Lisa Young – Professor, University of Calgary (title to be confirmed)
Seminar
TBC About the presenter: Lisa is an accomplished scholar in the area of Canadian politics, with a particular research focus on political parties, election finances and women’s participation in political life. She is the author of numerous journal articles, book chapters, conference papers…
Brexit, Referendums and Deliberative Democracy
Seminar
"We want another referendum but one based on facts”, wrote the philosopher A.C. Greyling recently. In an ideal world, referendums (like all other democratic exercises) should be grounded in discussion. But the impression is that referendums, rather than being exercises in deliberation, are…
Endogenous Institutions and Constitutional Manipulation in Dictatorships
Seminar
Much of the existing comparative dictatorships literature is concerned with the effects of authoritarian institutions on survival. Given the existing difficulties of the identification of the possible effects of institutions, this paper instead turns to understand the…
The Hillary Hypotheses: Testing Candidate Views of Loss
Seminar
The surprising election of Donald Trump to the Presidency calls for a comprehensive assessment of what motivated voters to opt for a controversial political novice rather than a provocative but experienced political veteran. Our study provides a novel exploration of the Trump victory through the…
New Kremlinology: The Challenge of Understanding and Studying the Russian Political Regime
Seminar
In a departure from accounts centred on the failure of democratisation in Russia, my argument begins from a basic assumption that the political regime of Vladimir Putin is a personalist regime in the making. How do regimes turn personalist? How do their rulers acquire and maintain personal…
How Preferences as Principles Explain Peace and Competition During Power Transitions
Seminar
Does crisis behaviour signal information about resolve or, aggressive long-term intentions, or is there too much uncertainty to signal anything at all? Studies of iterated crisis bargaining have found this question difficult to answer because they assume states draw their values for each issue…
Deliberating on a hot topic in the headlights: the Irish Citizens’ Assembly’s deliberations on abortion
Seminar
Empirical research on deliberative democracy has moved through a series of stages, the most recent of which has entailed the study of real-world deliberative mini-publics. Among the various forms of mini-publics citizens’ assemblies are seen as ‘democratically superior’, and as having potentially…