I'm Back... and on sabbatical for the term!

Last term my have been one of the most busiest I've encountered, although it has been said I say that every term. It did mean that I didn't really get a chance to write any blogs, and the writing I did do did not lend itself to easy conversion into blogs.

But, now I'm on sabbatical until July. I'm still catching up on some projects I couldn't complete last term, but the office is set up in the basement and I can work in my pajamas (or at least the ones the dog hasn't eaten).

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Is Low Voter Turnout Actually A Good Thing?

[It's a provocative position. I hope my answer is a bit more nuanced. Thinking with a pen, so the views are my own and likely to change as I think about it a bit more.] The big talking point regarding yesterday's municipal election in London is the free fall debacle in voter turnout. Only 25.5% of eligible voters cast a ballot, a significant plunge from the 40% turnout in 2018 (the BRT election) and from the 2014 high of 43% (the get rid of Fontana and the Fontana 8 election). This low turnout is seen as the reason for the rather surprising outcomes in some of the words, namely the defeat of three "incumbents."* Incumbents are considered safe bets because they have name recognition and represent the status quo for voters. Generally, the mass of voters in municipal election have little to guide their votes other than name recognition and a desire not to change things up. However, when that "mass" of voters decides not to show up, that generalized support fo...

Women on Councils: Majorities and Lockouts

In this blog myself and my fantastic research assistant, Leila Russell Brown (soon to be an MA student at Western University) break down the Association of Municipalities Ontario (AMO) numbers from the October 2022 Municipal Elections (check out Ontario Municipal Elections (amo.on.ca) ). Overall, according to the AMO, more women put themselves forward as candidates in 2022, 1,939 or 31% of all candidates. This is compared to 1,808 or 27% in 2018. In total, 6,325 women and men ran in 2022. Women won or were acclaimed in 32.3% of the races, an increase from 29.4% in 2018 (AMO, 2022). This puts women on local councils at just above the 30% marker set by the UN as indicative of a critical mass , the point at which government becomes more responsive to women's needs and women are able to influence key decisions. As the AMO reports, the women who ran were slightly more successful than men in the 2022 elections. The success rate of women was 47.2% compared to 43.8% of men. In 2018,...

Ur-Fascism: The anti-democratic impulse of Trump's populism

Ur-Fascism: Trump’s Anti-Democratic Populism The King's Hour: Panel Discussion on “The Problem with Trump” King’s University College at Western, September 27, 2017. I have been agonizing for the past week as to what I would say in this address, not because I have nothing to say but because I have too much. How do I frame this in a way to outline coherently my angst beyond a performance of Edvard Munch’s The Scream . As this is the beginning of the school year, in class we focus on first principles or concepts, so it makes sense for me to return to first principles. First, as a common principle, it is safe to say that Nazi’s are bad. The question this raises though, is why are we even having a conversation where we have to preface our remarks with a reminder that Nazis are bad? We are having this conversation because Donald Trump is a “charismatic populist.” Populism can be a progressive force of democracy when viewed in terms of participatory engagement ...

Small P and Large P Politics and the F Word

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