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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

Comparative Politics



B05 - Populism in Canada and Abroad

Date: Jun 2 | Time: 01:30pm to 03:00pm | Location:

The Resurgence of Populism in Liberal Democratic Societies: Is Populism a Threat to Liberal Democracy?: Sirvan Karimi (York University)
Abstract: Recent spectacular electoral inroads by anti-establishment political parties in Europe and around the world has led to the resurgence of debate on populism and its threat to liberal democracy. Within the burgeoning theoretical and analytic interpretations of the surge of populism, competing arguments have been deployed . As a political backlash to status quo that capitalizes on division, populism cuts across geographic locations, historical era and ideological divide. Understanding and countering the populist revolt which has been envisaged by many as an impending threat to foundations of liberal democratic societies, necessities dissecting social, political and economic conditions that fuel populist propensity. It will be demonstrated that economic dislocation and demographic shift within liberal democratic societies have provided a fertile ground for the rise of populism . Populism is not necessarily anti democracy since it projects itself as an emancipatory project to reestablish the sovereignty of people. However, populism's proposed policy measures such as direct and participatory democratic mechanisms and procedures are ineffective in tackling and surmounting the conditions that foster populism in first place. Despite its shortcomings, liberal democratic system contains the ability of self correction and the essential basis required for tackling and mitigating those conditions from which populism draws its strength.


From Social Credit to the People’s Party: Exploring the Evolution of Representational Claims by Right-Wing Populist Parties in Canada: Brian Budd (University of Guelph)
Abstract: Since the mid-point of the 20th century, Canada has seen several different populist movements, parties and leaders emerge to pose a challenge to the prevailing political establishment by claiming to represent the interests of and speak on behalf of ‘the people.’ My contribution to the workshop would examine how Canadian populist parties and leaders have discursively constructed their representational claims and how those claims have evolved over time. Through a comparative analysis of populist parties and leaders beginning in the 1950s, I advance the argument that Canadian populists have historically tended to offer discursive constructions of the people arrayed around regional or linguistic identities, with political grievances directed toward failures in representation provided by Canadian federalism. Over time, populist parties and leaders have increasingly neoliberalized their discourse to broaden their representational claims to a larger number of groups, particularly those belonging to ethnic and immigrant communities. The paper concludes by considering the general absence of representational claims by Canadian populists focused on an exclusionary ethnic or cultural identity. While several recent Canadian parties and leaders have adopted the exclusionary ideologies championed by the populist radical right (Mudde, 2008), these ideologies have yet to establish a foothold in mainstream Canadian politics and have traditionally been eschewed by successful populists. I interpret this absence as being due to a lack of political opportunity structures in Canada that would incentivize the mobilization of exclusionary populist ideologies by existing parties and leaders.


Development in 2014 and Hyper-nationalism in 2019: The Personalistic and Divisive Social Media Strategies of the BJP in Recent Elections: Shelly Ghai Bajaj (University of Toronto)
Abstract: In 2014, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under the divisive and controversial leadership of Narendra Modi, won the first electoral majority since 1984 and was the first party, apart from the historically dominant Indian National Congress Party (INC), to form a majority government since India’s independence. In the most recent general elections, the incumbent BJP under Modi increased the party’s parliamentary presence and electoral mandate despite the unpopular and poorly executed rollout of economic policies like demonetization and the implementation of GST as well as the BJP’s lacklustre performance in several state assembly elections. This paper examines the differences in the BJP’s political communication strategy in general, and its social media strategy in particular, during the 2014 and 2019 elections. Through a qualitative analysis of Narendra Modi’s twitter handle, this paper finds that in 2014 the BJP was able to successfully fuse the themes of development, governance, economic growth, and the leadership of Modi into a coherent election narrative, thereby setting the election agenda. In contrast, in 2019, the party ran a hyper-nationalist election campaign, linking national security to the populist style of leadership under Modi. In 2014, the BJP combined its social media campaign with more conventional or “older” forms of campaign political communication like advertisements, local and grassroots organizing and mobilizing, and public rallies. In 2019, the BJP also utilized these conventional strategies, but also deployed a more divisive strategy of spreading misinformation through social media.


Common Sense Justice? Examining Differences Between the Mainstream and Populist Right on Criminal Justice in Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland: Edward Anthony Koning (University of Guelph), Kate Puddister (University of Guelph)
Abstract: The literature on radical populist parties has demonstrated that many of the proposals these parties bring forward on immigration tend to be legally unfeasible or counterproductive. Their populist approach, so the argument goes, has made these parties more intent on catering to ‘common sense’ views among the electorate than on making constructive suggestions for addressing complex societal problems. At the same time, legal scholars have long emphasized that criminal justice is highly susceptible to populist pressure. The literature on ‘penal populism’ describes criminal justice as a political minefield for center-right parties in particular, because their constituents are likely to demand much more punitive outcomes than are possible or desirable based on the legal framework and scientific evidence. Surprisingly, however, these two literatures have rarely engaged with each other. This paper draws insight from both literatures and compares the position on criminal justice of the mainstream right and radical right as expressed in campaign manifestoes in Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. We find that the differences between the mainstream and populist right in the content, focus, and feasibility of their platforms on criminal justice are larger in some countries than in others. We explain these findings by country-specific factors, in particular the level of decentralization, the size of the party system, the novelty of the radical populist right, and the presence of mechanisms of direct democracy.




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