Political Theory Commons^™

Luja Volume 6: Issue 1 (Full Volume)

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Representation Of Indigenous Spiritualities In The Ontario Grade 11 World Religions Curriculum: A Discourse And Textual Analysis, Katelin A. Chavez

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Teacher Education For Religious Diversity In British Columbia: Policy Recommendations For Sikh And Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Inclusion, Ashton Kemper

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Embarrassment As A Signal: Feminist Affects And The Commodification Of Love, Bianca L. Schmitt

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Editors' Note, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies, David Pfrimmer

Consensus

Gushee, D. P. (2023). Defending democracy from its Christian enemies. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN: 9781467466219

What Is Success? How Peer Support Workers In Ontario See Addiction & Recovery, Ngaire Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The drug crisis in Canada has high mortality rates, especially in remote and rural communities, but there are significant barriers to accessing healthcare to which peer support may represent a partial solution, (Eddie et al., 2019; Englander et al., 2020; The Government of Canada, 2023; Kourgiantakis et al., 2023; Lavalley et al., 2020; Lennox et al., 202; Russell et al., 2021). Research how peer support workers define success in their work with adults experiencing addiction in Ontario, Canada is lacking, but important to understanding the crisis and implementing peer programs. Grounded in Marxist theory, the following exploratory research investigated the …

Spillover Effects Of Quota Or Parity Laws: The Case Of Ecuador Women Mayors, Marcos Fabricio Perez, Santiago Basabe-Serrano

Political Science Faculty Publications

Do quota or parity laws designed to improve the representation of women in plurinominal elections have a spillover effect to uninominal elections? We empirically test this theory by analyzing the effects of quota and parity legislations implemented in Ecuador for plurinominal elections on the proportion of women elected as mayors. Through an unpublished database, our results show that after the implementation of such legislation, the probability of a woman being elected as mayor almost doubles (ceteris paribus). We also find evidence that a possible causal chain for the documented spillover effects is the increasing importance of female role models, motivated …

Political Culture: An Unexplored Factor In Climate Change Diplomacy, Alexander Suen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As climate change continues to ravage the world, mitigation efforts continue to be insufficient to rise to the challenge. Inaction on climate change has been traditionally explained by economic incentives, but some of the variability in climate policies cannot be explained by economics alone. Some variations could be accounted for by the deeply rooted national political culture of Anglo-settler colonies. This political culture may inhibit the willingness of such states to cooperate on climate change. In this dissertation, I describe the political philosophy of the Anglo-settler colony, and the histories of domination of its white settlers over the indigenous peoples …

The Combined Transitions Of Great Power Politics And The Global Energy System A Comparative Analysis Of China, The United States And Russia, Roger Boyd

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The objective of this study is to provide a framework that allows for a holistic and integrated analysis of what will become, if they are not already, the two most significant determinants of foreign policy – the need for a fundamental change in the global energy system and the nature of major power competition within the international system. It specifically rejects the eco-modernist framing of the required energy transition as simply a technocratic challenge, and instead accepts the large-scale nature of the social, political and economic changes and disruptions that will be required. By framing these changes within the dynamic …

Neighbouring Horizons: Migration, Squatting, And Citizenship In São Paulo, Diana Zacca Thomaz

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines the shared struggles and political horizons of citizens and non-citizens living together in squatted buildings in central São Paulo, Brazil. Building on six months of ethnographic fieldwork, it focuses on the coalition forged between the MSTC (Movimento Sem Teto do Centro, i.e. Central São Paulo Roofless Movement) and international migrants and asylum-seekers who have taken up residence in the movement’s squats. This dissertation argues that the problem of political subjectivity and belonging at the urban margins is deeply shaped by the struggles for adequate housing. Further, that looking at the divergent aspirations and claims-making of …

For The Wild: Ritual And Commitment In Radical Eco-Activism By Sarah M. Pike, Alda Balthrop-Lewis

The Goose

Review of Sarah M. Pike's For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism

Liberal-Democratic States Should Privilege Parental Efforts To Instill Identities And Values, Andrew M. Robinson

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberal-democratic states’ commitments to equality and personal autonomy have always proven problematic with respect to state regulation of relations between parents and children. In the parental authority literature positions have varied from invoking children’s interests to argue for limitations on parental efforts to instill identities and values to invoking parental rights to justify state privileging of such efforts.

This article argues that liberal-democratic states should privilege parental efforts to raise their children to share their identities and values. Its approach is distinctive in two ways: i) it engages in interdisciplinary reflection upon selected findings in psychological literature on immigrant youth, …

Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case For Mixed Electoral Systems, Loren King

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberal democracies encourage citizen participation and protect our freedoms, yet these regimes elect politicians and decide important issues with electoral and legislative systems that are less inclusive than other arrangements. Some citizens inevitably have more influence than others. Is this a problem? Yes, because similarly just but more inclusive systems are possible. Political theorists and philosophers should be arguing for particular institutional forms, with particular geographies, consistent with justice.

Les démocraties libérales encouragent la participation citoyenne et protègent nos libertés. Pourtant, ces régimes élisent des politiciens et décident de problèmes importants via les systèmes électoral et législatif, qui sont moins …

Capitalist Childhood In Film: Modes Of Critique, Susan Ferguson

Journalism

This paper explores the latent political meanings of cinematic representations of capitalist childhood. The films it examines—three adaptations of the Oliver Twist story, Slumdog Millionnaire and a lesser-known Korean film, Treeless Mountain—have much in common: they feature abandoned or orphaned child characters who negotiate precarious existences in a rapacious crisis-ridden capitalist world. But the filmmakers’ evolving imaginings of childhood—from the Victorian vulnerable child to more postmodern understandings of children as agents in their own right—invite distinct political responses. While the Dickensian mode of critique rests problematically on an abstract idealized notion of childhood, attempts to update the image of childhood …

Human Rights Revisionism And The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition To Combat Antisemitism, Susan Ferguson, James Cairns

Journalism

This article focuses on the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA): a self-appointed group of parliamentarians dedicated to extinguishing what it calls “the new antisemitism.” Working from a Gramscian perspective, we identify key discursive strategies in coalition publications and testimony and argue that despite the CPCCA’s pretence to being a forum for liberal-pluralist debate, in fact it is engaged in an ideological reframing of human rights designed to restrict political debate. It does so, paradoxically, by drawing on the language of left-liberalism, which contrasts with recent ideological interventions aiming to secure the priorities of the neo-liberal state.

Cultural Rights And Internal Minorities: Of Pueblos And Protestants, Andrew M. Robinson

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article considers the question: should rights extended to cultural communities to help them preserve themselves include the right to discipline dissident members who violate cultural norms? The case of the Pueblo Protestants is employed to consider two important defenses of cultural rights (revisionist liberal and cultural communitarian) that offer conflicting answers. Both are found unsatisfactory because of their implicit reliance on “cultural monism” (that is, the assumption that individuals identify with only one cultural community). An approach to defining cultural rights is then outlined that avoids this assumption and its application is illustrated with respect to the Pueblo case.

A Tripolar World? A Framework For Analysis, Heidi J. Bachert-Burke

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The complex changes which are now under way have sparked a great deal of interest and speculation around possible world order, futures and the U.S.' relationship to them. The predominant image of the New World Order is one which hinges on the development of a liberal, economic multipolar world order in which mutual responsibility and macro-policy coordination become effective means of global management. Indeed this perspective is prone to see the possibility for change through peaceful and harmonious means. In as much as advocates of Interdependency Theory try to anticipate, explore and systematize, they seem to override a very important …

Collective Consciousness And Self-Societal Definition: A Theory And Model For A Direct Democracy, John Blaikie Armstrong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis builds a theory of ideal democracy based on the concept of human self-realization as intersubjectively determined. Self-realization and intersubjectivity, it argues, is founded on the existential notion of "choice". Self-realization is broadened, it is argued, by broadening the choices available to individuals. The thesis attempts to broaden individual choices by broadening participation in democracy. The thesis then constructs a practical model for a direct democracy using modern telecommunications networks. The intent of the theory is to build an intuitive myth of Universal Leadership that transcends the liberal myth of freedom. It outlines the liberal notion of the 'contract' …

Nationalism And Integration, Allan Harold Moore

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The hypothesis of the paper is that nationalism and integration are compatible with each other, and only conflict when the integrationist tendencies in society become overbearing. To study the hypothesis to the fullest extent possible, we explored it in both intellectual and concrete terms. Chapter One looks at the literature on nationalism and concludes that it can be used in the integration processes of society. Chapter Two examines how nationalism is treated by the modern proponents of integration. The functionalist, neo-functionalist, federalist and pluralist schools of integration are explored in the chapter. Chapter Three examines the hypothesis in concrete terms …

The Appropriateness Of The Concept Of The Individual, Frank Clancy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The fundamental concepts of any discipline ought to be examined periodically, not only to understand what constitutes those principles or concepts but also to ensure that our basic assumptions are logically and empirically acceptable. This thesis calls for the reexamination of the concept of the “individual” and of its role as the basic or fundamental unit of human society. Two suggestions are made an indications that possible alternative views are logically consistent with the data presently at our disposal. The first suggestion is that the concept of the individual in Western culture was formed largely as a by-product of a …

The Origin Of Ideology: Marx’S Method Of Human Liberation And Husserl’S Investigation Of Judgments, Bryce Weber

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis begins by asking how alienation can be distinguished by objectification. By examining the first chapter of Capital I and the Grundrisse it is discovered that Marx’s theory of labour hinges on an understanding of the psychic process of the subject. In order to universalize Marx’s method the thesis shifts to Husserl’s examination of the subjective process of judging. The latter is understood in this thesis as structurally equivalent to Marx’s understanding of labour. It is discovered that the meaning of any act of judging/labour is irreal. Alienation is thus discovered to be the naive belief in the factual …