Political Science

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Political Science.

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Browsing Political Science by Author "Esselment, Anna"

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    Politics of Fear: Unitary Bias of a Federal Design in Nepal
    (University of Waterloo, 2018-08-16) Jnawali, Hari Har; Esselment, Anna; Macfarlane, Emmett
    This thesis explores the reasons that have led the framers of the constitution to centralize powers in the federal government of Nepal, despite claims for accommodation by its minority groups. It contends that the centralized model is chosen to neutralize the potential risk of secession. Taking discourse analysis as its methodological approach, the thesis examines this argument in two sections. First, it develops seven measures: the recognition of minorities, the demarcation of sub-unit boundaries, the distribution of powers, the constitutional amending formula, the appointment process of the Judges in the Supreme Court, the jurisdiction of the upper house in the federal parliament, and the constitutional (a)symmetries, and applies them in the constitution. Second, it assumes that the fear of disintegration existed in the polity due to i) Maoists’ interpretation of the ‘right to self-determination’ ii) utterances of secession threats by regional leaders and, iii) the foreign intervention in the domestic politics of Nepal. In its attempt to dampen the risk of disintegration, the current arrangement of the Nepali state fails to accommodate the demands for the ‘right to self-determination’ and autonomy, further augmenting the discontent among minorities. Despite the change in the structure, the thesis concludes that the present design has not lost the fundamental character of the previous unitary state that repressed diversity and claimed to maintain the territorial integrity. In order to reach this conclusion, official discourses such as the manifestos of political parties, their debates as recorded in the CA transcripts, and the official statements of the governments have been analyzed.
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    The Sun Will Shine Again: On Populist Contagion of New and Establishment Parties in the Dutch National Elections of the 21st Century
    (University of Waterloo, 2024-12-02) van Mierlo, Kevin R.O.; Esselment, Anna
    Twenty-one years after the murder on Pim Fortuyn, the right-wing populist Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid; PVV) won a plurality in the 2023 Dutch national election after long-term PM Mark Rutte announced that he would not run for re-election. This study serves as a contribution to Rooduijn’s ‘A Populist Zeitgeist?’ study (2014), looking into the spread of right-wing populist rhetoric throughout the Dutch party system since 2002. More specifically, this study looks at the contagion of populist rhetoric on the three establishment (‘winner’) parties (PvdA, VVD, CDA) and three new but successful (‘savior’) parties, compared to two well-known populist parties (LPF, PVV). This content analysis study uses a blend between Hawkins’ (2009) wholistic grading rubric and Rooduijn et al. (2014) paragraph-level coding in order to assess the amount and type of populist rhetoric in the selected party manifestos of the 2002, 2010, and 2023 election years. The qualitative discourse methods used shows that, in line with Rooduijn and colleague’s (2014) findings, that there still is no change in the absence of a populist Zeitgeist. The significance of these findings is in the enrichment of the understanding of Dutch populism after the PVV’s electoral win in 2023.