Political Science

Western politics are defined by a subjectivity of intense individualism and lack of social capital. However, contentious politics can completely change this subjectivity and build an interconnected, interdependent subjectivity anew. Studying first-hand reports of the subjectivities and protagonism developed in Argentina during protests following the 2001 economic collapse, a case is made for a new subjectivity that can empower and change democracies.

The concept of activism in academy has changed considerably just as the concept of an agent in academia has changed. Students are disempowered, constructed as simply consumers. Faculty are disempowered, as mere service providers. To reclaim activism, agency must reclaimed; this is how academia can be re-claimed.

Simon Fraser University's acceptance of a multi-million dollar donation from Goldcorp for their fine arts campus raises significant questions about the potential of the university as a place of critical engagement when funders bring with them significant baggage.

As governments and public bodies use methods and practices of consultation to meet demands for a more democratic administration through public participation in governance and public policy, it is important to question to what degree consultation is actually participatory.  Some methods arguably only ‘slouch towards’ democratic administration, serving instead to appear participatory while limiting participation through what is described as the ‘design, display, defend’ model of consultation. This model is studied through reference to examples of participation and governance, and a preliminary discussion of alternatives and theoretical importance is offered.

Political science, and, arguably, traditional politics, are epistemologically oriented towards the state as a thing to
be taken over, and power as something to be wielded. This epistemological orientation leads to political programmes that seek out the power of the state as a way to create emancipatory projects. This is a mode of praxis that is not unknown in Argentina, though those participating in the popular uprisings of the 19th and 20th, and in the “autonomous” movements afterwards seem to have solidly rejected this particular form of organizing towards freedom. Indeed, they appear to have rejected the state power programmatic entirely, in favour of what Colectivo Situaciones, a self-described “radical research collective” has termed “social protagonism,” or a multiplicity of diverse aims and goals
working in concert towards many emancipatory and anti-capitalist goals. In this paper, I explore what this might mean for political projects in the future.

In this paper, I will explore the emergence of the autonomous social movements in Argentina and argue that this mode of organising and engagement, which emphasizes a social subjectivity and protagonism instead of the more traditional political subjectivity,  is the kind of civil society that participants in the movements believe is what is needed for future of their vision of democracy in Argentina.  Importantly, as I agree with Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault on “the indignity of speaking for others,”  I will try to animate participant accounts of participation in the assemblies and MTDs to provide a grounded connection to organising in Argentina.  Through these accounts, I will argue that the kind of civil society that participants identified as needed for democratization is one that does not try to impose a universality that could become a counter-hegemony, instead focusing on heterogeneity, participation, and subjectivity and agency, and a democracy that shares in these characteristics as a way to dismantle the existing hegemony without necessarily replacing it..  As the MTD Solano say,

"We are delighted about this initiative, this genuine quest for democracy without representation, already with no trace of the old.  And the discussion is going that way."

How can we build good jobs? This is an important question. When we, as British Columbians, decision makers, workers, and citizens, engage with this question, we develop a long list of potential ideas because we approach the issue in different ways: some policy makers count any job—no matter its precariousness, insecurity, or income—as a success. Others posit that jobs need to pay a living wage to be considered a good job. Others indicate that workers define good jobs as those that are empowering, are fulfilling, connect people socially, and many other characteristic connected to inclusion
and empowerment. The truth is that a good job is a combination of all of these factors. I argue that
one path towards building fulfilling, empowering, rewarding, and community-oriented jobs – good jobs – is through co-operatives. Co-operative enterprises can offer jobs that
are rewarding to workers, which provide stable employment, that allow workers to participate in their jobs, and that contribute to their communities through the local
circulation of business proceeds, wages, and consumer activities. This becomes a mutually positive economic flow, as increased economic activity supports workers.

Many Canadians believe there's a trade-off to be made between employment and environmental sustainability. But that doesn't have to be the case -- particularly if we look at co-operatives as a source of jobs.
You might be familiar with co-ops already -- you probably know of housing co-ops, or you might be one of the more than a million B.C. residents who are members of a credit union. But you might not be familiar with the potential that co-ops can have in terms of employment -- especially employment with environmental sustainability in mind.

Social" and economic changes associated with the emergence of the "new Europe" in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty have prompted social theorists, politicians and media pundits to call for the drafting of a "new social contract." Similar aspirations are also expressed in North America. This is not surprising. At the close of the twentieth century, few things are less in doubt than the rise of individualism and the ideological triumph of liberalism. This still relatively inchoate consensus has been shaped at a time when the postwar consensus legitimizing the Keynesian welfare state is breaking down. State interventionism no longer has any intellectual or political legitimacy in the Western world. Economic liberalism has become the new orthodoxy. The new consensus is far stronger on economic issues than on social issues, however, especially in continental Europe. The crisis of the welfare state does not translate into a rejection of its egalitarian goals, as evidenced by the recent electoral successes of social democratic parties in many countries. The challenge for these parties is to design in social policies that would be more ef cient from an economic standpoint, less dependent on implementation by large bureaucracies and more respectful of individual freedoms, but would still protect citizens against the worst social consequences of free markets and accelerated technological change. The French economist and moral philosopher Serge-Cristophe Kolm offers insightful answers to such questions. Although Kolm is well known in France and by economists worldwide, 1 his work has not yet attracted the attention it deserves in disciplines that overlap with political economy and normative economics, e.g. political science or philosophy. My hope is that this paper will go some way toward rectifying this situation. In many respects Kolm is an orthodox economists and, philosophically speaking, a liberal. As his Modern Theories of Justice clearly demonstrates, Kolm's conceptual universe shares much ground with the works of leading Anglo-American economists and analytic philosophers. Yet he sometimes diverges from these perspectives. This is in part a re ection of his original, somewhat idiosyncratic, attempt at bridging the gap between Western and Buddhist epistemology and psychology about which I do not intend to comment here. 2 But more often than not, these divergences are best understood as echoes of, or responses to, heterodox currents that continue to play a notable, albeit less and less central, role in the French social sciences. Thus Kolm's work is pertinent in at least two ways: as a valuable contribution to a debate on justice and the future of the welfare state; and as a focal point for exploring the contrasts between ,

Can the theories and approaches that fall under the more or less overlapping labels “classical liberalism” or “libertarianism” be saved from themselves? By adhering too dogmatically to their principles, libertarians may have painted themselves into a corner. They have generally failed to generate broad political or even intellectual support. Some of the reasons for this isolation include their reluctance to recognize the multiplicity of ways order emerges in different contexts and, more significantly, their unshakable faith in the virtues of free markets renders them somewhat blind to economic inequalities; their strict construction of property rights and profound distrust of state institutions leave them unable to recommend public policies that could alleviate such problems. The doctrine advanced by “left-libertarians” and market socialists address these substantive weaknesses in ways that are examined in detail in this paper. But I argue that these “third way” movements do not sta...

With the constant negotiation and renegotiation of political arrangements between levels of government in Canada, federalism and intergovernmental relations are never stagnant. From time to time, new political circumstances bring about sudden policy changes which redefine the federal partnership, perennial problems are cast in a new light as new solutions emerge. What used to be obvious no longer is, and unsuspected opportunities open up which political entrepreneurs can seize upon. In this context, the question raised at the workshop "Common Ground: Renewing the Federal Partnership in Quebec and the West," held in Vancouver in March of 2007, was whether the election of the Conservative government, among other factors, has created a new climate for renewing Canadian federalism and, more specifically, whether Quebec and the western provinces will be able to work out their past differences in a new atmosphere of cooperation around issues of mutual interest. Overview With the...