The 2007 Provincial Election and Electoral System Referendum in Ontario

Ontario’s general election in Oct. 10, 2007, was unprecedented for several reasons. The election was held on a date fixed by legislation and not one set by the premier or his caucus, something new to Ontario and relatively new to Canadian politics. Turnout declined to 53%, the lowest ever in Ontario history. The incumbent Liberals won a second consecutive majority government, something the party had not achieved since 1937. And finally, the election featured a referendum question that asked voters in Ontario to approve reforms to the electoral system, a proposal that was overwhelmingly rejected. This article explores each of the above-stated elements as they unfolded in the election

The Elements of Effective Program Design: A Two-Level Analysis

Politics and Governance221-1

Design in the Time of Policy Problems

This paper discusses an emerging context in which design expertise is being applied – the making of government policy. It reviews existing research and identifies the claim that design changes the nature of policy making. The paper then adapts a conceptual framework from social studies of science to make sense of the encounter between design and policy making. The paper applies this lens to an empirical account of design being applied to policy making in a team in the UK government. The findings are that in addition to supporting officials in applying design approaches, the team’s work shapes the emergence of hybrid policy making practices, and at times problematizes the nature of policy making. It does this within logics of accountability, innovation, and reordering. The contribution is to provide empirical detail and a nuanced account of what happens in these encounter between design expertise and policy making practice

Keeping Pets and (Not) Eating Animals in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

This article examines the role of animals, as well as of veganism, in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, his second novel which deals with the lingering trauma of 9/11. Although Foer took some readers by surprise with his overt interest in animal issues and dietary ethics in his follow up to Extremely Loud – the nonfiction work Eating Animals – this essay demonstrates that some of the issues regarding food and animals that will so preoccupy Foer in Eating Animals are already on display in his earlier fiction. Additionally, this article demonstrates the ways in which Foer is interested in Extremely Loud with how traumatized people use animals both to alleviate feelings of guilt and alienation, and also as chauvinistic reminders of human exceptionalism that only further contribute to their painful feelings of isolation

Institutionalized inhibition: examining constraints on climate change policy capacity in the transport departments of Ontario and British Columbia, Canada

This paper examines the interaction between transportation policy and climate change policy in two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario. The concept of policy capacity is used to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of instruments in advancing goals in an area where established policy paradigms may not be congruent with new initiatives. A review of official policy documents and budgetary information on policy-related spending, as well as primary interviews with policy managers in relevant provincial ministries, reveals that overlapping policy goals and instruments may have created a situation of institutionalized policy inhibition, in which conflicting layers of policy goals and instruments constrain the available policy capacity

The 2007 Provincial Election in Newfoundland and Labrador

On the surface, there was nothing special about the 2007 Newfoundland and Labrador general election, which saw Danny Williams re-elected for a second term as Premier. That his Progressive Conservatives would win a solid majority was never in doubt. There were no emerging issues, major gaffes or innovative campaign tactics, and few tight races. The de facto referendum on Williams’ leadership became a coronation. As Mackinnon (2007: 1) wrote about the Prince Edward Island election held five months earlier, “some campaigns are over before they begin.” In this case the only intrigue was how many Liberal or New Democratic Party candidates would form the opposition. However the results do illustrate that a relatively homogenous electorate can rally around a leader who decries the province’s status in the Canadian federation. Furthermore, when elected officials from all major parties have been implicated in a scandal, many electors respond by not participating in politics. Political scientists can therefore draw comparative insights, such as asymmetrical federalism reminiscent of Quebec Premier Jean Lesage in the early 1960s, political scandal similar to the Grant Devine administration of Saskatchewan in the early 1990s, or about civic engagement generally

Canadian Sex Work Policy for the 21st Century: Enhancing Rights and Safety, Lessons from Australia

This paper reviews the current problematic state of public policy addressed to the sex trade in Canada. It explores the recent parliamentary inquiry into the sex trade and suggests that the Canadian polity needs to set in train a clear program for reform in this area. A particular priority of these reforms should be to enhance the safety and rights of sex workers. At present the Canadian polity is mired in philosophic, moral and political divisions over the acceptability of sex work and this is limiting the search for practical ways of addressing urgent social problems. We argue that this search needs to be wide and continuing and that some practical ‘lessons’ can be learned from Australia where prostitution law reform has been in place for a considerable period of time

Who Is a Stream? Epistemic Communities, Instrument Constituencies and Advocacy Coalitions in Public Policy-Making

John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was articulated in order to better understand how issues entered onto policy agendas, using the concept of policy actors interacting over the course of sequences of events in what he referred to as the “problem”, “policy” and “politics” “streams”. However, it is not a priori certain who the agents are in this process and how they interact with each other. As was common at the time, in his study Kingdon used an undifferentiated concept of a “policy subsystem” to group together and capture the activities of various policy actors involved in this process. However, this article argues that the policy world Kingdon envisioned can be better visualized as one composed of distinct subsets of actors who engage in one specific type of interaction involved in the definition of policy problems: either the articulation of problems, the development of solutions, or their enactment. Rather than involve all subsystem actors, this article argues that three separate sets of actors are involved in these tasks: epistemic communities are engaged in discourses about policy problems; instrument constituencies define policy alternatives and instruments; and advocacy coalitions compete to have their choice of policy alternatives adopted. Using this lens, the article focuses on actor interactions involved both in the agenda-setting activities Kingdon examined as well as in the policy formulation activities following the agenda setting stage upon which Kingdon originally worked. This activity involves the definition of policy goals (both broad and specific), the creation of the means and mechanisms to realize these goals, and the set of bureaucratic, partisan, electoral and other political struggles involved in their acceptance and transformation into action. Like agenda-setting, these activities can best be modeled using a differentiated subsystem approach

Regulation crash-test: applying serious games to policy design

Successful policy solutions rely on policy addressees responding in certain ways. Policy designers need an analytical method that allows them to anticipate impact of a new intervention, while tak- ing into account bounded rationality of policy actors and sociopo- litical complexity. The article proposes using serious games at the stage of policy formulation to test the architecture of a new regulation in a safe environment. It provides a blueprint for using games in policy design, consisting of conceptual framework, design procedure, and techniques for strengthening game valid- ity. The application is illustrated with an example of a draft regu- lation on rural transport in Poland. The case study points out three advantages of game method: (1) revealing mechanisms trig- gered by the architecture of regulation, meaning actors’ initial assumptions, decisions, and feedback loops created by actors’ responses, (2) demonstrating the consequences of mechanisms over time, that in real life would occur with a long delay, and (3) creating a risk-free environment where policy actors can verify their assumptions and experiment with ways of interpreting and responding to new regulation. The article concludes that serious games are a promising method for anticipating impact of complex policy regulation

Electoral Parity or Protecting Minorities? Path Dependency and Consociational Districting in Nova Scotia

Abstract: 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