Semester One: SPIR Seminar Series
Seminar
Week Speaker Talk title 18 February Mark Franklin "Does electoral integrity yield more responsive government?" 25 February Csaba Nikolenyi "Party Switching In Israel and Canada: Assessing the Impact…
Does electoral integrity yield more responsive government?
Seminar
Abstract This paper investigates European party congruence with voters in left-right terms over the period of a quarter century since the late 1980s. By aggregating individual-level data collected for many countries over a long time-period to the birth-year-cohort level, and in conjunction…
Beyond elitism: The possibilities of labour-centred development in Latin America
Seminar
The ‘pink tide’ in Latin America is drawing increasing criticisms from the political left for its inability to confront existing socio-structural inequalities. In this talk Benjamin Selwyn contributes to discussions on the future for human development in Latin America by advocating a new paradigm…
The Politics of Fiscal Equalization in Canada and Australia: Contemporary Responses and Practical Reforms
Seminar
The Australian Centre for Federalism (ACF) presents: "The Politics of Fiscal Equalization in Canada and Australia: Contemporary Responses and Practical Reforms" Australia is a well-known pioneer in the field of fiscal federalism and equalization policy. Created in 1933, the Commonwealth…
The New Politics of the Minimum Wage
Seminar
What are the partisan politics of the minimum wage? If left-wing parties are aligned with unions and right-wing parties with employers, we would expect a positive left-partisan effect on the level of the minimum wage. But two things may work against this. First, the ‘producer group’ alignments of…
The Electoral Consequences of Ministerial Turnover in Canada
Seminar
Despite an abundance of studies on the incumbency advantage and elite careers, we know very little about the electoral performance of ministers and ex-ministers. Are ministers electorally rewarded thanks to their powerful position in government? Conversely, are ministers that exit government…
Political prediction based on resilient stresses: What is going to happen to South Africa?
Seminar
Abstract It's sometimes naively thought that short-term political prediction is easier than long-term prediction, because more contingencies pile up the further out in time a prediction reaches. I'll illustrate a more sophisticated view, based on what I'll call 'resilient stresses' -…