Faculty publications - Department of Political Science
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Item Open Access Do Leader Evaluations (De)Mobilize Voter Turnout? Lessons From Presidential Elections in the United States(Cogitatio, 2022-12-30) Harsgor, Liran; Nevitte, NeilDo evaluations of presidential candidates in the US affect the level of voter turnout? Voters’ affections towards presidential candidates, we contend, can either stimulate or inhibit voter inclinations to turnout. Voters are more inclined to turn out when they have positive feelings towards the candidate with which they identify because they want “their” candidate to win. But citizens may also be more likely to vote when they dislike the candidate of the party with which they do not identify. In that case, voters are motivated to prevent the candidate from being elected. Utilizing the American National Election Studies data for 1968–2020, the analysis finds that the likelihood of voting is affected by (a) the degree to which voters’ affections towards the candidate differ from one another (having a clear‐cut choice between options) and (b) the nature of the affections (negative or positive) towards both in‐ and out‐party candidates.Item Open Access Disclosing Influence: Hydraulic fracturing, interest groups, and state policy processes in the United States(2020) Baka, Jennifer; Hesse, Arielle; Neville, Kate J.; Weinthal, Erika; Bakker, KarenThis paper examines copy-and-paste regulating in hydraulic fracturing (HF) fluid disclosure regulation across US states. Using text analysis, cluster analysis and document coding, we compare HF regulations of twenty-nine states and two “model bills” drafted by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF, an environmental NGO). In contrast to recent studies that have documented ALEC’s widespread influence across policy domains, we find limited evidence of ALEC influence in HF fluid disclosure regulations. Instead, elements of the EDF bill are more prevalent across state regulations. Yet, text similarity scores between states are higher than similarity scores between states and the EDF bill. In particular, Colorado and to a lesser extent Pennsylvania functioned as leader states for other states to follow. This indicates that state-to-state communication was a more influential channel of policy diffusion than interest group model bills in this instance. Future research should better examine processes of information sharing amongst state oil and gas regulators as regulatory text is but one channel of policy diffusion. The cluster analysis also reveals that contiguous states, often within the same shale basins, frequently have different regulations. This finding calls for a reconsideration of the current state-led environmental regulatory framework for HF, which has resulted in a patchwork of regulations across the US. Finally, through the use of novel text analysis tools, this paper adds methodological diversity to the study of policy diffusion within energy policy.Item Open Access Can shareholder advocacy shape energy governance? The case of the US antifracking movement(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Neville, Kate J.; Cook, Jackie; Baka, Jennifer; Bakker, Karen; Weinthal, Erika S.Research on socially responsible investing (SRI) and investor-led governance, especially in the climate sector, suggests that shareholders adopt social movement tactics to influence corporate governance, including building networks, engaging directly with corporations and lobbying regulators. Further, research on corporate transparency and financial disclosure has proliferated, notably in the extractives sector. Our work builds on these existing literatures, with a focus on shareholder resolutions on hydraulic fracturing (HF) in the United States. We analyze US HF-focused shareholder resolutions from 2010 to 2016 to evaluate filing strategies and outcomes. We argue that these resolutions provide space for a range of new actors to shape corporate governance—but their power is constrained. The constraints flow from the same political economy factors that enable shareholders to take collective action: the distance between individual investors and financial decisions; the structure of resolutions and managerial responses; and the complexity of investment vehicles and vote shares. We assess how shareholders respond strategically by altering the focus of resolution demands, liaising with external campaigns and networks, and engaging with government to enhance regulatory interventions. Our work reveals how the upstreaming of power in commodity chains intersects with the power of management boards and the challenges of financialization, with consequences for corporate and energy governance.Item Open Access Debating Unconventional Energy: Social, Political, and Economic Implications(Annual Reviews, 2017-10) Neville, Kate J.; Baka, Jennifer; Gamper-Rabindran, Shanti; Bakker, Karen; Andreasson, Stefan; Vengosh, Avner; Lin, Alvin; Singh, Jewellord Nem; Weinthal, ErikaThe extraction of unconventional oil and gas—from shale rocks, tight sand, and coalbed formations—is shifting the geographies of fossil fuel production, with complex consequences. Following Jackson et al.’s (1) natural science survey of the environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing, this review examines social science literature on unconventional energy. After an overview of the rise of unconventional energy, the review examines energy economics and geopolitics, community mobilization, and state and private regulatory responses. Unconventional energy requires different frames of analysis than conventional energy because of three characteristics: increased drilling density, low-carbon and “clean” energy narratives of natural gas, and distinct ownership and royalty structures. This review points to the need for an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing the resulting dynamic, multilevel web of relationships that implicates land, water, food, and climate. Furthermore, the review highlights how scholarship on unconventional energy informs the broader energy landscape and contested energy futures.Item Open Access Why does industry structure matter for unconventional oil and gas development? Examining revenue sharing outcomes in North Dakota(Elsevier, 2018-07-11) Litzow, Erin; Neville, Kate J.; Johnson-King, Brianna; Weinthal, ErikaScholars have identified many determinants of regulatory outcomes in unconventional oil and gas development, but few have focused on industry structure. We examine the effects of company size and ownership on revenue sharing outcomes in North Dakota (ND), drawing on political economy bargaining models. We examine firm-level characteristics of ND’s oil producers from 2005 to 2015, matching these data against revenue sharing outcomes and estimating effects using graphical and statistical methods. Along with this core analysis, we conduct key informant interviews with four elite actors in the unconventional oil and gas sector in ND, to provide supplementary details on industry structure and voluntary contributions to local communities. Our findings suggest that when industry is dominated by larger, publicly-traded firms, there is more revenue sharing between firms and the state government. However, we find anecdotal evidence that smaller, local firms may better target resources towards local needs. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the varied outcomes at the sub-national and sub-state level and expands the “resource curse” literature that suggests that industry characteristics shape local outcomes.Item Open Access Mitigating Mistrust? Participation and Expertise in Hydraulic Fracturing Governance(Wiley, 2016-09-20) Neville, Kate J.; Weinthal, ErikaIn Canada's Yukon Territory, a legislative committee was tasked with assessing the risks and benefits of hydraulic fracturing. The committee designed an extensive participatory process involving citizens and experts; however, instead of information access and public hearings fostering an open dialogue and trust, these two channels failed to de‐polarize debates over hydraulic fracturing. We argue that mistrust was reinforced because (1) weak participatory processes undermined the goals of public involvement, (2) scientific evidence and scientists themselves were not accepted as neutral or apolitical, and (3) strategic fostering of mistrust by actors on both sides of a polarized issue intensified existing doubt about the integrity and credibility of the process. The implications of a failure to restore trust in government are significant, not only for the issue of hydraulic fracturing, but for governance more broadly, as mistrust has spillover effects for subsequent public negotiations.Item Open Access Scaling up site disputes: strategies to redefine ‘local’ in the fight against fracking(Taylor & Francis, 2016-03-04) Neville, Kate J.; Weinthal, ErikaPlans to replace an aging diesel backup energy plant with liquid natural gas (LNG) generators in Whitehorse, Yukon, resulted in a public outcry, involving community meetings, massive petitions, and demonstrations. Are these civil society protests just a case of a local siting dispute – a response to an unwanted industrial site in an urban neighborhood? Here, it is argued that siting debates are not the driver of these campaigns, but instead are harnessed by activists to advance a broader environmental movement. By linking the LNG project to more distant extraction, involving hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’), movement leaders portray the entire territory as part of the ‘local’ for Whitehorse residents. Movement leaders rely upon two key mechanisms: claiming insider status, and identifying visible symbols. This case reveals the strategic use by environmental movements of local concerns to recruit support for broader campaigns, and the value of local, place-based activism for broader environmental movements.Item Open Access The Contentious Political Economy of Biofuels(MIT Press, 2015) Neville, Kate J.The stairway and halls leading to a closed-door room of the Nairobi High Court buzzed with activity on February 14, 2011. Roughly one hundred people had traveled overnight by bus from the Tana River—the east coast outflow of Kenya’s largest river—to convene at the judicial heart of the nation’s capital. They had gathered to attend a court hearing, risking time away during the dry season from herds of Boran cattle, farms growing maize and peas, and shops and domestic responsibilities. The hearing was one of several for a case filed in 2010, which followed a previous case against many of the same government and corporate actors, notably the governmental National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), the parastatal Tana and Athi River Development Authority (TARDA), and the private Mumias Sugar Company. The previous case had focused on a contested title deed for 40,000 hectares of land claimed by TARDA and implicated in a sugarcane project—the Tana Integrated Sugar Project, or TISP—jointly planned by TARDA and Mumias. TISP planned to convert 20,000 hectares of land into irrigated plantations and associated infrastructure. According to Mumias, the joint venture would produce electricity from co-generation and ethanol, along with sugar. That first case, filed in 2008 by the Tana River Pastoralists Development Organization, Tana Delta Conservation Organization (TADECO), East African Wild Life Society, Centre for Environmental Legal Research and Education, and Kenyan lawyer George Wamukoya, challenged legal rights to the land for TISP and led to a temporary injunction against the project. However, the judicial review was reconsidered and in 2009 the court ruled in favor of the developers, apparently on technicalities.Item Open Access The Changing North–South and South–South Political Economy of Biofuels(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Dauvergne, Peter; Neville, Kate J.Since the 2007 food crisis, controversy has engulfed biofuels. Leading up to the crisis, world-wide interest in these fuels—which include biomass, biogas, bioethanol, and biodiesel—had been surging as states increasingly saw these as a way to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets and promote sustainable economic development. Now some consumers, notably in Europe, are scaling back demand as they worry that biofuels are responsible for increased food prices and deforestation. In contrast, some states—particularly Brazil and the USA, the world's leading bioethanol producers—continue to promote biofuel development, especially in developing countries. Partnerships arising from these efforts, we argue, reflect new patterns in the international political economy, where trade relationships among developing countries are strengthening, and where economic lines between developed and emerging developing countries are blurring. Given previously observed patterns of resource exploitation involving complex webs of North–South and South–South trade (such as for resources like palm oil in Indonesia), we anticipate that the emerging political economy of biofuels will repeat and reinforce many of these same environmentally destructive trends.Item Open Access Forests, Food, and Fuel in the Tropics: The Uneven Social and Ecological Consequences of the Emerging Political Economy of Biofuels(Taylor & Francis, 2010) Dauvergne, Peter; Neville, Kate J.The global political economy of biofuels emerging since 2007 appears set to intensify inequalities among the countries and rural peoples of the global South. Looking through a global political economy lens, this paper analyses the consequences of proliferating biofuel alliances among multinational corporations, governments, and domestic producers. Since many major biofuel feedstocks - such as sugar, oil palm, and soy - are already entrenched in industrial agricultural and forestry production systems, the authors extrapolate from patterns of production for these crops to bolster their argument that state capacities, the timing of market entry, existing institutions, and historical state-society land tenure relations will particularly affect the potential consequences of further biofuel development. Although the impacts of biofuels vary by region and feedstock, and although some agrarian communities in some countries of the global South are poised to benefit, the analysis suggests that already-vulnerable people and communities will bear a disproportionate share of the costs of biofuel development, particularly for biofuels from crops already embedded in industrial production systems. A core reason, this paper argues, is that the emerging biofuel alliances are reinforcing processes and structures that increase pressures on the ecological integrity of tropical forests and further wrest control of resources from subsistence farmers, indigenous peoples, and people with insecure land rights. Even the development of so-called 'sustainable' biofuels looks set to displace livelihoods and reinforce and extend previous waves of hardship for such marginalised peoples.Item Open Access Biofuels and the Politics of Mapmaking(Elsevier, 2012) Neville, Kate J.; Dauvergne, PeterOn a world scale companies and governments are acquiring tracts of land from rural communities across the developing world in what some describe as a global “land grab.” Yet looking into local settings reveals that negotiations and arrangements are often piecemeal and halting, with little resemblance to a coordinated seizure of land. Conflicting maps, overlapping territorial claims, and unclear acquisition processes are creating land disputes, mistrust, and ambiguity. Resulting cycles of contention are enabling companies to obtain—even appropriate—some land. Still, in at least some locales the process is doing more to undermine development opportunities for all parties. To probe into these local politics of mapmaking, this article draws on fieldwork from 2010 to 2011 in Tanzania's Rufiji District, located in the lower floodplain of the Rufiji River. Companies, one might surmise, should be able to exploit information asymmetries to wrest control of land from local villagers. Interviews, primary documents, and field observations reveal, however, that this is not occurring as much as one might expect along the lower Rufiji River. The politics of such land acquisitions, we argue, would seem to be better understood in terms of cycles of contentious politics, as an ongoing process in which movements and counter-movements vie for control through the strategic use of images, maps, and discourse. This research extends the understanding of the processes changing global agriculture and energy production by bridging the frames of the “politics of mapping” and “cycles of contention” to more fully reveal how and why control over land and resources is shifting in the global South.Item Open Access Exchanges and Peacemaking: counterfactuals and unexplored possibilities(2015) Wilson, IainItem Open Access Mindbombs of Right and Wrong: Cycles of Contention in the Activist Campaign to Stop Canada’s Seal Hunt(Taylor & Francis, 2011-03-17) Neville, Kate J.; Dauvergne, PeterActivists use emotional language and images – what Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter coined ‘mindbombs’ – to convince people that some actions are wrong, morally and environmentally. For over 50 years anti-sealing activists, for example, have employed mindbombs to transform seal pups into babies and seal hunters into barbarians. Although ‘image politics’ contributed to the decline of the Canadian sealing industry in the 1980s, its effectiveness has been – and continues to be – rocky, particularly as pro-sealing voices counter with competing claims of cultural rights, traditional livelihoods, and sustainable use. Drawing on Tilly and Tarrow’s ‘cycles of contention’ framework, it is found that controlling and predicting the global uptake of messaging is becoming harder as activists operate in an increasingly crowded discursive landscape, as campaigners and countercampaigners articulate scientific and moral frames that resonate differently across changing social and cultural contexts, and in light of globalising markets, transnational networks, and changing media.Item Open Access Small capacity and big responsibilities: financial and legal implications of a human right to water for developing countries.(Georgetown University Law Center, 2009) McCaffrey, Stephen C.; Neville, Kate J.As a cholera epidemic sweeps across Zimbabwe, and as climate change models predict increasing droughts across parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the urgency of the need for access to clean water in southern Africa has re-emerged in the media.1 A right to water, internationally recognized through General Comment 15 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC Committee), takes on particular immediacy in light of these outbreaks; however, while the recognition of this right internationally and by some states is no doubt a positive development, the implications of its implementation are less well-defined, particularly in many developing countries, including those that have entrenched the general right into their domestic legislation.Item Open Access Adversaries versus Partners: Urban Water Supply in the Philippines(University of British Columbia, 2011-06) Neville, Kate J.In the Philippines, skepticism about private sector participation in urban water provision became increasingly pronounced as missed service targets and regulatory battles plagued governmental relations with the two companies (Manila Water and Maynilad) granted concessions for water provision in the capital, Manila. A comparative study of these two public-private partnerships (PPPs) reveals the challenges of reconciling bureaucratic and organizational dynamics with public suspicion of the private sector. This study draws on interviews and observations with corporate and government officials, academics, journalists, non-governmental organizations and civil society members in the Philippines, almost a decade after the initial privatization. This paper furthers our understanding of the outcomes in Manila -- and PPPs more generally -- by addressing the tension between credible commitment in contractual arrangements and flexibility for responding to economic and environmental shocks. It argues that adversarial interactions between the private corporations and regulators hindered the collaborative negotiations needed to respond to the currency crisis. Fear of public backlash against price increases and contract adjustments prevented the government and companies from engaging in meaningful joint problem solving. The differential outcomes of the companies illustrate the relevance of specific contractual arrangements and leadership in determining the impact of unforeseen shocks. However, the problems experienced by both companies indicates the need—if the private sector is to equitably and efficiently provide public goods—to redesign PPPs to increase transparency and to develop true partners.