Adrienne Davidson

Adrienne Davidson

Adrienne DavidsonSkelton-Clark Post-Doctoral Fellow
PhD (UofT); MPP (UofT); BAS (Guelph)

Department of Political Studies
Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room C302
adrienne.davidson@queensu.ca

 

 


Research Interests

Canadian politics, federalism and intergovernmental relations, comparative public policy, the politics of policy change, qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Brief Biography

Adrienne is a Canadian political scientist interested in the political and policy dynamics of federal systems. Her research agenda places Canada in a comparative perspective, and is organized along two central themes. First, her research explores the politics of policy change in federal systems—investigating the conditions that favour policy change and that affect the choice of certain policy or governance decisions. Second, her research explores linkages between institutions and group identity, and the ways in which institutions can shape, reinforce, or undermine minority groups. In particular, she is interested in the politics of minority nations within federal systems, the institutional arrangements designed to meet their political interests, and the implications of such institutional creation.

In her dissertation research, Adrienne investigated the factors that led to the United States and Canadian federal governments to implement modern land claim agreements with northern Indigenous populations. Not only did modern land claim agreements mark a key policy innovation, they fundamentally reformulated the relationship between Indigenous nations and the state through the creation of new governance organizations. Her current research moves to the subnational level (provincial and state governments), engaging in a systematic exploration of the conditions that favour policy innovation.

In 2016-2017, Adrienne was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. Her research has appeared in several national and international journals including Regional & Federal Studies, Canadian Journal of Political Science, and Policy Sciences.

Selected Publications

“Risk Perception, Regulation, and Unlicensed Child Care: Lessons from Ontario” (with Linda White, Michal Perlman, and Erica Rayment). Journal of Risk Research. Online first: 09 January 2018.

“Advancing the Study of Political Cleavages through Experimentation: Revisiting Regionalism and Redistributive Preferences in Canada” (with Matthew Lesch, Maxime Héroux-Legault, Tanya Whyte, Alesha Porisky, Karol Czuba, and Zain Asaf). Regional & Federal Studies 27:2 (March 2017): 103-125.

“Negotiating Aboriginal Self-Government in Canada: An Analysis of the Inuvialuit Experience” with Christopher Alcantara. Canadian Journal of Political Science 48:3 (June 2015): 553-575.

  • Winner of the 2016 John McMenemy Prize for the best article in Volume 48 of the Canadian Journal of Political Science. 

“Policy Logics, Framing Strategies, and Policy Change: Lessons from Universal Pre-K Policy Debates in California and Florida” (with Linda White, Heather Millar, Milena Pandy, and Juliana Yi). Policy Sciences 48:4 (December 2015): 1-19.