In Neoliberal Parliamentarism, Tom McDowell provides an alternative approach to understanding the decline of parliament at the Ontario legislature, an approach that highlights the politics of neoliberalism and the significant impact it has had over the last four decades. McDowell offers a structural critique of parliament, claiming that restrictions on the legislature cannot be separated from the ascendance of neoliberalism as the dominant social and policy paradigm in the province. Tracking the evolution of procedure at the Ontario Legislature from 1981 to 2021, McDowell shows that, beginning in the early 1980s, the establishment of increasingly restrictive procedural rules was critical in securing the passage of controversial neoliberal restructuring policies. Further, he argues that the decades-long shift towards de-democratization and the concentration of political power in the executive ought to be understood in the context of neoliberalism’s rejection of parliamentary sovereignty and legal positivism. As an in-depth study of the implementation of neoliberalism policy on the political apparatus of Ontario, Neoliberal Parliamentarism is critical reading for scholars and students interested in the relationship between neoliberalism and de-democratization, the politics of Ontario, and parliamentary procedure more broadly.

Neoliberal Parliamentarism analyzes the evolution of parliamentary process at the Ontario Legislature between 1981 and 2021.

Ontario is the most populous province in Canada and perhaps the most complex. It encompasses a range of regions, cities, and local cultures, while also claiming a long-standing pre-eminence in Canadian federalism. The second edition of The Politics of Ontario aims to understand this unique and ever-changing province. The new edition captures the growing diversity of Ontario, with new chapters on race and Ontario politics, Black Ontarians, and the relationship of Indigenous Peoples and Ontario. With contributors from across the province, the book analyses the political institutions of Ontario, key areas such as gender, Northern Ontario, the intricate Ontario political economy, and public policy challenges with the environment, labour relations, governing the GTA, and health care. Completely refreshed from the earlier edition, it emphasizes the evolution of Ontario and key public policy challenges facing the province. In doing so, The Politics of Ontario provides readers with a thorough understanding of this complicated province.

The EU as a democratic polity has been invented: it is a product of creative and innovative actors and thinkers that conceptualized and by and by helped to realise it, from the beginning up to the present. But the concepts, ideas, and utopias of a democratic Europe differ considerably. The processes of inventing and building a democratic EU are marked by conceptual controversies in both public and academic debates. These are the resource for the present book, which focuses on the concepts, actors and controversies related to inventing the EU as a democratic polity. The chapters study exemplary long-term and detail cases related to inventing and institutionalizing the decisive elements of representative democracy in the EU—a parliament, citizens that vote for it in universal suffrage and governmental bodies that are linked to parliament in much the same way as government is in a parliamentary democracy.

In Latin America during the 1980s, the widely accepted model of economic development collapsed, triggering profound changes in relations among the state, civil society, and the market. This volume advocates a fundamental rethinking of central issues in Latin American political economy.

The strength of secessionism in liberal-democracies varies in time and space. Inspired by historical institutionalism, Nationalism, Secessionism, and Autonomy argues that such variation is explained by the extent to which autonomy evolves in time. If autonomy adjusts to the changing identity, interests, and circumstances of an internal national community, nationalism is much less likely to be strongly secessionist than if autonomy is a final, unchangeable settlement. Developing a controlled comparison of, on the one hand, Catalonia and Scotland, where autonomy has been mostly static during key periods of time, and, on the other hand, Flanders and South Tyrol, where it has been dynamic, and also considering the Basque Country, Québec, and Puerto Rico as additional cases, this book puts forward an elegant theory of secessionism in liberal-democracies: dynamic autonomy staves off secessionism while static autonomy stimulates it.