Partisanship, Ideology and Civic Autonomy: An Adjusted Framework for Measuring Autonomy in Canadian Cities

Despite the earlier obscurity of urban politics within political science research, the exploration and analysis of these political arenas has grown substantially since the 2000’s. Smith and Spicer (2018) contribute to this burgeoning body of literature with a quantitative framework for measuring the autonomy of Canadian municipalities. While their framework is a novel contribution to urban politics literature, it fails to account for the influence of intergovernmental partisanship, and ideology more broadly, on local autonomy. Through an analysis of the political history of Vancouver, Katelynn's research challenges the assumption that the presence of intergovernmental political connections are always positively related to increased autonomy within local governments. While the provincial connections held by these individuals may operate as a gateway to increased bargaining power for municipalities during intergovernmental discussions, they can also serve as an exertion of political power over the municipality to further the provincial governments own agenda, particularly in the presence of a municipal political party structure.

Katelynn Kowalchuk is a Political Science MA student who will be continuing her studies at UBC in the PhD program beginning September 2022. Hailing from the prairie province of Saskatchewan – the birthplace of medicare in Canada – and completing her BA (Hons.) at the University of Regina imbued her with a passion for health research, particularly how healthcare policies are formed in the context of ideological struggle. Her research is broadly based in Canadian politics and includes mental healthcare policy, histories of healthcare, ideological conflicts and intergovernmental relations.