On Politics https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics <p>On Politics is the journal of the University of Victoria Undergraduates of Political Science. It seeks to provide opportunities for undergraduate publishing, and to encourage undergraduate scholarship. The Journal publishes high-quality academic writing from a multitude of theoretical perspectives and sub-fields within the discipline of political science, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives. With these broad aims and inclusive features, On Politics presents an accommodating format to disseminate scholarship of a political nature from those who seldom gain the opportunity. On Politics publishes two issues per year.</p> en-US onpol@uvic.ca (Simone Rutherford and Anna Alva) oliverjames@uvic.ca (Oliver James) Thu, 19 Jan 2023 16:12:40 -0800 OJS 3.1.2.4 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 Foreword https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21203 Simone Rutherford, Anna Alva Copyright (c) 2023 Simone Rutherford and Anna Alva http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21203 Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 Repealing the Eighth Amendment: A Historical Institutionalist Discursive Analysis https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21204 <p>This study analyzes the Republic of Ireland’s successful 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Constitutional Amendment restricting access to abortion. Using a historical institutionalist perspective to interpret our findings, we analyze the dominant issues informing Irish public opinion towards abortion over time by conducting a discursive analysis of newspaper publications between 1992 and 2018. Our study concludes that the X Case and the death of Savita Halappanavar constitute critical policy junctures resulting in the development of new moral templates, which in turn shifted popular opinion towards liberalizing abortion, and ultimately led to the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.</p> Anna-Elaine Rempel, Q Roxas, Jenna Hrechka Copyright (c) 2023 Anna-Elaine Rempel, Q Roxas, and Jenna Hrechka http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21204 Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 Here on We Love Radio: Hip Hop Culture and Black Expressionism in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21205 <p>Hip hop is a cultural movement that advocates for the collective strength of marginalized communities amid urban despair. As a ballast of Do the Right Thing, hip hop culture grounds its various characters and events as expressions of the black American consciousness. An essential component of the film which this paper addresses in the context of contemporary justice is the murder of Radio Raheem, an unarmed and innocent black man strangled by police. Taking up the lens of Saussurean linguistics, this article examines the function of hip hop culture throughout the film which radio (both the device and the waves) represents, fighting systemic racism as an agent of black expressionism and collective strength.</p> Megan Switzer Copyright (c) 2023 Megan Switzer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21205 Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 Surveillance, Containment, and the Establishment of Indian Reserves in Canada https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21206 <p>Drawing on work done in anti-colonial theory and surveillance studies, this paper aims to examine the realities and implications of historical and ongoing settler colonial surveillance assemblages. I focus on the paradoxical nature of settler state surveillance to argue that surveillance is used as a tool of the colonial project with its goals of erasure and invisibilization of Indigenous people, while at the same time a racialized surveillance functions to render Indigenous people as hyper visible. My aim with this paper is to unsettle the ways in which systems of surveillance, containment, and categorization are often taken for granted or naturalized. I hope to foster critical dialogue and questions to carry these ideas further.</p> Emily Hiser Copyright (c) 2023 Emily Hiser http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21206 Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 Pathways to Victory: The Creation of Canada’s Emissions Accountability Law (Bill C-12) https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21207 <p>After three decades of international climate action gridlock and domestic target failures, there is an emerging policy focus on the passage of national emissions accountability legislation. Emissions accountability legislation is an attempt to safeguard science-based emissions reductions plans from changing political winds. This article presents a peer-reviewed case study of Bill C-12, Canada's first emissions accountability legislation, passed in June 2021. While Bill C-12 was strengthened through the amendment process, the final legislation remained significantly weaker than the "gold standard" UK Climate Change Act (2008). The author analyzes the interests, institutions, and political context that enabled Bill C-12's passage, tracking the ways in which these forces interacted to both weaken and strengthen the legislation.</p> Emily Lowan Copyright (c) 2023 Emily Lowan http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21207 Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800 The Role of the Canadian Settler-State in Facilitating Flows of Transnational Executive Capital https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21208 <p>What does the neoliberalization of extractive and border infrastructures by the Canadian settler-state illuminate about its relationship to transnational extractive capital? To answer this question, I first examine how neoliberalism has shaped border and extractive policies. In the second section, I look at how flows of transnational extractive capital are made flexible by Canadian settler-state policies, while simultaneously securitizing colonial borders against racialized migrants. In the third, I investigate how material and epistemological challenges to extractive infrastructures from Indigenous land defenders and racialized migrants challenge the legitimation by accumulation processes the Canadian settler-state employs. Ultimately, I argue the settler-state selectively securitizes pipeline and border infrastructures to facilitate the flow and accumulation of transnational extractive capital as a means of self-legitimation that relies on normative imaginings of a white Canadian nationhood. Furthermore, these imaginings rely on upholding certain logics of racial capitalism that construct a white Canadian nationhood, such as white supremacy, colonialism, and hetero-patriarchy.</p> Lena Price Copyright (c) 2023 Lena Price http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/21208 Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800