2016 Cadario Lecture: Would Electoral Reform Strengthen Electoral Integrity? The Canadian Debate in Comparative Perspective
April 25, 2016 | By Public Policy Admin |
The School of Public Policy & Governance is pleased to present The 2016 Cadario Visiting Faculty Lecture featuring Professor Pippa Norris.
Few things are more central to the effective functioning of democracies than citizens’ faith in the fairness of the process whereby they elect their representatives – from voter registration, through the design of electoral systems to the conduct of campaigns. In elections in many parts of the world, including established democracies like Canada, that faith has been strained in recent years. In Canada, one response has been to call into question the practice of electing representatives in single-member districts on a first-past-the-post basis.
Would the integrity of the electoral process be served by changing Canada’s voting system? What does experience in other nations tell us? How can we ensure that Canadian elections function as true engines of democracy? Professor Pippa Norris, Director of the Electoral Integrity Project, visited the University of Toronto on April 25 to address these and related questions at this critical moment in Canadian history, as legislators prepare recommendations to Parliament that may alter the electoral system that Canada has known since Confederation. Following her lecture, Professor Norris sat down with Jennifer Ditchburn, editor-in-chief of Policy Options, to discuss her remarks in a live on-stage interview.
Pippa Norris is a comparative political scientist who has taught at Harvard University for more than two decades. She is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. She has also served as Director of the Democratic Governance Group at the United Nations Development Program in New York. Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Woodrow Wilson School. He holds a bachelors degree in Mathematics with Computer Science and Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.
Honors include the the 2014 Karl Deutsch prize awarded by the International Political Science Association to recognize a prominent scholar engaged in the cross-disciplinary research, the 2011 Johan Skytte prize in political science, with Ronald Inglehart, the 2011Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellowship, a ‘special recognition’ award by the UK Political Science Association, book prizes in 2005 and 2006, an outstanding professional achievement award by the MPSA, and a Doctor honoris causa by the University of Edinburgh.
Her research compares public opinion and elections, democratic institutions and cultures, gender politics, and political communications in many countries worldwide. Her current research focuses on a multi-million 5-year project, The Electoral Integrity Project, based at the University of Sydney, which started in mid-2012.
A well-known public speaker and prolific author, she has published more than forty books. This includes a series for Cambridge University Press: A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies (2000, winner of the 2006 Doris A. Graber award for the best book in political communications), Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide(2001), Democratic Phoenix: Political Activism Worldwide (2002) andRising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the Globe(with Ronald Inglehart, 2003), Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (2004), Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (with Ronald Inglehart, 2004, winner of the Virginia Hodgkinson prize from the Independent Sector, 2nd edition 2010), Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market(2005), Driving Democracy: Do power-sharing institutions work?(2008) and Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalizing World (2009, with Ronald Inglehart), Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited (2011), and Making Democratic Governance Work: The Impact of Regimes on Prosperity, Welfare and Peace (Cambridge University Press Fall 2012). Recent books are Why Electoral Integrity Matters (CUP 2014) and Why Elections Fail (CUP 2015).
Jennifer Ditchburn is the editor-in-chief of Policy Options, the IRPP’s online policy forum. An award-winning parliamentary correspondent, Jennifer began her journalism career at the Canadian Press in Montreal as a reporter-editor during the lead-up to the 1995 referendum. She went on to work in the agency’s Toronto and Edmonton bureaus before landing in the nation’s capital in 1997. From 2001 and 2006 she was a national reporter with CBC Television on Parliament Hill, and in 2006 she returned to the Canadian Press. She is a three-time winner of a National Newspaper Award: twice in the politics category, and once in the breaking news category together with colleagues from the Ottawa bureau of the Canadian Press. In 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Charles Lynch Award for outstanding coverage of national issues, and the same year, she was named one of the ten most influential Hispanic-Canadians. Jennifer has been a frequent contributor to television and radio public affairs programs, including CBC’s Power and Politics, the “At Issue” panel, and The Current. She holds a bachelor of arts from Concordia University, and a master of journalism from Carleton University.
Event Date
April 25, 2015
6:00 pm to 8:30pm
Location
Desautels Hall
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto