Search

We provide a mixed-methods, comparative analysis of the development of the urban-rural electoral cleavage in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States from the early 20th century to the present. Using aggregate election results, electoral district boundary files, and electoral district population measures, we construct a new comparable dataset of district election results and urbanity for the lower house of the legislature in each country. We use this dataset to measure the importance of the urban-rural divide for election outcomes across countries and time. We find that the cleavage has widened over time in each country, each arrived at its current urban-rural divide via a distinct developmental trajectory, which we interpret with reference to secondary literature. We conclude by discussing the significance of our findings for theories of both the causes and consequences of urban-rural divides and discuss the implications of our work for the comparative study of urban-rural cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation of election campaign donation, fundraising, expenditure, and advertising is an enduring object of study and reform. Compared to the federal and provincial levels, virtually no attention has been paid to Canadian municipal campaign finance regimes. This is surprising given the urban political economy literature's focus on business influence on local politics and policy and evidence of corruption in Canadian local government. We take stock of Canadian campaign finance rules for municipal elections in light of Canadian and American research findings, which reveals considerable interprovincial variation in their sophistication and stringency. We then propose a research agenda to investigate aspects of Canadian local campaign finance regimes. La reglementation des dons de campagne electorale, de la collecte de fonds, des depenses et de la publicite constitue un objet tenace d'etude et de reforme. En comparaison aux paliers federal et provinciaux, les regimes canadiens de financement des campagnes municipales n'ont pratiquement recu aucune attention. C'est un fait etonnant compte tenu que la litterature sur l'economie politique urbaine se focalise sur l'influence des entreprises dans la politique et les politiques locales et les preuves de corruption dans les administrations locales canadiennes. Nous faisons le point sur les regles de financement des campagnes electorales municipales au Canada a la lumiere des resultats de recherches canadiennes et americaines, qui revelent des variations interprovinciales considerables dans leur complexite et leur rigueur. Nous proposons ensuite un programme de recherche pour etudier les aspects des regimes canadiens de financement des campagnes electorales locales., The regulation of election campaign donation, fundraising, expenditure, and advertising is an enduring object of study and reform in Canada and in other countries (Mutch 2014; Young and Jansen 2011a; [...]

Hollifield's 'migration state' concept draws attention to the political tension between openness and closure in liberal-democratic countries, arguing that domestic migration policy regimes represent an equilibrium outcome between security, rights, markets, and culture. This overstates national strategic control over migration and borders. Through a case study of recent developments in Canada, sometimes held up as the paradigmatic centralised liberal migration state, we present evidence of growing policy blurring, fragmentation, and decentralisation as migration management programmes have been patched and layered in response to controversies and pressure from domestic interests, including employers, higher education institutions, advocacy groups, and subnational governments. As a result, volumes of temporary foreign workers and foreign students have increased tenfold since 2000. More generally, we propose that a strategy of disaggregation reveals the internal complexity of, and political tensions within, contemporary migration states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates elite and mass attitudes towards local autonomy. Using surveys of more than 1,200 elected municipal politicians and 5,800 citizens in Canada, we ask three questions: Do citizens agree with their elected representatives about the need for increased power for local authorities? Are predictors of support for expanded local power similar among elites and the public? Finally, do elected politicians understand their constituents' attitudes on local autonomy? We find that elites and citizens differ substantially in their attitudes towards local autonomy: politicians overwhelmingly support increased power for local governments, while citizens' preferences are conditional on their support for the current provincial government, level of education, and ideological alignment with their local community. Moreover, politicians display no knowledge of citizens' preferences regarding local autonomy. We explain the implications of our findings for theoretical debates about citizen support for local autonomy and for practical debates regarding the empowerment of local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matrix exponential methods have long been utilized for isotopic depletion in nuclear fuel calculations. In this paper we discuss the development of such methods in addition to species transport for liquid fueled molten salt reactors (MSRs). Conventional nuclear reactors work with fixed fuel assemblies in which fission products and fissile material do not transport throughout the core. Liquid fueled molten salt reactors work in a much different way, allowing for material to transport throughout the primary reactor loop. Because of this, fission product transport must be taken into account. The set of partial differential equations that apply are discretized into systems of first order ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The exact solution to the set of ODEs is herein being estimated using the matrix exponential method known as the Chebychev Rational Approximation Method (CRAM).

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2010.00507.x Byline: GABRIEL EIDELMAN (1), ZACK TAYLOR (2) Abstract: ABSTRACT: This article supplements and enriches Judd's and Sapotichne, Jones, and Wolfe's controversial diagnosis of a disjuncture between 'mainstream' political science and the study of urban politics in the United States by suggesting that Canadian urban political science scholarship is equally isolated. Yet for the most part, the underlying causes of this predicament differ greatly from the U.S. experience. We offer three interpretations-one institutional, one epistemological, and one ontological-to explain the marginality of Canadian urban political science in relation to both mainstream Canadian political science and American urban politics. First, the growth of Canadian urban political science has been inhibited not because there are too few interested scholars, but rather because interested faculty are so thinly dispersed across the country's academic institutions. Second, unlike the American experience, the historical development of Canadian political science as a discipline has led it to focus on national-level issues at the expense of local and urban politics. Finally, Canadian cities have developed differently from American cities in important respects, again leading Canadian scholars to privilege the national over the local. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Toronto (2)University of Toronto Article note: Direct correspondence to: Gabriel Eidelman, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Room 3018, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada. E-mail: g.eidelman@utoronto.ca.

A numerical framework for modeling depletion and mass transport in liquid-fueled molten salt reactions is presented based on exponential time differencing. The solution method involves using the finite volume method to transform the system of partial differential equations (PDEs) into a much larger system of ordinary differential equations. The key part of this method involves solving for the exponential of a matrix. We explore six different algorithms to compute the exponential in a series of progression problems that explore physical transport phenomena in molten salt reactors. This framework shows good results for solving linear parabolic PDEs with each of the six matrix exponential algorithms. For large problems, the series solvers such as Padé and Taylor have large run times, which can be mitigated by using the Krylov subspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]