Panel 1 - Regulation, Welfare, and the Moral Economy of the State

Discussant: Dr. Jonathan Malloy

Loeb A602

The Great Stifling: How the Regulatory Deluge Is Draining the Life Force from Modern Society – Karanveer Singh

Contemporary Western societies exhibit a striking paradox: material abundance coexists with rising apathy, collapsing ambition, and widespread psychological distress. This paper argues that a central, yet overlooked, driver of this malaise is regulatory overproduction, the unchecked proliferation of laws, permits, and compliance mechanisms that drain cognitive and emotional resources from daily life. Reviving a philosophical tradition that includes Laozi, Bastiat, and integrating empirical findings from Donald Shoup and cognitive psychology, the paper contends that excessive low-stakes regulation imposes what Mullainathan and Shafir call a “bandwidth tax” and what Baumeister describes as “ego depletion”, together, a chronic erosion of executive function, autonomy, and agency. The paper’s central case study contrasts Canada’s hyper-regulated parking landscape with the informal, low-enforcement systems of India, illustrating how institutional scarcity is manufactured by policy, not by material constraint. It identifies five societal consequences: diminished mental bandwidth, social isolation, regressive economic burden, stifled entrepreneurship, and shrunken life horizons. It then evaluates three common justifications for regulatory accumulation, order, complexity, and public demand, and rebuts each with real-world evidence from Alberta, Edmonton, and New Zealand. Ultimately, the paper calls for a return to radical simplicity in lawmaking, via sunset clauses, permissionless zones, and compliance-hour caps, not only as a matter of efficiency, but as a moral imperative. Regulatory reform is not merely technocratic housekeeping; it is the restoration of psychic sovereignty, civic possibility, and human flourishing.

Occupation and Opportunity: Ottawa’s Freedom Convoy, Annexation and Sowing Chaos Abroad – Jack Edwards-Boone

Since coming into power in 2025, Donald Trump’s foreign policy doctrine has involved causing and capitalizing upon destabilization and disorder wherever profitable, including utilizing the emergence of a Canadian right-wing populist movement for his own political ends. The 2022 Freedom Convoy is identified as a pivotal turning point in Trump’s perception of Canada in this respect. Through process tracing, this paper analyzes how the events of the Freedom Convoy ultimately informed Trump’s attitude towards Canada during the start of his second term in office. It begins with a discussion of Trump’s foreign policy doctrine. This leads to a causal analysis of how the Freedom Convoy became a pivotal moment in Canadian political history – representing a previously unforeseen susceptibility to the rising tide of right-wing populism. The paper will continue to explore the causal chain of events in Canada leading from the Freedom Convoy to 2025, where the resignation of Justin Trudeau and the narrow electoral victory of Mark Carney amidst Trump’s threats of tariffs and annexation demonstrated how Trump perceived the vulnerability of the Canadian political system to upheaval and right-wing populism. The events of the 2022 Freedom Convoy represent more than simple pandemic-era anxieties or a fleeting dalliance with right-wing populism. Instead, the Freedom Convoy should be understood as a pivotal moment in testing the resilience of Canada’s institutions and liberal status quo – one that the nation did not weather unscathed.

The Price of Welfare: Narratives of First Nations Economic Development in Ontario’s Bill 5 – Owen Cober

The Government of Ontario has framed Bill 5 as a necessary defence of economic sovereignty in response to Trump tariff threats. Despite this, the Bill has stirred significant public controversy. Many First Nations groups were quick to point out the Bill's colonial nature, highlighting how it gives the Government of Ontario the power to override existing legislation and treaty rights in the name of 'economic development'. There is a deep schism between the provincial government and First Nations regarding Bill 5, as First Nations argue the government’s objectives for this Bill promote a specific form of economic development via natural resource extraction to their detriment. This reveals a rift that becomes central to the questions guiding this project – how has the Government of Ontario’s messaging regarding Bill 5 employed arguments about First Nations economic development to promote mining activity in the province? To explore, this project employs Critical Discourse Analysis not only to analyze the discursive structures at play, but to explain them in their broader context as well. Data from the Ontario government, its ministries and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is gathered from January 1 - June 30 2025, ensuring that all key aspects of Bill 5’s development thus far are included. This project aims to contribute to First Nations-led efforts to resist Bill 5, offering a deeper insight into the ways that governments attempt to manipulate public sympathy through discourse in the context of First Nations and extractive industries. It will bring together concepts of settler coloniality, racial capitalism, and discourse studies to scrutinize the power structures that continue to pervade Canada’s colonial welfare state, as well as the First Nations resistance therein.

Panel 2 - Gendered Radicalization, Masculinity, and Political Violence

Discussant: Dr. Erin Tolley

Loeb D780

A New Approach to the Study of Populism: Replacing “The People” with the Heartland – Ben De Toni

In the contemporary study of populism there are three predominant approaches that define and locate populism: the ideological approach, the strategic approach, and the socio-cultural approach. Due to the many competing claims on what populism encompasses, a messy canon has been fashioned, where one approach’s ideal type of populist movement may not even be considered populist by another approach. The main problem that has led to this fractured field is that lies, vagueness, and obscuration are inherent to populism as an ideology, as a strategy, and as a cultural movement. This vagueness is generated through the political constructs populism employs, which are crafted to allow audiences to derive different meanings from these constructs. There are a variety of these political fictions, but at the crux of populism lies the most important one, “the people”. Scholars of all three approaches use a definition of “the people” as vital to their conceptual definitions of the phenomenon, but “the people” is a political fiction designed to be ambiguous. As such, including “the people” in a definition of populism is ultimately a mistake. This paper proposes a new definition of populism, one that abandons “the people” as the central idea of populism and replacing it with Paul Taggart’s concept of the heartland, a place which embodies all the positive aspects of ‘the people.’ Thus, populism can be described as an ideology concerned with the restoration of a past utopian heartland, which has been corrupted via liberal capitalist democracy by an inherently immoral “Other”.

Fighting Your Way to the ‘Right’ Side: How Hypermasculinity Mediates Right-Wing Populist Discourse in Social Media Influencers – Briana Kroeker

There has been a shift in the way people interact with social media, from using it as a means of entertainment and lifestyle posting towards a prominent method of communication for social media influencers (SMIs) to share political opinions (Suuronen et al. 2022, 307). SMIs typically curate their own platforms to portray an authentic lifestyle, where they act as opinion leaders through a one-sided trustworthy relationship and mediate the dissemination of complex information to their audiences (Suuronen et al. 2022, 313; Klüver 2024, 3). Previously apolitical SMIs have begun to endorse political candidates, with a prominent example being Jake Paul’s endorsement of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election. Paul’s online platform consisted of entertainment-based content beginning in 2013, gradually shifting towards combat sports as he entered into professional boxing in 2020. It has been shown that right-wing populist support is correlated with masculinity, where men who display more masculine personality traits are more likely to support and vote for right-wing parties (Coffé 2018, 178). However, less is known about how right-wing populist support emerges in SMI platforms curated to masculine interests, such as professional boxing. This study aims to understand the factors involved in the emergence of right-wing populist discourse by using content analysis on five of Paul’s YouTube videos over a five year timespan. Hypermasculinity, consisting of dominance and self-reliance, emerges as a mediating factor. This is traced through Paul’s entry into professional boxing highlighting how right-wing populist discourse can unfold in online SMI platforms.

Incel Communities, Stochastic Terrorism, and Increasing Online Political Radicalization – Sierra Nediu

Recent years have witnessed a marked rise in gender-based political violence connected to online extremist subcultures, particularly within the “manosphere” and Incel (involuntary celibate) communities. This paper examines how digital platforms, algorithmic recommendation systems, and online community formation contribute to misogynistic radicalization and political violence, situating these dynamics within broader debates about state security, social cohesion, and institutional capacity. Drawing on feminist security studies and critical terrorism scholarship, the paper interrogates the growing tendency to conceptualize Incel violence through the framework of “stochastic terrorism.” While this label captures the role of online media in facilitating ideological diffusion, it ultimately fails to account for the collective identity, shared ideology, and reciprocal radicalization processes that characterize Incel communities. Through a qualitative case study of the 2014 Isla Vista Massacre and the subsequent Incel-inspired acts of violence, this research demonstrates how digital spaces function not merely as sites of exposure, but as structures that actively cultivate grievance, nihilism, and political motivation. This paper argues that Incel violence constitutes a distinct form of misogynistic terrorism aimed at reshaping social and gender hierarchies through fear and intimidation. By highlighting the limitations of existing terrorism frameworks, this study calls for greater attention to gender, online community dynamics, and digital infrastructures in understanding contemporary political violence. In doing so, it contributes to broader conversations about how evolving social structures challenge states and institutions tasked with maintaining democratic security and public safety.

Panel 3 - Surveillance, AI, and the Crisis of Democratic Trust

Discussant: Dr. William Walters

Loeb A602

The Power to Blind Power: A Postsecret Reading of La Boétie – Vincenzo Poti

This paper reactivates La Boétie’s voluntary servitude hypothesis to interrogate contemporary regimes of surveillance and transparency, focusing on how individuals voluntarily “lend their eyes” to oppressive political configurations. It asks: How can La Boétie’s critique of voluntary servitude be reactivated as a radical lens for thinking transparency and surveillance today? In engaging in the academic debate on this topic, the paper situates its intervention against uncritically optimistic accounts that equate transparency with democratic openness. Drawing on secrecy studies, and especially Birchall’s concept of “postsecrecy”, it argues that opacity is not antithetical to political community but can instead strengthen collective resistance to totalizing forms of transparency – whether enacted through top-down or lateral surveillance. Postsecrecy offers a framework for imagining political communities capable of depriving power of its “eyes” without collapsing into homogenizing visibility, thus refusing both domination and the demand to be fully knowable. Methodologically, the paper proposes a conceptual reading of La Boétie’s Discours, treating voluntary servitude as a living political problem, rather than reconstructing the text’s authorial intent. Encounters between La Boétie and more contemporary authors like Deleuze and Guattari are key to problematizing liberal notions of individual will, and foregrounding the role of desire and the importance of political subjectivity in La Boétie’s theorization of servitude and refusal.

The Smartphonocene: Surveillance Capitalism’s Impact on the Environment – Jeremi Berg

While critiques of surveillance capitalism have typically focused on privacy and human rights violations, this research paper examines the environmental impacts of this billion-dollar industry. By investigating the logical operations of data extraction and the role of data brokers, this paper aims to illustrate how the smartphone serves as a necessary instrument for mining raw behavioural data that can be monetized. These technological devices have become social passports and extensions of the human body, creating a continuous techno-social entanglement in which human behaviour is monitored, predicted, modified, and sold through an algorithmic feedback loop that ensures a sustainable source of extraction. This study further argues that these logics of surveillance capitalism are the fundamental driving force of the Smartphonocene, a framework akin to the Capitalocene that attributes the current ecological crisis to capitalist systems' reliance on smart devices rather than humanity as a whole. Which is evident in the smartphone’s life cycle and in the destructive extraction of rare earth minerals like lithium, cobalt, and others that contribute to the global accumulation of toxic e-waste. Additionally, the industry’s reliance on planned obsolescence, in which devices are engineered with shorter lifespans to promote continuous consumption. Ultimately, the survival and continued prosperity of surveillance capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability, as its pursuit of behavioural surplus necessitates an infrastructure that inflicts irreversible damage to our planet, with the Global South bearing the brunt of its destructive forces.

When Facts No Longer Suffice: AI-Driven Disinformation and the Crisis of Democratic Trust – Fatoumata Mansaré & Linh Kim

The sturdy assumption that democracy will function smoothly as long as individuals have access to information has been fundamentally destabilized by social media and generative AI. In fact, AI-driven disinformation has strained the democratic relationship between individuals, institutions, and the state by advancing targeted agendas, creating information bubbles that trap people in what feels like different realities. Through the fabrication and distortion of facts, AI contributes to the erosion of trust in science and ultimately in public institutions and scientific authorities. This research explores the impact of AI-driven disinformation on eroding public trust and democratic backsliding. Specifically, it looks at how AI has reshaped the production and circulation of factual information while undermining the epistemic foundations necessary for democracy and institutional legitimacy. In an era marked by heightened geopolitical instability, AI creates a new frontier of challenges that is highly relevant for policymakers across the world. Trust occupies an integral place in the democratic functioning of societies. The growing concern is not simply that individuals will be misled into falsehood, but that truth becomes harder to find. As a result, this complicates accountability and civic engagement, impeding effective governance in an era of pressing global challenges. Adopting a comparative, institutional approach, the study examines national AI strategies in selected countries while comparing them to scholarly literature on democratic theory and AI. In combination with interviews with policy and communication experts, the study points out gaps in governance and suggests ways for restoring public trust and building an AI-ready, resilient society.

Panel 4 - Migration, Refuge, and the Governance of Belonging

Discussant: Dr. James Milner

Loeb D780

There Are No Sidelines in Geopolitics: Neutralism in the 21st Century – Kaia Goodhope

“What are the varieties of neutrality and why do small states follow specific strategies of neutrality?” After the Cold War, Ukraine was among other states facing residual East-West tensions and an opportunity to define its domestic and foreign policies outside of a Soviet identity. What Ukraine did was surprising. It confounded an expectation that it would immediately align with the West. This is surprising because most observers consider neutrality as a matter of staying out of the fray, but it is more sophisticated than that. States can be ostensibly neutral, but my analysis reveals that in order to maintain neutrality, states are deeply constrained in the types of neutrality they can adopt. My project goes beyond how neutrality is understood in law and history, introducing an original geostrategic neutrality typology, building off a combined comparative method and process-tracing of formally recognized neutral states and empirically observed neutral behaviour in ‘non-neutral’ states. My argument is that states are only as neutral and their options, and the current world order shapes what options are available.

Advocating for Admission: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Diplomacy on behalf of Refugees with Disabilities, 1951–2025 – Rachel McNally

Refugee resettlement is one way that states who are not geographically close to refugee-producing countries can share responsibilities for refugee hosting. Resettlement states have perceived refugees with disabilities and complex medical needs as a burden on a state’s medical and social services. As a result, states have been reluctant, today and historically, to resettle a sizeable number of refugees with disabilities. From the literature, one might expect that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would adapt to the preferences of these resettlement states by reducing their advocacy for the resettlement of refugees with disabilities over time. Yet, the archival record shows remarkable consistency in the UNHCR’s advocacy for the resettlement of refugees with disabilities over a long period of time. This paper asks the question: what explains how UNHCR has engaged in the resettlement of refugees with disabilities over time? The paper draws on documents from the archives of the UNHCR in Geneva, the UNHCR website, the United Nations Library in Geneva, the United Nations Digital Library, and university libraries. It argues that successive High Commissioners for Refugees prioritized solutions for refugees over state preferences, taking on a diplomatic role and successfully coordinating collective action among a coalition of willing states that led to the admission of refugees with disabilities. The paper suggests that far from being merely instruments of states, international organizations can play a diplomatic role in advocating for policies consistent with their mandates.

Panel 5 - States, Institutions, and Democratic Resilience

Discussant: Dr. Aaron Ettinger 

Loeb A602

Filtering Populism: How Institutional and Societal Structures Mediate Identity Politics and Insecurity – Prabhu Hariharan

Contemporary political science often assumes that rising populism, identity politics, and insecurity exert direct and destabilizing effects on democratic governance and state behavior. Yet empirical outcomes frequently diverge from these expectations. This paper advances a structural argument: political pressures such as populism and identity do not operate autonomously but are filtered through institutional and societal architectures that condition their effects. Using India as an empirical case, the paper integrates three complementary analyses. First, a configurational Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of India’s bilateral engagement with Muslim-majority states demonstrates that sustained external cooperation persists not despite domestic populist rhetoric, but because foreign-policy institutions selectively bracket ideological pressures through specific combinations of material interdependence, diaspora leverage, and normative pragmatism. Second, a state-level panel analysis of Indian federal elections challenges “security voting” narratives, showing that terrorism does not systematically increase ruling-party vote share once participation and structural electoral factors are considered. Third, a policy-process perspective highlights how agenda control and institutional equilibrium generate continuity across policy domains, even under conditions of heightened political polarization. Together, these findings suggest that the political consequences of populism depend less on ideology itself than on the robustness and configuration of the structures through which it is processed. By foregrounding institutional filtering and societal mediation, the paper contributes to broader debates on democratic resilience, policy drift, and the conditions under which contemporary states adapt to, or resist, transformative social change. The paper thus contributes to the conference’s focus on States, Societies, and Structures by demonstrating how institutional design and societal configurations mediate political stress, shaping governance outcomes under conditions of populism and uncertainty.

States, Sanctions, and Domestic Discourse: Iranian Political Newspapers and the U.S. Withdrawal from the JCPOA – Marzie Khalilian

This paper examines how Iran’s major political newspapers aligned with opposing political camps framed the domestic implications of the United States’ withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018. The JCPOA was a multilateral nuclear agreement linking limitations on Iran’s nuclear program to sanctions relief, and it played a central role in shaping Iran’s economic conditions, foreign relations, and internal political debates. Its collapse following the U.S. withdrawal constituted a significant structural disruption with immediate domestic consequences. Focusing on a four-week period spanning the two weeks before and two weeks after the withdrawal announcement, the study treats the event as an external shock to Iran’s political system. The analysis draws on coverage across two widely read newspapers associated with opposing political camps, examining how the withdrawal was discussed, contextualized, and interpreted within broader domestic political discourse. By approaching newspapers as institutional structures that mediate between state authority and society, the paper explores how domestic political narratives are organized and contested under conditions of international pressure and economic constraint. Rather than evaluating policy outcomes or public responses, the study focuses on elite framing and discursive positioning during a moment of heightened political uncertainty. The paper contributes to discussions on state–society relations, political communication, and the role of media institutions in shaping domestic political environments under sanctions.

Talking to Rebels? Public Attitudes Toward Rebel Diplomacy in the United States and Nigeria – Hayl Hasan Hayl Al-Salehi

This paper will examine an understudied dimension of rebel diplomacy: how ordinary citizens in democratic polities evaluate diplomatic engagement with armed non-state groups, and what domestic political constraints this creates for governments considering talks with insurgents. The paper will employ survey experiments to be fielded in two contrasting contexts—the United States (distant superpower with abstract interest in foreign conflicts) and Nigeria (state directly experiencing Boko Haram insurgency)—to test how framing effects, threat perceptions, perceived legitimacy, and personal exposure to violence shape public support for various forms of rebel diplomacy including office opening, media access, and recognized party status in negotiations. The experimental design will manipulate rebel group labels ("rebel group" vs. "terrorist organization"), stated goals (self-determination vs. regime change vs. religious imposition), and tactics (civilian-targeting vs. military-only), while measuring respondents' support for engagement and preferences between military-only versus mixed diplomatic-military strategies. The paper will assess whether labeling effects are more powerful in the US context (where threat is distant and symbolic) than in Nigeria (where direct exposure to violence may create more complex, experience-driven attitudes). The analysis will also examine whether exposure to violence creates non-linear effects, testing whether moderate exposure increases hardline opposition to talks while extreme exposure combined with war-weariness increases pragmatic support for negotiations. These findings will provide important insights into understanding domestic political constraints that shape governments' willingness to pursue diplomatic engagement with armed groups, and will inform how mediators and policymakers can frame engagement to build public support.

Panel 6 - Colonialism, Algorithmic Power, and Violent Governance

Discussant: Dr. Gopinka Solanki

Loeb D780

The Vampire State: Ethnocentric Political Grievance and Economics of Extraction in Sub-Saharan Africa – Roy C.J. Wu

Does economic opportunity drive civil war, or do political status and power disparities determine economic destiny and civil war? While the “Greed versus Grievance” debate often assumes universal rationality, this study argues that the post-colonial sub-Saharan African (SSA) states exhibit a distinct institutional logic - the “Vampire State” - where ethnocentric politics overrides economics. Using a novel “Grievance Ladder” framework applied to ETH Zurich’s GeoEPR dataset (1990 ~ 2018) to differentiate between benign political exclusion and active discrimination, I used the Binomial Logistic Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) with supplementary rare-event and Bayesian specifications to test for structural divergences in conflict logic between SSA and the rest of the world. The results revealed a stark contrast. Outside of SSA, conflict follows a “rational actor” logic: mere political exclusion can trigger conflicts, provided groups possess the economic wealth to mobilize (a significant Grievance * Wealth interaction). In SSA, this logic collapses such that “benign neglect” (exclusion) is insufficient to trigger violence; conflict requires active discrimination and/or loss of political power, regardless of group wealth or size. Furthermore, satellite nightlight luminosity analysis demonstrates that while political status has negligible economic effects outside of SSA (marginal R-squared approximately 0.0063), in SSA, it is an essential determinant of group-level welfare (marginal R-squared approximately 0.1149). These findings challenge Eurocentric “opportunity cost” models, suggesting that African civil wars are not fought for loot, but against a predatory state structure where political exclusion is an existential economic threat.

Algorithmizing the Subaltern: Palestinians from Colonial Subjects to Algorithmic Matters – Ali Al Ashoor

In May 2021, the Israeli military bragged about conducting the first artificial intelligence (AI) war after its 11-day conflict with the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza. As a result, 261 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, over 2,200 were injured, and up to US $380 million in physical damage to core infrastructures. Despite the inaccuracy of the Israeli military’s claim, the increase, intensification, and escalation of using AI and algorithmic systems against Palestinians after the Hamas-attack on October 7th require rigorous examination, not only for inquiring the ethics, implications, and military complex profiteering, but to interrogate the colonial dimensions of it. This necessitates unpacking the structural relation between Israel as a settler colonial state and Palestinians as colonized people to contextualize and conceptualize the role of AI. Grounded on Patrick Wolfe’s concept of “the logic of elimination” that structurally drives settler colonialism, this paper assesses the utilization of AI and algorithmic systems as a colonial act against the Palestinian people on social media platforms, Israeli surveillance systems, and AI killing-targeting machines. I propose the concept Algorithmizing the Subaltern to unpack the colonial dimensions of AI within the structural relation between the colonizer and the colonized. Algorithmizing the Subaltern refers to the continuous processes of datafication that turn the subaltern into algorithmic matters. Algorithmizing the subaltern creates algorithmic forces of erasure in and through which the subaltern simultaneously experiences isolation and elimination. This paper aims to tackle the operational dynamics of algorithmizing the subaltern.

The Politics of Defining: Interrogating the Belem Gender Action Plan – Sunitha Bisan Bisan Singh

The adoption of the Belem Gender Action Plan (Belem GAP) under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) marks a significant advancement in embedding gender norms within global climate governance. Building on the Paris Agreement, the Belem GAP institutionalizes gender-responsive measures across the 27 activities. This paper examines these developments as a critical moment in reframing gender-responsive justice within the UNFCCC process. How can this institutionalization create new entry points for accountability and advocacy? This question examines this operational commitment represent the shift to understand if it move beyond symbolic inclusion. This is critical in light of the various climate solutions promoted within the UNFCCC. While this adoption is celebratory, the removal of explicit human rights language and limited intersectional framing reveal tensions between transformative ambitions and patriarchal hold. This paper aim to unpack how legal norms are institutionalized and explores the conditions under which it can potentially advance gender-responsiveness beyond rhetoric towards substantive change.

Panel 7 - Political Economy, Extraction, and Dispossession

Discussant: Colin Anthes

Loeb A602

Extractive Alignments in Canada’s Net Zero Transition – Shaolin-Rose Gawat

Canada’s Net Zero agenda is increasingly operationalized through green industrial policy (GIP), positioning large-scale ‘clean’ infrastructure as a path to decarbonization and economic growth. This paper examines contradictions in GIP through the case of the Site C hydroelectric dam and LNG Canada’s export facility in British Columbia. Engaging with Kupzok and Nahm’s (2024) concept of the decarbonization bargain, I argue that the Canadian case operates through a different political dynamic. I introduce the concept of extractive alignments to describe cross-sectoral state-industry arrangements where GIP tools are used to build enabling infrastructure that stabilize fossil fuel exports. In British Columbia, hydropower development is discursively, institutionally, and materially linked to LNG expansion, lowering costs and legitimizing fossil production under a Net Zero framework. Using theory-testing process tracing (2013-2025), an analysis of policy documents, power agreements, fiscal frameworks, regulatory decisions, and legal conflicts demonstrate how Site C’s “clean power” is integrated into LNG Canada’s competitiveness strategy. These extractive alignments fall outside the expectations of decarbonization bargains, which anticipate sector-specific emissions reductions rather than cross-sectoral reinforcement of fossil production. The findings demonstrate how Canada’s GIP reproduces extractive, racial-capitalist, and settler-colonial logics, emphasizing the limits of distributive climate governance and the need for decolonial and transformative alternatives grounded in Indigenous sovereignty and relational ontologies.

Toward an Equitable Carbon Regime: Framing CBAs through a Justice Lens– Gabrielle Aubin

      Global climate governance continues to rely on production-based carbon accounting despite the growing role of global supply chains in reshaping the geography of emissions. As consumption in high-income countries increasingly drives emissions embodied in production elsewhere, territorial accounting conceals causal drivers, enables carbon leakage, and produces unfair burden-sharing. This paper argues that consumption-based accounting offers a more defensible ethical foundation for allocating climate responsibility under principles of climate justice, including responsibility, capacity to pay, and fairness. Drawing on distributive justice theory, the analysis shows that production-based frameworks systematically under-attribute responsibility to high-consuming economies while over-burdening lower-income producing countries. The paper further reframes border carbon adjustments as instruments of distributive justice capable of approximating consumption-based responsibility within existing institutional constraints. While border carbon adjustments can reduce leakage and protect domestic decarbonization efforts, their effectiveness and legitimacy are limited by measurement challenges, trade law constraints, and risks of reproducing global inequality.

Talking to Rebels? Public Attitudes Toward Rebel Diplomacy in the United States and Nigeria – Hayl Hasan Hayl Al-Salehi

Why does the stock market keep going up, even as factories close, unemployment rises, and social crises multiply? This presentation will offer some insight into this puzzle by outlining some of the initial findings of my dissertation research investigating excess capacity in the global auto business. The ongoing evolution of the auto business has made it an emblem of the disruptive transformations of global capitalism, making it an ideal case study for understanding the relationship between social crisis and capital accumulation. In my research, I am investigating the seeming paradox between the proposition, within political economic theory, that profit is generated through the production process, and the claim that the auto business is facing a crisis of too much productive capacity. I offer a critical exploration of the concept of excess capacity: how it is theorized, measured and narratively deployed in the context of the auto sector. Briefly, I argue that the narrative of excess capacity obscures the role of structural power wielded by large auto companies and their shifting strategies of capital accumulation. In fact, at least since the 1980s, contractions in auto production have become part and parcel of the process of capital accumulation in the sector. This hypothesis has important implications for how governments and their constituents negotiate investment in and organization of society’s productive capacities.

Panel 8 - Race, Gender, and Institutional Change in Canada

Discussant: Dr. Laura Macdonald

Loeb D780

From Protest to Policy: Black Lives Matter and the Evolution of Canada’s Employment Equity Act– Bethel Woldemichael

The rise of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policies in North America has intensified debate about when and how such policies produce meaningful social change. Global racial justice movements, particularly Black Lives Matter (BLM), alongside the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on Black communities, have renewed demands to confront systemic racism. In Canada, these pressures coincided with significant changes to the Employment Equity Act (EEA), which now explicitly recognizes Black people as a designated group. Yet, little research explains how or why this policy shift occurred. This dissertation uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the relationship between social movements—especially BLM—and the evolution and implementation of Canada’s federal employment equity policy. Since its introduction in 1986, the EEA has been Canada’s primary framework for addressing systemic employment discrimination, requiring proactive measures to improve representation of women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and visible minorities. While the Act has produced modest gains, persistent inequities—particularly for racialized women and Black Canadians in leadership—remain. The 2020 global BLM protests following the murder of George Floyd marked a pivotal moment, intensifying scrutiny of anti-Black racism and influencing Canada’s 2021 review of the EEA, which separated Black employees from the broader “visible minority” category. At the same time, recent backlash against DEI, including policy rollbacks in the United States, highlights enduring limitations in policy frameworks that fail to center race and power. Using a mixed-methods design, this study combines Census analysis, organizational surveys, and in-depth interviews to assess whether and how BLM shaped policy change and workplace practices. By centering race and systemic power, the research aims to generate evidence-based recommendations to strengthen employment equity for Black Canadians and contribute to more race-conscious policy design.

From City Hall to Parliament Hill? Gender, Race and Progressive Ambition in Canada – Kaitlin Gallant

Canada’s federal system offers politicians multiple entry points across municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government, which produces career trajectories that are more multidirectional than the hierarchical progression typically observed elsewhere. While extensive scholarship examines progressive political ambition—defined as the desire to seek higher office—this literature offers limited insight into how ambition operates within the Canadian context, particularly across gender and racial lines. This thesis addresses this gap asking: how do progressive ambitions among municipal officeholders vary by institutional and contextual factors such as province, municipality size, tenure, and party affiliation; and whether women and racialized politicians are more or less likely to express ambition for higher office compared to white men. Using municipal officeholder survey data and archival biographical analysis of federal and provincial legislators, this project contributes empirically by providing the first national, disaggregated account of ambition in Canada; theoretically by testing the applicability of U.S.-based ambition models; and substantively by clarifying how ambition intersects with gender, race, and institutional structures to shape political representation in Canada.

Addressing Trust in Healthcare: Perceptions and Responses of Health Policy Leaders in Ontario– Nour Al-Nasser 

Extensive research documents why marginalized communities mistrust healthcare institutions, pointing to racism, historical harm, exclusion, and ongoing system failures. Far less attention has been paid to how health policy leaders themselves understand this mistrust and how those understandings shape policy responses. This paper addresses this gap by “reversing the gaze” from communities to institutions, examining how senior health policy actors in Ontario define, explain, and attempt to address healthcare mistrust. The paper draws on a qualitative case study of Ontario’s High Priority Communities Strategy developed during COVID-19 and its influence on ongoing population health initiatives. Data come from semi-structured interviews with health policy leaders across Ontario Health, public health units, hospitals, and community health organizations, alongside analysis of relevant policy documents. The paper focuses on three analytic questions: how healthcare mistrust is understood by health policy leaders; what types of solutions policy leaders advance to address mistrust; and what barriers they identify when attempting to implement these responses. Using a critical, anti-oppressive policy lens, the analysis shows how institutional power, funding models, and accountability structures limit the scope of equity-focused responses, even when leaders express strong commitments to trust-building. The paper contributes to Canadian public policy scholarship by shifting attention from community mistrust to institutional sense-making, helping explain why mistrust persists despite repeated policy efforts to address it.