political science

Professors who teach politics report that since 2016, they’ve been confronted with increasing polarization among students—as well as their own biases

Q&A with a professor after his outburst

A graduate’s call for policies to discourage studying arts

Jack Buckby is the younger face of the far right

It’s not really about the censorship

Anti-tuition argument never made sense to me

Writer Roy MacGregor on his days at Laurentian U.

3M Teaching Fellow creates equality in the classroom

Abstract: This paper helps explain the variation in political turmoil observed in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] during the Arab Spring. The region’s monarchies have been largely spared of violence while the “republics” have not. A theory about how a monarchy’s political culture solves a ruler’s credible commitment problem explains why this has been the case. Using a panel dataset of the MENA countries (1950-2006), I show that monarchs are less likely than non-monarchs to experience political instability, a result that holds across several measures. They are also more likely to respect the rule of law and property rights, and grow their economies. Through the use of an instrumental variable that proxies for a legacy of tribalism, the time that has elapsed since the Neolithic Revolution weighted by Land Quality, I show that this result runs from monarchy to political stability. The results are also robust to alternative political explanations and country fixed effects.

Program aimed at creating public servants

Peter Aucoin, the celebrated political science professor and scholar, passed away yesterday at the age of 67.

My story for print Maclean’s on Conservative fortunes in provincial politics is now on the web. As is often the case, I had help with the story from lots of people who didn’t make it into the finished version, and gathered information and had thoughts that didn’t quite fit.