The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) first came into being as a result of border negotiations between Russia and China but evolved shortly thereafter into more than this. A regional organization comprised of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and China the SCO’s mandate now encompasses trade and security. Most secondary literature on this organization tends to detail the interests of its constituent members, while overlooking the historical relationships underlying the SCO’s growth and evolution. This thesis argues that Russia’s long-standing relationships with the states of Central Asia created the conditions making the SCO a necessary tool of Russian foreign policy, while Moscow’s relations with China and the US have driven the development of the group. It concludes that the SCO has become the most viable of Central Asia’s regional organizations because it has effectively resolved contradictions and conflicts in Russia’s relationships with the other SCO members.

This thesis is on John Stuart Mill’s imperialism. Mill’s classic text Considerations on Representative Government is framed as a treatise of a theorem for guiding “civilized” governors in imperially democratizing “non-civilized others” for the ends of historically moving humanity towards “civilizational progress.” This theorem is broken down into an architecture which consists of the first four chapters of Considerations and a conceptual architecture consisting of three notions: imperialism, democracy, and good governance. In outlining this theorem, gaps and shortcomings currently existing in the body of literature that engages Mill’s relationship with imperialism are identified. The theorem and the secondary literature are also used to problematize and argue against the call by some authors for a turn to Mill’s imperialism.

Gender has developed as an important ‘public and political’ category throughout the Twentieth Century in BC and Canada as the basis of feminist demands on society and governments. In 2007, gender has become ‘privatized’ and increasingly erased from government institutions. The de-politicization of gender in Canada is an example of a shifting social consciousness and political discourse that avoids a critical perspective on the social context and places an increasing emphasis on the individual. A new critical discourse must grapple with these challenges, emerge at some distance from government and coincide with a political activism that has resonance in women’s lives.

Childhood obesity and chronic disease rates have reached epidemic proportions, but policy responses remain focused on individual health promotion rather than environmental change. This paper reveals the limitations of the current response, the Minimal Public Health (MPH) approach, due to its moral and political foundations. The foundations of the MPH rest upon the problematic liberal public/private divide. Furthermore, the MPH neglects to recognize the legal obligations and implications of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Additionally, children’s entitlements to care extend beyond the provision of basic necessities and demand high standards of nutrition and physical activity to ensure equal and just developmental outcomes. Finally, obesity and chronic disease may limit children’s ability to participate in practices of meaningful citizenship. As a result of its foundations, the MPH is inherently flawed and an alternative public health paradigm must be developed to effectively address childhood obesity and chronic disease.

In this thesis I explore neoliberalism and resistance to neoliberalism by focusing on the relatively recent rise of radical, local anti-poverty organizations in Canada, particularly on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in Toronto. To accomplish this exploration, I present a brief history of neoliberalization in two ways: first in theory, exploring the phenomenon in general, and then in a more specific context, through the study of neoliberalization in Ontario. Special emphasis is given to the ways in which contemporary processes of neoliberalization tend to discourage collective action and movement formation, and encourage the ideological, discursive, and practical depoliticization of issues and communities. In addition, I suggest that Ontario’s neoliberalization has led mainstream left forces to retreat to a more moderate support base in the middle class, leaving poor people and anti-poverty activists with little potential for meaningful participation in political processes. The lack of avenues for participation, I argue, discourages the development the development of a sense of agency for poor people and anti-poverty activists. This agency is framed here as political dignity. After presenting a history OCAP, I conclude by suggesting that radical, local anti-poverty organizations make an important contribution to combating some of the outcomes of neoliberalization presented here. By using a broad range of scholarship (including working-class focused sociology, post-colonial theory, and others), I argue that OCAP’s key contribution to antineoliberal struggles is the way in which the organization encourages political dignity building through engaged, confrontational participation.

In this thesis, I explore how the logic and mobilization of critique as an emancipatory practice, situated within various historical inheritances of the Enlightenment project, enable/delimit ‘Western’ political imaginations. I therefore question how discourses and practices of critique not only reproduce but become functional to that which they seek to transform. That is, through its conventional fault-finding role, how does critique regulate (un)acceptable ways of thinking? By resituating critique as integrally constitutive of our inheritances, rather than an exceptional instrument of correction or virtue, this methodological reorientation has the potential to foster explorations that are grounded within, as opposed to transcendentally outside, our complex sites of inheritances. In this way, it is an inquiry into the histories and politics of Western projects of emancipation and progress as captured by practices, methods, and subjects of critique within various influential traditions.

Sceptics about deliberative democracy point out that some issues involve material that is inaccessible to the untrained public, while other issues highlight fundamental value differences that cannot be resolved by public discussion. Value pluralism and public incompetence present serious challenges that threaten to limit the practical scope of deliberative democracy. This project aims to meet these challenges by considering cases that illustrate the successes and failures of public interaction. I draw upon the Oregon experiment, the BC Citizens’ Assembly, the Quebec kirpan controversy, and Turkey’s ongoing headscarf debate to outline useful procedures and institutional elements for a more robust deliberative theory. Provided these procedural suggestions, I argue that deliberative democracy can be a functional theory under non-ideal social conditions.

This thesis relies on the idea that members of a culture should be able to secure the survival and flourishing of their own culture, or, in other words, that they should be self-determining. The collective will to take charge of its own destiny is the sign that a political community exists. The development of this subjectivity is made possible by a shared culture. I argue for conceptualizing self-determination in a way that recognizes both the autonomy of cultural groups and the necessity for people-to-people relations between groups. The people-to-people relations are necessary for allowing the coexistence of different peoples with the same right to self-determination. Although the contemporary discourse of liberal multiculturalism is sympathetic to cultural self-determination, it tends to undercut its own commitment by linking itself to the current systems of nation-states and specifically Western liberal ideas about recognition and empowerment. I will argue that the nationalist discourse that is specific to the literature on liberal multiculturalism intends to empower self-determining peoples, but ultimately reinforces a hierarchy of peoples in which minorities’ nationalism is instrumental to the achievement of the myth of an overarching civic nation that is embodied in the liberal state. (T1). The myth of the civic nation has its origins in the liberal principles of individualism and neutrality of the state. In the context of a multinational state, attempts to create an overarching civic nation result in efforts to domesticate and assimilate diversity. My thesis will also argue that the survival and flourishing of cultures requires both questioning the universality of the state model and developing a post-nationalist framework that would acknowledge the legitimacy of a great diversity of political communities, as such diversity is representative of the diverse cultures that sustain these political communities. (T2).

In the West German federal election of 1983, the Green party won enough votes to earn seats the Bundestag. The young party’s fame grew exponentially as a result and they have become, arguably, the most well-known of all environmental parties. This project explores the formation of the Greens. The Greens’ political identity is reassessed by examining the party’s roots in the new social movements and the formation of the party, regionally and federally. I contend that the Greens represent a political experiment whose establishment as a parliamentary party was never certain. The Greens attempted to integrate “postmaterialist” issues and grassroots organizational forms into the traditional politics of the Federal Republic. This paper also establishes the opportunities available for a new party within the context of the development of the left in post-war West Germany.

This study examines the situational leadership phenomena for Chief Administrative Officers (CAO) in Canadian local governments. CAO perceptions were solicited to explore how CAO strategic perspectives influence leadership preferences. A better understanding of the CAO leadership role is essential to maximize organizational effectiveness. A 45-item strategic contingency questionnaire was developed to reveal the CAO’s strategic context in terms of organizational/community and current/future dimensions providing an interpretive means to determine the reactive/proactive nature of strategic contexts facing CAOs. The CAO leadership approach was captured through a 48-item leadership competency questionnaire exhibiting a people/task-centred duality. Interviews with CAOs provide further insights to understand survey results. The survey data analyses produced reliable and robust factor structures to reduce instrument items to eight leadership clusters and four strategic contexts. Instrument testing confirms the utility of the study’s core local government functions, leadership style and strategic context matrices to organize and compare quantitative and qualitative data. The CAO observations of what is receiving organizational attention were not consistent with their aspirations of what should be important indicating an administrative bias. This strategic context duality is significant because community or external matters often draw CAOs into the political realm whereas organizational or internal matters enable them to stay in the administrative realm. The CAO interviews indicate reluctance on the part of CAOs to spend as much time as they do in the strategic direction and policy choice spheres. These results suggest a tension between CAO strategic aspirations and the strategic imperatives of local government. The empirical findings demonstrated that CAO strategic perspectives exhibit a patterned relationship to leadership preferences. A Community-oriented strategic context had a stronger association with task-centred leadership while a people-centred leadership approach was preferred for an organizational-oriented strategic context. A dual rating system indicated that prevailing situations cause a control leadership style that was at odds with their preferred flexible leadership competencies. The strategic context differentiates leadership requirements from leadership preferences depicting the nature of situated action dilemmas among CAOs. CAO functions and CAO leadership style impact their leadership approach. The CAO role is shaped by Organizational Size, Structure and Electoral Systems which influence the strategic contingencies they face. The mediating effect of Gender, Age and CAO Experience is shaped by CAO Roles in larger organizations associated with career advancement, rather than by personal demographics. Situational leadership is a conscious process subject to control or flexibility expectations of the CAO for the outcomes of their leadership approach. The relationship is a complex web rather than a hierarchical sequence of influences. Nevertheless, some generalizations can be made to produce a CAO situational leadership role framework to better understand the CAO situational leadership phenomena.