-
15 Seconds of Media Attention for a Vintage Watch
I happened to be watching CBC Newsworld’s Morning Live show on Friday and the discussion turned to the surprising phenomenon of digitally-connected millennials buying analog watches. After giving several reasons for this trend – they look nice, it’s refreshing to have something with only one function – host Jennifer Hall asked the audience for their…
-
Bingeing on Borgen
I’ve now started working on a new book about public sector narrative, a successor to my 2011 book Governing Fables that will look at more recent narrative texts from the US and UK, as well as those from a number of other countries. This and subsequent blog posts are intended as initial reactions after watching…
-
Campaigning in Poetry
I have just completed a draft of a paper about narratives in the 2015 Canadian and 2016 US Presidential elections, to be presented at the Canadian Political Science Association meetings later this spring. One of the key results is that it illustrates what Mario Cuomo meant when he spoke about campaigning in poetry. My methodology…
-
Budgets Simulated and Real
The centrepiece of my undergraduate public management course is a budgeting simulation in which a group of ministers and public servants either divide up a fiscal windfall or allocate a collective budget cut. This year, we allocated a $6 billion dollar fund for new initiatives for the Government of Canada. We took the government’s priorities…
-
Two Predictions I Nailed
I’ve ignored my blog because I’ve been very busy teaching my three courses this semester, but I want to post before the month is over. Two recent predictions I’ve made, both concerning the Trump Administration, have come to pass. When it became clear that the President-elect was appointing a cabinet of people who did not…
-
Heck of a Job, Comey!
I have now begun analyzing the data I gathered about Clinton and Trump ads posted on YouTube throughout the entire election campaign. (For a detailed discussion of the data and research plan see my blog post last Nov.25.) Participation in social media is voluntary and initiated by citizens. Visits to social media sites often represent…
-
Ten Letters a Day
Jeanne Marie Laskas’s article The Mailroom in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday both moved me and left me with unanswered questions. Laskas describes former President Obama’s mailroom. In it, a group of relatively young staff members received approximately 10,000 letters and emails daily, analyzed them in terms of the issues raised, responded to…
-
Acknowledging Traditional Land
This semester, I decided to begin each of my courses with the University of Toronto’s official acknowledgement of traditional land, which reads as follows: I wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently,…
-
My Brain for the Picking, Revisited
My blog post last August 12 was about how organizations that conduct training for practitioners often ask academics to volunteer their time as speakers. The post generated some controversy. Several colleagues agreed with me, and told me of being approached by organizations to discuss giving a lecture or providing training, but the organization, having lifted…
-
Let Her Be Canada’s Last Monarch
The “heavy cold” that Queen Elizabeth is now suffering reminds us of her mortality. For people her age, a heavy cold may turn into pneumonia, and lead quickly to their demise. Because she has chosen to reign until the very end – unlike many other monarchs and a recent pope – as time passes, she…
-
Innovation: What a Minister Says, What the Media Write
I am always on the lookout for stories about public sector innovation, and I heard one last week. John McCallum, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was on CBC radio news announcing that his department had introduced innovations to reduce the processing time for spousal immigration applications from two years to one. He mentioned that this…
-
Public Servants, Prepare for War
One thing I learned in economics graduate school is the doctrine of revealed preference, which recommends evaluating people on the basis of the choices they make rather than the things they say. That doctrine is turning out to be particularly relevant in understanding Donald Trump, who will say anything on any side of any issue.…
-
Richard Posner’s Academic Hyper-Productivity
One of the strongest influences on my research on narrative has been Richard Posner’s Law and Literature – all three editions of it. What I like about the book(s) is his thoughtful readings of literary texts dealing with the law and the legal system, and the way his book has evolved from a focus on…
-
Analyzing US Presidential Campaign Ads
This is a report on an ongoing research project on public sector narrative. With the support of my latest SSHRC Insight Grant, a research assistant and I have been recording and coding all the ads posted on their YouTube channels by the Clinton and Trump campaigns and their associated PACs. We have coded their ads…
-
Remembrance Day: Bring Back “O God our Help in Ages Past”
Recently I heard the hymn “O God our Help in Ages Past” at the memorial service at my undergraduate reunion. I had heard that hymn many times on Remembrance Day in Canada, so it was very familiar. But this time, at a service for people I knew personally, it was that much more moving, and…