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Crisis in Catalonia
A crisis simulation is a key component of my public management course, intended as an enjoyable and thought-provoking way of teaching crisis management. Each year I invent a crisis: there are enough situations out there that could escalate into a crisis that it’s easy to imagine a plausible scenario. This year’s concerns the separatist movement…
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Hooking Up With CPAP
A few years ago, my wife discovered something disconcerting about me. I snored regularly and gasped occasionally. She was not amused. I consulted a respirologist, who arranged a sleep study. The study discovered that this was the case when I slept on my back, but hardly at all when I slept on my side. So…
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Pricing Parks and Historic Sites
Timothy Egan recently reported in the New York Times that the Trump Administration is proposing drastic price increases (up to $70 for day-use) and budget cuts ($300 million) to the National Park System. Egan’s article suggested that this was not the result of any plan or strategy, but simply an expression of the view that…
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Understanding The Evidence Room
Yesterday I visited the Evidence Room exhibit, currently at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. The Evidence Room, first shown at the 2015 Venice Biennale, is a representation of the evidence displayed at the 2000 libel trial of Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt had been sued in a British court by Holocaust denier David Irving, and had the burden…
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A Long Look at Government at a Glance
This post is a review of the 2017 edition of the OECD’s annual publication Government at a Glance. I begin with a personal disclosure. The team leader for this publication is Zsuzsanna Lonti. I had the honor to be an adviser for her excellent doctoral dissertation on innovative workplace practices in Canadian government. We have…
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My Expected Ancestry
I recently DNA-tested my ancestry, and the result was exactly what I expected: predominantly Eastern European Jewish. More precisely, 84 percent Eastern European Jewish, 10 percent Italy Greece (Sephardic maybe), 2 percent Finland or Northwest Russia, less than 1 percent western or Eastern Europe or north Africa, and zeroes everywhere else included the UK, Ireland,…
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Darkest Hour – Not Even Remotely Based on a True Story
I saw Director Joe Wright’s homage to Winston Churchill – Darkest Hour – at the Toronto International Film Festival last weekend. It will not be released until November 22, so this is a very early review. The movie deeply disappointed me – not because of Gary Oldman’s powerful portrayal of a force of nature –…
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Remaining Seated for the Star-Spangled Banner
When I went to the soccer game between the San Jose Earthquakes – an unfortunate name choice – and Toronto FC yesterday, as has been my practice since Donald Trump became President, I remained seated for the Star-Spangled Banner. As far as I could see no one else in the crowd, except my son Nathaniel…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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