Ah, I see you're once again at a Homesense/Winners?

"The victim's last words were 'look at minifig Riker's little trombone!'"

I just checked and I did 4 reviews as ABD, for a variety of poli sci journals (some better, some worse). Plus a couple reviews for top journals very shortly after I defended. FWIW. But I never did a review for a prof under their name - I agree that would be inappropriate.

We're blaming Disney, right?

This new report looks great. Lots of alignment with what we found last year in our GenAI and Elections report for @ubcdemocracy.bsky.social . We apparently have terrible SEO for it but it's here for anyone interested: open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream...

PhD Scholarship at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen (UCPH): Citizens’ Agenda-Setting in Democratic Systems (CASDS)

CfA: PhD scholarship in political theory @ucph.bsky.social

Part of my project "Citizens' Agenda-Setting in Democratic Systems," which will explore how citizens should participate in making political agendas

Apply by Aug. 3, 2025
➡️ employment.ku.dk/all-vacancie...

#PolTheory #demoinno

From my vantage point, he looks pretty good in comparison to the couple guys who followed him! Maybe not a ringing endorsement, but, hey, this is politics we're talking about.

Not obvious Robertson will be terrible in this portfolio (although he might be). From someone who is v. good on Vancouver housing: bsky.app/profile/pwal...

Bust out the lift locks pin!

'Viewpoint diversity' is affirmative action for incompetent and malicious people.

Newspaper article text: A hallmark of the leaders’ debates are the free-for-all post-debate scrums. They are egalitarian exercises, where parties hold no control over which journalists get to ask questions. In past years, fringe outlets like Rebel News have protested being excluded from the debate facilities and, thus, the post-debate scrums. Things have really changes this year. The debate commission had tried to limit news outlets to sending just a single reporter each into the post-debate scrums — this year, that includes Rebel. But, according to Rebel News founded Ezra Levant (who is also conducting conspiratorial anti-Liberal advertising across the country) that wasn’t good enough. Levant says they are sending 16 people to the debates and they demanded access to the scrums for all 16, even threatening to sue. Levant, yesterday, announced they won. “They wrote back to us, at the last minute, calling off our lawsuit, by agreeing to allow not one, not two, not three, not four, but five Rebels to ask questions.” The debate commission responded to me this morning, confirming the news: “Rebel News’ legal representation has identified to the Commission that Rebel News has five distinct divisions.” As such, the conspiratorial right-wing fringe outlet gets five spots, while everyone else just gets one. The debate commission seems to be trying to maximize how many chaotic and inexplicable decisions it can make at the last possible minute, raising the question: Why do we have a debate commission, anyway?

I suspect the Commission is twice bitten, third time shy. The Commission refused to accredit Rebel in both 2019 and 2021 and both times Rebel got an injunction. The Commission wrote it up a bit here: www.debates-debats.ca/en/report-20... . As for 2025, Justin Ling wrote it up in the Star:

Newspaper article text: A hallmark of the leaders’ debates are the free-for-all post-debate scrums. They are egalitarian exercises, where parties hold no control over which journalists get to ask questions. In past years, fringe outlets like Rebel News have protested being excluded from the debate facilities and, thus, the post-debate scrums. Things have really changes this year. The debate commission had tried to limit news outlets to sending just a single reporter each into the post-debate scrums — this year, that includes Rebel. But, according to Rebel News founded Ezra Levant (who is also conducting conspiratorial anti-Liberal advertising across the country) that wasn’t good enough. Levant says they are sending 16 people to the debates and they demanded access to the scrums for all 16, even threatening to sue. Levant, yesterday, announced they won. “They wrote back to us, at the last minute, calling off our lawsuit, by agreeing to allow not one, not two, not three, not four, but five Rebels to ask questions.” The debate commission responded to me this morning, confirming the news: “Rebel News’ legal representation has identified to the Commission that Rebel News has five distinct divisions.” As such, the conspiratorial right-wing fringe outlet gets five spots, while everyone else just gets one. The debate commission seems to be trying to maximize how many chaotic and inexplicable decisions it can make at the last possible minute, raising the question: Why do we have a debate commission, anyway?

The Commission refused to accredit them in both 2019 and 2021 and both times Rebel got an injunction. The Commission wrote it up a bit here: www.debates-debats.ca/en/report-20... . As for 2025, Justin Ling wrote it up in the Star:

From www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

"Canada's old relationship with the United States is over, except for the safe 3rd country agreement" - Carney, probably

All the pundits who already filed their 'French debates should be called the Quebec debates' columns can rest easy now.

Came to say the same thing. It's a stop sign E-W on 10th. If they mean to say entering the intersection when it's not clear, say that. But the very conception of 'crossing against the signal' doesn't exist here unless you're moving NB or SB on Clark and you don't have a green light.

(Grace, Too *is* a banger though)

Should I anticipate dining at a Montana's on Friday?

Yes, for sure. Some of what I know re: protest and DD has had a different substantive focus (IIRC, advancing racial justice in Anna Drake's work) rather than defending the 'normal structure' pieces. But I was attracted to DD for similar reasons so happy to continue to chat!

I've never been - I'm potentially interested though. Please send me an email (spencer.mckay at ubc.ca ) and we can discuss!

Yeah, that sounds right. To put a finer point on it, I think in some sense DD is ill-prepared to fight (too adversarial) for parties, elected legislatures, civil service, news media etc b/c it has pointed out their 'deliberative' faults. But maybe democracy's future does lie somewhere different! 🤷🙏

(All that being said, it may be unsurprising that I have increasingly focused attention on material that is not so clearly tied to DD and so maybe I've missed something in the last couple years, or forgotten something else important).

This ended up much longer than expected but I guess what I'm saying is that I think DD remains useful, but the 'normal structure' pieces seem to have been of less interest to deliberative folks and more to those who may be sympathetic to DD but who are thinking about 'democratic systems'

Moreover, I'm unaware of a really good explanation in the DD lit for what to do with unrepentant, bad faith interlocutors, esp in the current attention economy. When people self-select into mini-publics, you don't really have these problems. So empirical lit on deliberation is positive!

For instance, undermining of the press is an attack on deliberative ideals of publicity. But I think deliberative democracy in its current form is somewhat ill-placed to address this because I think 'the press' has become a bit of a neglected topic in the field.

Of course, minipublics =/= "deliberative democracy". Roughly, where I'm at is that DD and deliberative systems are helpful as a kind of normative democratic theory of political communication. It's striking how much of the current crisis is explicitly anti-deliberative: no [good] reasons given!

I've also increasingly suspected that deliberative minipublics are attractive to a) technocratic/academic types who want to make some kind of feasible contribution in the short-term and b) empirical researchers. I've done some of this work myself - like deliberation, it has its place...

Mini-publics are great at certain things but I'm still not convinced that they work as a replacement for legislatures without some kind of legitimation through large scale participation via elections or referendums. & I can't recall how or if any of them do a good job of theorizing executive branch

On #1&3, I think one way of reading the systems turn (to deliberative, but esp. democratic systems) is as an attempt to reassert importance of some of the 'normal structure' of liberal democracy (parties, elections, etc) in face of potential tunnel vision around mini-publics.