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An Interactive Talk with Peter C. Newman

Organized by the Pols'02 Reunion Committee & Department of Political Studies
 

In honour of their 15th reunion, the Political Studies Class of 2002 is hosting an interactive talk with acclaimed Canadian journalist, prolific author, and historian, Peter C. Newman moderated by Leif Malling.

About the Speaker: Peter Charles Newman is a journalist, author, and newspaper and magazine editor. Newman began writing for the Financial Post in 1951 and by 1953 he was Montréal editor of the Post, a position he held for 3 years before returning to Toronto to be assistant editor, then Ottawa columnist, at Maclean's. In Ottawa, Newman produced his masterly popular political chronicle of John Diefenbaker, Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (1963). Five years later, he published a similar study of Lester Pearson, The Distemper of Our Times (1968). The following year he became editor-in-chief at the Toronto Star (later publishing in Home Country: People, Places and Power Politics, 1973) and changed his focus from politicians to members of the Canadian business establishment. In Flame of Power (1959), he assembled 11 profiles of the first generation of Canada's business magnates; next he explored the lives of those who currently wielded financial power in popular studies such as his 2-volume The Canadian Establishment (1975, 1981), The Bronfman Dynasty (1978) and The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982). A third book called Titans: How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power was added to this series in 1998. His books have sold 1 million copies in Canada and he has had a profound effect on political reporting and business journalism, making them more personalized and evocative. He was editor of Maclean's where for a decade (1971-82) he worked to transform the magazine from a monthly to a weekly with a Canadian slant on international and national events. In 1982 he resigned to work on a three-volume history of the Hudson's Bay Co. In 1998, Newman received the Canadian Journalism Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Toronto Star's Excellence in Journalism. 

Founded in Fall 2015, the Colloquium is an initiative by the , the , and the Department of Political Studies. It consists of a series of seminars and workshops within the broad ambit of the Colloquium’s mandate. Students registered with the course meet with the Colloquium convenors to discuss a recent paper by a leading scholar. The following week, the students meet with the author, along with other faculty members and invited guests, for a workshop about the paper.

The Colloquium’s aim is to promote closer collaboration between legal, philosophical, and political studies, by bringing together students and faculty from these overlapping disciplines to engage in rigorous intellectual engagement. The Colloquium contributes to the 

In Fall 2020, the Colloquium convenors are  and . The Colloquium is funded by Professor Webber's Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law.

Further to the decision of the University that the Fall 2020 semester be held remotely for the majority of students, all Colloquium sessions listed below will be hosted remotely. 

All members of the »Ê¹ÚÌåÓý's community are welcome to attend the workshops and are invited to communicate with the convenors in order to receive information on how to do so.

Kristen Rundle joined Melbourne Law School in 2015 and teaches in the areas of administrative law and legal theory. She became the Co-Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies in December 2016. Kristen previously held appointments at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, as well as adjunct, visiting and honorary appointments at the University of Toronto, Erasmus University, the University of Ottawa, and the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University.

Kristen's research is located at the intersection of legal theory and public law in its effort to trace the conditions necessary for law to act as a limitation on power. Led by her work in legal philosophy on the intellectual legacy of the legal philosopher, Lon Fuller, Kristen's interest in interactions between legal forms and human agency has also informed her research into the connections between law and the Holocaust, her work on the legal and institutional attributes of the British child migration program, and her ongoing inquiry into questions of theory and practice arising from the neoliberal redesign of the administrative state, especially with respect to contracted-out public functions.

Kyle Hanniman
Assistant Professor,  Department of Political Studies, »Ê¹ÚÌåÓý

One of the greatest sources of Canada’s resiliency in recent years has been the public sector’s ability to borrow. It allowed us to run countercyclical deficits during the global financial crisis and to build bridges for struggling businesses and households during the current pandemic. But this capacity varies considerably across orders of government. The federal government is in a far better position than the provinces to stabilize its debt-to-GDP ratio. It is also less vulnerable to credit shocks. This asymmetry is not unique to Canada. Still, it poses special risks for us because of our unparalleled stock of subnational debt. Canada needs to slowly stabilize provincial borrowing, while ensuring other policy goals, including the provision of adequate services, investment, and fiscal stabilization, are met. This talk will discuss the sources of provincial debt and possibilities for stabilizing it going forward.    

Details

Title: The political consequences of austerity: how incumbents (and future generations) lose from austerity

Speaker: Olivier Jacques, Skelton-Clark Post-Doctoral Fellow

Abstract: What policies do governments prioritize when they implement austerity? What are the political consequences of austerity? Many scholars in the political economy suggest that governments can implement austerity with impunity and that fiscal consolidations can help to reorient public expenditures toward productive investments. In contrast, I argue that governments choose the path of least resistance when they engage in fiscal consolidations. When governments implement austerity packages, they tend to prioritize policies benefiting large and influential constituencies and those offering short-term benefits, while cutting back on long-term investments. Using a compositional dependent variable analysis in 17 OECD countries from 1980 to 2014, I show that austerity, measured with the narrative approach to fiscal consolidations, is associated with a decrease in the proportion of public investment in research and development and gross fixed capital formation and an increase in health care and pensions’ proportion of budgets. Thus, austerity is detrimental to intergenerational equity as it leads to a decline of long-term investments. Regarding the political consequences of austerity, I show that spending cuts decrease government approval, especially during economic downturns, but tax increases’ impact on approval remains minimal. Finally, left- and right-wing governments are equally likely to lose approval after implementing austerity.