization of the word genocide, therefore, can be partially explained by the rent-seeking efforts of neotribal elites and lawyers working for indigenous organizations.


Ethics, Power, and the Provenance of Money: Dilemmas of Long-Term Finance in Emerging Economies: Leslie Armijo (Simon Fraser University)
Abstract: Policymakers in emerging economies, that is, countries aspiring to middle income status, want to pursue social welfare and rapid industrial catch-up through increased investment in social and economic infrastructure. A powerful contemporary consensus, shared among the leadership of the OECD, the G20, the Western-dominated international financial institutions, and major private sector think tanks in the global North, has since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 converged on the transnational project of leveraging “billions to trillions” of dollars for financing big infrastructure and other long-term development projects. It proposes combining small amounts of state financing with larger quantities of globally-mobile, private, profit-seeking investment capital. This paper theorizes the core policy dilemma of securing long-term finance as it looks from the viewpoint of an incumbent political leader in a middle-income, politically-fragile, emerging market democracy (EMD). Incumbent EMD policymakers make highly-significant choices, sometimes without much debate, along two dimensions. First, policymakers may choose to source the requisite long-term savings primarily nationally or from abroad. Their second important choice is between primary reliance on the state to allocate and manage investment – or on private sector decision making. These meta-choices imply subsequent tradeoffs among multiple goals, including direct public budgetary costs, market efficiency, public goods provision, societal inequality, and national sovereignty. Incorporating political as well as economic analysis, the paper gently questions the wisdom of financing national economic development via footloose foreign capital.


Confronting Division by Manufacturing Consent? Technocratic Neoliberalism and the Standardization of Green Finance: Korey Pasch (Queen's University), Joshua McEvoy (Queen's University)
Abstract: The 2020 CPSA conference theme, Confronting Political Divides, draws attention to the difficulties that division and its resolution poses in contemporary politics. These challenges are manifest in the ubiquity of “sustainability” initiatives in global civil society, government, and private sector spaces. These initiatives are part of a drive towards consensus on how to address the climate crisis through a resolution of economic growth with environmental protection. This is especially true with regard to the financial sector as a critical mechanism in the expansion of contemporary neoliberal-led capitalism – the dominant global political, social, and economic order responsible for the spiraling climate crisis. Employing a critical political economy perspective, we elucidate the ways structural power permeates processes by which sustainable finance is codified and standardized, and how these processes affect issues of climate justice and environmental degradation. We advocate for an understanding of sustainable finance shaped by a neoliberal governance technocracy that leverages sustainability to de-politicize alternatives to mainstream climate action. In this way, political divides are erased. Our paper undertakes an analysis of ongoing efforts to create a Canadian approach to sustainable finance, as well as the standardization of this approach at the international level. We contend that such efforts will not lead to the political and ecological harmony their rhetoric promises but rather will sustain the status quo. We conclude that contemporary sustainability is a means of buttressing the already dominant structures of power that permeate neoliberal-led capitalism as well as the practices of (uneven) capital accumulation which animate


Beyond Reserves: Domestic Currency Resources and Banking Crises in the Emerging World: Michael Gavin (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Foreign currency reserves are widely regarded as an effective means to insulate emerging market banking systems from adverse movements in global capital markets. Grounded in a formal model, this study shows that domestic currency financial safety nets (deposit insurance, lender of last resort lending facilities, etc.) provide equivalent protection. The model predicts that states strengthen their domestic currency financial safety nets when their ties to financial globalization deepen, their access to the IMF’s global financial safety net wanes, and their banking system experiences a crisis. The model also predicts that, even when moral hazard concerns are binding, stronger domestic financial safety nets decrease the probability of emerging market banking crises. These predictions are confirmed using a newly developed measure of domestic currency financial safety net strength. The mechanism that explains the stabilizing capability of domestic currency financial safety nets is their ability to successfully attenuate the link between adverse movements in global monetary conditions and the onset of banking crises.




Return to Home