Question 1

Discussant: Professor Robert Vipond

Accepted Answer

Professor Rob Vipond is the Director of the Centre for the Study of the United States and American Studies program, and a Professor in the Department of Political Science. He is interested in political development, especially in Canada and the U.S. This approach spans a variety of subject areas: federalism (Liberty and Community); constitutional theory (“Rights Talk in Canada in the Late Nineteenth Century”); ideational diffusion (“The Civil Rights Movement Comes to Winnipeg”); healthcare (“The Virus of Consumerism”); and the discipline of political science (The Comparative Turn). Vipond’s new book, Making a Global City: Diversity, Community, and Ideas of Citizenship in a Toronto School, 1920-1990, explores changing ideas of citizenship through the history of a Toronto public school.

Question 2

Andrew Jones, “Globalists, Gamergate, and Groyper: A History of the Alt-Right”"

Accepted Answer

The Alt-Right is most known for their actions during and after the 2016 election, yet there is a substantial history stretching back before 2008 that is under discussed. The history of the Alt-Right can be subdivided into three distinct periods: the precursor period (1968 to 2008), the intellectual incubation (2008 to 2014) and the contemporary period (2014 onwards). The first period covers the pre-history of the movement, focusing on the conditions that made the Alt-Right possible. The historical events and movements that created an opening for the Alt-Right prior to 2008 include: the decline of the materialist left due to the failures of the Soviet Union, the rise of the intersectional left, the rise of globalization and the decline in American hegemony after 9/11. The second period is dominated by both the American responses to the 2008 financial crisis established cultural and political conditions for the emergence of the Alt-Right on the international scene in 2014. This period is also known for the publication and English translations of the foundational texts of the Alt-Right, which gained a small but dedicated following during the Obama presidency. The contemporary period is the most publicized era of the Alt-Right, despite the movement becoming popular in 2016, two years earlier in 2014 the contemporary Alt-Right movement emerged within public discourse. In 2014 we saw the attempted coalescing of the Alt-Right in Budapest and the prominence of Alt-Right internet trolls during Gamergate entering mainstream media discourse. The election of Donald Trump, Brexit and the subsequent dominance of sensationalist political coverage since 2015 has propelled the Alt-Right into the public imagination.
 
Andrew Jones is a doctoral candidate at York University in Toronto. His dissertation research focuses on the emergent political ideology of the Alt-Right. His research interests include critical political theory, Hegel, American politics, and global politics.

Question 3

Simon Sihang Luo, “Memorizing the Past: Understanding the Missing Link in Judith Shklar’s ‘The Liberalism of Fear’”"

Accepted Answer

This paper examines a missing link in Judith Shklar’s innovative idea, the liberalism of fear. In a recent study of Shklar’s political thought, Katrina Forrester writes that “it is never entirely clear precisely why Shklar thought that a historical outlook necessarily entailed an enhanced sensitivity to cruelty, but her broadly realist historical epistemology twinned with her belief in the ubiquity of cruelty was sufficient for her to claim a direct link between the historical awareness of cruelty and ethical insight.” In other words, a crucial step in her theory concerns the way in which we can effectively move from a combination of historical awareness and psychological effects that are common to all to a vital political project that belongs to the tradition of liberalism. Shklar herself, however, provided few illuminating insights on this very step. In this paper I argue that the memory of past cruelty and the fear of cruelty do not automatically result in a liberal politics that fits Shklar’s political vision. On the one hand, fear is a powerful political emotion which provides an emotional ground for different ways of social mobilization. It has many variations, and some of these variations could boost nonliberal or antiliberal political projects. On the other hand, public memory of cruelties is not a direct reflection of events that happened in the past. On the contrary, public memory is a highly politicized concept that is usually manipulated and exploited by the state. As a result, memorizing the ordinary cruelties in our political life does not necessarily leads to a shared vigilance of power of the state. The overall purpose of this paper is not to reject the liberalism of fear either as a theoretical argument or as a practical project. By closely examining the obstacles that the liberalism of fear would have to face, the paper intends to point out the limits of the liberalism of fear. Shklar’s political theory has been widely recognized for its realistic and dystopian understanding of the political and the social. It is only with a realistic recognition of the limits of the liberalism of fear that Shklar’s realism can be rightly understood and utilized as a practical guidance for our political actions.
Simon Sihang Luo is a PhD student in political theory at Indiana University. His research interests include political memory, political emotion, Marxism, critical theory, and radical theory. His dissertation investigates the many uses of political fear in contemporary China.

Question 4

Adriana Farias, “Twitter and Institutional Change: The Legacy of Populist and Pluralist Discourses in Venezuela”"

Accepted Answer

How does Twitter impact democratic institutions? This paper suggests that a political leader’s tweets are a form of official discourse that reflects a normative assessment of the legitimacy of the political system. Like other official communications, tweets can also prompt, justify, and respond to a particular strategy for amassing power in order to defend the politician’s interpretation of the common good. As social media provides a direct connection between the speaker and mass audiences, it offers political leaders a unique and powerful platform to mobilize support across frontiers, and is therefore, increasingly at the heart of the institutional development of a country.
The relationship between the tweets of political elites and the legitimacy of institutions is especially important in hybrid systems like Venezuela, where opposition and incumbent politicians compete for power, and over the rules of the game itself. A content analysis of the tweets of the opposition and incumbent leaders in Venezuela during three electoral periods revealed that their communications reflect fundamentally different normative stances. The incumbent’s discourse is predominantly populist – the understanding of politics as a zero-sum game, part of a global struggle between a conspiring elite and the people, which prompts a polarizing strategy for competition, and an “anything goes attitude”. Meanwhile, the opposition’s discourse is predominantly pluralist – the belief in a heterogeneous society in which the various interests and goals are to be resolved through electoral competition. The authoritarian shift in Venezuela, together with the opposition’s continued democratic strategies, support the notion that a populist discourse is compatible with undemocratic practices, while a pluralist discourse is compatible with electoral strategies. Moreover, this study prompts the question about the extent to which a similar relationship may exist in more stable democracies.
Adriana Farias is a Venezuelan-American who pursued undergraduate and graduate studies in Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include development issues, public policy, and political discourse within the context of U.S. and Latin American politics. She recently finished her MA in Political Science at McGill University, and currently works at the Center for Democracy and Development in the Americas in Washington DC.

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Discussant: Professor Stanka Radović

Mary Jo MacDonald, “On the Democratic Boundary Problem: Using Lottery to Create Democratic Boundaries" "

Arjun Sawhney, “Robot Citizenship”"

Alex R. Steers-McCrum, “Self-Determination After the Deluge”"

Hilda Loury, “Immigration Exclusion and Cultural Preservation”"

2. Redistributive Justice and the Global Economy

Discussant: Professor Kanta Murali

Ivan Ozai, “International Tax Competition and the Ethics of Burden Sharing”"

Dr. Anthony Sealey, “New Old Politics: The Globalization of Political Economies and Popular Support for Redistribution in the Postindustrial Democracies, 1990-2012”"

3. Localizing the Global: Concepts and Practices

Discussant: Professor Margaret Kohn

Jonathan Morgan, “Crafting a New Capitalism: Materiality as Praxis”"

Clémence Nasr, “The First Signs of a Relocalized Society”"

Galen Watts, “’Spiritual but not Religious’ Millennials in Canada: Liberal Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Community”"

4. Limits of Liberal Imagination

Discussant: Professor Robert Vipond

Andrew Jones, “Globalists, Gamergate, and Groyper: A History of the Alt-Right”"

Simon Sihang Luo, “Memorizing the Past: Understanding the Missing Link in Judith Shklar’s ‘The Liberalism of Fear’”"

Adriana Farias, “Twitter and Institutional Change: The Legacy of Populist and Pluralist Discourses in Venezuela”"

5. The Local & the Global: Frameworks and Practices of Resistance

Discussant: Professor Neil ten Kortenaar

Alexander Sarra-Davis, “A World of I’s: Surveillance, Complicity, and the Politics of World Literature in The People of Paper”"

Benjamin Bilgen, “Kurdish Group Dance as Negotiated Political Resistance in Turkey”"

David Semaan, “(Re)Imagining Contemporary Middle Eastern Masculinities: Decolonizing Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities”"

6. Techniques of Global Governance

Discussant: Dr. Mara Marin

Binfan Wang, “A Confucian Law of Peoples—Mencius’ Thought on Global Justice”"

Dr. Igor Shoikhedbrod, “Beyond Welfare Nationalism and Liberal Transnationalism? Habermas vs. Streeck and the Future of the European Monetary Union”"

Mohammad Nur Nabi, “Redefining Weak State Strategy in the Globalized World: Bangladesh's Dexterity towards the India-China Power Politics”"