Just a few days ago the 2022 World Cup ended in spectacular fashion, with Argentina besting France in what was largely regarded as one of the greatest finals in World Cup history. While much excitement surrounded the finale, the tournament as a whole was surrounded by even more controversy, in large part due to the Cup being held in Qatar: a semi-constitutional kingdom that veers towards authoritarian. While FIFA would point to the diplomatic potential of bringing football to the Middle East with this year’s tournament, observers have widely criticized the way in which the World Cup has effect ..read more

In just under a week, the near 450 municipalities across the province of Ontario will be holding elections to chart the next four years of local governance. And while municipalities play an important role in the provision and administration of services for Canadians, the structures and institutional dynamics of municipal governments mark a fairly under-defined black box in Canadian political science. While the roles and responsibilities of the provinces and federal government have been thoroughly defined by constitutional documents such as the BNA Act of 1867, and have been subject to countles ..read more

Unthinkable. Surreal. On June 22, 2022, a moment long-feared by women and the supporters of civil rights across space and partisan lines came into fruition in the United States with the overruling of Dobbs versus Jackson Women’s Health by the American Supreme Court, effectively dissolving constitutional protections over the right to legal abortions for American women as a right of privacy. As the ink on the decision dried, trigger states in the American south immediately enacted state laws banning abortions – even in life-or-death situations – some going as far as seeking to frame the medical ..read more

Politics and sports – despite our best attempts at telling ourselves otherwise – are inherently chained to one another. One need only look to Eminem ‘taking a knee’ as an act of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement this past weekend at the Superbowl halftime show to see how the field, the pitch and the arena are hardly apolitical. The world of sports is political, and politics will always be subject to the eyes of athletic activism – this is an unalienable truth going back to the days when Muhammad Ali protested the American government by refusing the draft to f ..read more

“So far from God, so close to the United States”. Porfirio Diaz’s infamous words describing Mexico’s relationship with the United States in many ways still ring true today. Whether through economic integration, the War on Drugs or even the steady stream of citizens and dollars moving across their shared border, the social, political and economic fate of Mexico remains as tied to its neighbors to the north today as it did in those early days following the Mexican revolution over a century ago. That relationship has seen its fair share of crests and waves, with the Presidency of Donald Trump her ..read more

As a system of governance, democracy has come to define institutions and administrations the world over, and is one of the enduring characteristics of the modern nation-state. The success of democracy requires a sense of decorum – the peaceful transfer of power, competition coinciding with respect for one’s political opponents. But in recent years, the democracies of the western world have seemingly reached an impasse in this regard, enduring a rising tide of political polarization that has pushed incivility from the political fringe to the political mainstream. The question of how to stem thi ..read more

In many ways, the campaign trail of the 44th Federal Election has been a campaign unlike any other in Canadian history. Called amidst a resurgence of COVID-19 infection rates due in large part to the delta variant, the campaign has seen the Liberal and Conservative Parties of Justin Trudeau and Erin O’Toole respectively at dead heat since the drop of the writ, with the only predictable outcome being that the next government of Canada will likely be a minority government. But the most pronounced aspect of the campaign may not be its potential outcome, but the ways in which public discontent has ..read more

As the 2021 winter semester drew to a close just a few weeks ago, Carleton University's Political Science Graduate Student Association held their third annual graduate student conference ‘Continuity or Rupture: Politics in the 2020s’. After the cancellation of academic conferences throughout 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's conference marked a return to form and featured the research of graduate students from across the world, as well as a keynote address by the incomparable Dr. Kiera Ladner. Professor Ladner is not only an alumnus with Carleton University’s Department of Politic ..read more

With the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States in January of this year, the tumultuous ‘America First’ foreign policy mandate of the Trump administration finally came to an end. For many of America’s traditional allies in the liberal international order, the past four years under President Trump have been a difficult period, marked by a retrenched global presence, disruptions to free trade, strained relations, and moonlights with authoritarian regimes from a once reliable and steadfast ally. No doubt recognizing this, Biden would waste no time in heralding “America is bac ..read more

In January of this year, Kamala Harris celebrated her impending inauguration as the Vice President of United States by gracing the cover of Vogue Magazine. While it’s not uncommon for noteworthy female politicians to make the cover of Vogue, the cover actually gained notoriety for Vice President Harris’ presentation. Appearing washed out and poorly lit, the cover instantly stirred controversy with commenters questioning how the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine could print a cover of the second most powerful politician on the planet looking decidedly ‘un-Vogue’ and even messy. While ma ..read more