Jerald Sabin’s scholarly agenda considers how the relationship between Indigenous and settler peoples shape Canadian political institutions, intergovernmental relations, and policy processes. This work asks a critical question: In the context of (re)emerging Indigenous systems of law and government, what is the future direction of liberal democracy in Canada? A related secondary research agenda explores how other identity groups – such as those based in race, religion, and sexuality – shape Canadian public policy and government.
Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management (Carleton University)
MA in Public Administration (Carleton University)
PhD in Political Science (University of Toronto)
Jerald Sabin’s scholarly agenda considers how the relationship between Indigenous and settler peoples shape Canadian political institutions, intergovernmental relations, and policy processes. This work asks a critical question: In the context of (re)emerging Indigenous systems of law and government, what is the future direction of liberal democracy in Canada? A related secondary research agenda explores how other identity groups – such as those based in race, religion, and sexuality – shape Canadian public policy and government.
Canada represents a singular experiment: a settler federation grappling with its past, facing its colonial present, and charting an innovative future. I have witnessed this future most clearly working alongside Northern Indigenous and settler communities. Canada’s North is on the leading edge of political, constitutional, and administrative changes that are fundamentally remaking how Canadians govern themselves. Learning from the past, while planning for our shared future, is at the heart of my research agenda.
Honours
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2017-2019
John McMenemy Prize, Canadian Political Science Association, 2015
Sabin, Jerald and Kyle Kirkup. 2019. “Competing Masculinities and Political Campaigns.” Mediation of Gendered Identities in Canadian Politics. Eds. Angelia Wagner and Joanna Everitt. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Sabin, Jerald. 2018. “Fiscal Outlier: Yukon in an Austere Age.” Canadian Provincial and Territorial Paradoxes: Public Finances, Services and Employment in an Era of Austerity. Eds. Carlo Fanelli and Bryan Evans. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 380-408.
Sabin, Jerald. 2016. “Alternatives North: A History.” Care, Cooperation, and Activism in Canada’s Northern Social Economy. Eds. Frances Abele, Chris Southcott. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 125-140.
C-Dem: The Consortium on Electoral Democracy
SSHRC Partnership Grant, $2.5 million
Principal Investigators: Laura Stephenson (Western) and Allison Harrell (UQAM)
This study explores the attitudes and opinions of voters about democracy, policy, and elections management during the Tłı̨chǫ Grand Chief Elections in September 2021. Co-developed and co-directed by the Tłı̨chǫ Government, Hotıì ts’eeda, and Tłı̨chǫ knowledge keepers, this project explores the electoral management (administration) and political (voting behaviour) dimensions of an Indigenous electoral system. This survey is part of the Consortium on Electoral Democracy, a SSHRC Partnership grant that builds upon the long tradition of Canadian Election Studies (CES) and provincial election studies conducted by teams of researchers around the country since 1965.
The goals of this project are to (1) analyze the development of Tłı̨chǫ leadership selection processes over time and (2) conduct the first voting behaviour study in North America within an Indigenous electoral system. The latter will create a common core set of survey questions that could be adapted for use within other Indigenous electoral systems and enable the development of a new field of research in comparative Indigenous electoral behaviour.
What is a territory? Comparative federalism and colonial political development in North America
SSHRC Insight Development Grant, $44,160
Principal Investigator: Jerald Sabin
This project explores the development and uses of territories in Canada and the United States (U.S.). With their diverse histories and geographies – ranging from tropical islands to Arctic tundra – the project considers what binds these regions together under the jurisdictional class of “territory.”
Religion is usually thought of as inconsequential to contemporary Canadian politics. Religion and Canadian Party Politics takes a hard look at just how much or how little influence faith continues to have in federal, provincial, and territorial political arenas.
Drawing on case studies from across the country, this book explores the three axes of religiously based contention that have been most influential in Canada. Historically, denominational distinctions between Catholics and Protestants shaped party oppositions across several regions. Since the 1960s, as religiosity experienced a steep decline, a newly politicized divide opened between religious conservatives and political reformers. Then since the 1990s, sporadic controversy has centred on the political and legal recognition of non-Christian religious minority rights. Although the extent of partisan engagement with each of these sources of contention has varied across time and region, this book shows that religion still matters in shaping party politics.
