45 research outputs found
Les puissances secondaires et l’influence des attributs relationnels : le cas du Canada et de sa politique extérieure
Analyses et middle or « lesser » powers, unlike those of great and small powers, have not secured a distinctive place in the international politics literature and have generally not contributed to or borrowed from contemporary theoretical developments. The present study examines the foreign policy behavior of a lesser power (Canada) with an interrelated set of hypotheses drawn from theories explaining behavior as a function of the attributes of targets and actors. The four « relational » attributes employed here are status, salience, similarity, and proximity. Quantitative measures for these relational factors and for five categories of Canadian behavior across 51 (Canada to x) dyads are developed with particular attention being paid to questions of empirical-theoretical fit. Correlational analysis reveals many of the relational attributes and indicators explain a significant amount of variation in the behavior measures. Greater status, salience and proximity generally lead to more frequent Canadian activity. Status differences are particularly strongly related to all five types of dyadic behavior. Similarity appears a less influential factor. A further partial correlation analysis suggests that for Canada the relational attributes are interrelated with each other and with behavior in a patterned way. Greater proximity leads to increased salience, as do greater status and similarity. In turn, greater salience, status and similarity all lead to more frequent behavior of most types. These results tend to support some and refute other general hypotheses about target-actor attributes and behavior, and perhaps suggest some particular features of lesser power activity
An ecological analysis of voting behavior in Vancouver
Local elections have received little attention in the literature of political science, either as an important component of city politics, or as a source of data on voting behavior. The present exploratory study, as merely one step towards redressing this situation, attempts to identify and analyze some of the political and social cleavages that underlie electoral politics in the city of Vancouver.
The phenomena investigated as dependent variables include registration, turnout, ballot spoiling, non-use of votes, referenda voting, and candidate-party voting. The independent variables are the common census-derived socioeconomic characteristics of voters such as age, sex, marital status, religion, ethnicity, education level, occupation, and income. On the basis of a review of some important related studies, a simple model is proposed that sets out a theoretical relationship between these characteristics and voting behavior. The research method employed in the study is ecological analysis which, despite some inherent limitations, provides a suitable tool for the exploration of this relationship through correlation and regression techniques. A number of hypotheses are formulated from the data, but others, obtained from existing studies, have also been tested.
The main findings of the present paper are twofold. Firstly, significant and generally explicable cleavages between broad socio-economic groups are revealed with respect to each of the dependent variables. Thus, for example, it is shown that each of the political parties in the city has a more or less solid base of support in voters of a particular socio-economic level. The second general conclusion, closely tied to the first, is that each of the broad groupings has a reasonably consistent and explicable pattern of behavior. Persons in the lowest socio-economic status group, for example, tend less to register and to vote, tend more to spoil ballots and leave votes unused, and tend to oppose referenda issues, as well as tending to vote for certain candidates.
From the data and subsequent analysis, a typology is put forward classifying local voter orientation as being either purposive, maintaining, or protesting in nature. Finally, in part employing this typology as an explanatory mechanism, two general hypotheses are proposed which attempt to relate patterns of voting behavior firstly, to the decision-making output of Vancouver's political system and secondly, to persistence and change in the structure of the local party system.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat
Recommended from our members
Reservoir quality of Cenozoic carbonate buildups and coral reef terraces
Almost half of SE Asia's considerable hydrocarbon reserves are contained in carbonates. The majority of these reservoirs are Miocene buildups up to tens of kilometres across. However, with the exception of a few fields, there is little detailed data on how local depositional and diagenetic conditions influence the considerable heterogeneities in reservoir quality often encountered. This study focuses on factors influencing the facies, diagenetic and reservoir variability of comparable Modern, Quaternary and Neogene reef associated deposits from the Tukang Besi Archipelago, Central Indonesia.The Archipelago includes large atolls, a number of smaller buildups and 4 main islands each with modern rimmed shelves or fringing reefs. On the islands, over ten late Neogene and Quaternary coral reef terraces have been uplifted to maximum heights of ~300 m. Analysis of the modern deposits allows initial reservoir potential to be assessed and related to local environmental conditions. The influence of diagenesis on final reservoir quality is evaluated for the depositional facies exposed in the uplifted terraces. The overall spatial distribution of effective porosity across the area is strongly dependent on local energy conditions, water depth, carbonate producers, size of atolls or islands, climate and local meteoric diagenetic processes. This evaluation of spatial variability in carbonate reservoir characteristics provides much needed analogue data as the hydrocarbon industry focuses on improving recovery from existing fields and exploring for new reserves
'Voyaging in': colonialism and migration
A major reference chapter on the history of the literature of colonialism and migration 1945-70. The book marks an intervention into conventional histories of British Literature. The chapter illustrates and analyses the influential formation of alternative modernities by migrant writers resident in Britain during this period; it also extends the gaze to the period before 1945 earlier in the twentieth century. Maps new ways of reading literary history; broad and wideranging discussion of migration during this period