Miriam Smith

Political institutions and lesbian and gay rights in the United States and Canada

1. The Comparative Politics of Lesbian and Gay Rights 2. Starting Points, 1969-1980 3. Bowers and the Charter, 1980-1986 4. Discrimination, from Romer to Vriend, 1986-2000 5. The Emergence of Same Sex Marriage, 1991-1999 6. Policy Divergence and Policy Diffusion: Same-Sex Marriage in the 2000s 7. Conclusions: Historical Institutionalism and Lesbian and Gay Rights

Lesbian and gay rights in Canada : social movements and equality-seeking, 1971-1995

To the expanding literature on lesbian and gay rights in Canada, Miriam Smith contributes this fascinating analysis of trends in the movement toward equality for sexual minorities in the last quarter of a century. Using archival material that has largely been ignored, as well as interviews with Canadian activists, Smith investigates the ways in which the lesbian and gay movement has changed in response to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Smith demonstrates that equality-seeking was well entrenched as a strategy and ideology in lesbian and gay rights networks prior to the existence of the Charter. However, in the wake of the Charter, the movement has shifted from a strategy primarily based on building a social movement to one is based on achieving concrete legal and policy victories. Rather than focusing on win/loss ratios before the courts under the Charter or on the analysis of legal cases, the work centres on the impact of the Charter from the perspective of the experience of those within the movement itself. Unlike the existing literature on the lesbian and gay rights movement in Canada, Smiths study presents an analysis of the evolution of federal-level social organizing based on primary sources. Into the discussion Smith also introduces Quebec politics as a unique cultural entity and one that is often overlooked in the context of lesbian and gay activism in Canada. Lesbian and Gay Rights in Canada is an excellent analysis of an important and rising social movement in Canadian politics.

Social Movements and Judicial Empowerment: Courts, Public Policy, and Lesbian and Gay Organizing in Canada:

This article explores the impact of judicial empowerment on social movement politics and public policy using a case study of the lesbian and gay rights movement in Canada before and after the 1982 constitutional entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The expanded role of courts in the Canadian political system has had substantial effects on public policy in the lesbian and gay rights area over a twenty-year period, putting Canada in the forefront of this area of human rights.

Social movements, knowledge and public policy: the case of autism activism in Canada and the US

This paper explores the role of social movements in the policy process and, in particular, the ways in which movements interact with, access, and deploy expert knowledge. In the technocratic model, citizens are conceptualized as undifferentiated, rather than considered in terms of distinctive identities or interests. Their inclusion in policy-making is viewed as a technical problem to be ‘solved’ through forms of citizen engagement, rather than viewing citizens as active agents in the mobilization of distinctive knowledges. Citizens, we argue, are more than the undifferentiated lump that appears in the technocratic model under the guise of citizen engagement. Drawing on a case study of autism activism in Canada and the US, we demonstrate the range of ways in which civil society actors both deploy and contest expert knowledge in the policy process, and discuss the implications for how we conceptualize knowledge mobilization in policy processes.

New trends in Canadian federalism

Introduction, Fran ois Rocher and Miriam Smith Part One: Constitutional Developments and Canadian Political Identity Chapter 1: The Four Dimensions of Canadian Federalism, Fran ois Rocher and Miriam Smith Chapter 2: The Constitutional Debate and Beyond, Jennifer Smith Chapter 3: Executive Federalism: Beggar Thy Neighbour?, Kathy Brock Chapter 4: Conceiving Diversity: Dualism, Multiculturalism, and Multinationalism, Kenneth McRoberts Chapter 5: The Law of Federalism: Judicial Review and the Division of Powers, Gerald Baier Chapter 6: Aboriginal Governance and Canadian Federalism: A To-Do List for Canada, Frances Abele and Michael J. Prince Chapter 7: Treaty Federalism: An Indigenous Vision of Canadian Federalisms, Kiera L. Ladner Part Two: Public Policy and the Division of Powers Chapter 8: Neo-Liberal Trade Policy and Canadian Federalism Revisited, Ian Robinson Chapter 9: Canadian Federalism and Active Labour Market Policy, Rodney Haddow Chapter 10: Social Assistance and Canadian Federalism, Gerard W. Boychuk Chapter 11: Health Care and Canadian Federalism, Antonia Maioni and Miriam Smith Chapter 12: Passing the Environmental Buck, Kathryn Harrison Chapter 13: Regional Development: A Policy for All Seasons and All Regions, Donald J. Savoie Chapter 14: Canadian Federalism and Federation in Comparative Perspective, Michael Burgess Contributors

Framing Same-sex Marriage in Canada and the United States: Goodridge, Halpern and The National Boundaries of Political Discourse

The article draws on post-positivist policy analysis and social movement theory to explore the impact of law in shaping the politics of social movement claims and discursive construction of same-sex marriage as public policy issue in Canadian and American politics. Using the concept of framing, the article discusses the ways in which lesbian and gay rights claimants in Canada and the USA have framed the issue of same-sex marriage in two landmark North American rulings on same-sex marriage, Halpern (Ontario) and Goodridge (Massachusetts). The article finds that, despite differences in legal policy legacies between Canada and the USA, there is a common rights frame governing lesbian and gay struggles over same-sex marriage. Although working with different legal frameworks, judicial precedents, statutory law and human rights protections, courts reached remarkably similar conclusions about same-sex marriage and largely endorsed nearly all of the elements in the rights frame put forth by lesbian and gay litigants. Despite similarities in the framing of lesbian and gay rights issues in the two countries, the article demonstrates that the central difference in the same-sex marriage debate in Canada and the USA concerns the place of the rights frame within the broader political culture.

Activist knowledges in queer politics1

Abstract This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism. It situates the development of LGBT activist research capacity within a broader shift towards evidence-based policy-making. The paper presents case studies of LGBT organizing from the US and Canada to demonstrate how LGBT activists utilize established social science methodologies such as statistics to claim legitimacy and render queer worlds visible in the policy process. The paper argues that this development in LGBT advocacy is marked by struggles over the kinds of queer realities that may be enacted through social scientific inquiry. The paper also explores the deployment of auditing and benchmarking in LGBT activist knowledge production. It demonstrates the way in which LGBT activists are using these privileged modes of knowledge production to produce truths regarding the nature, extent and effect of homophobia and heterosexism. The relationship between such calculative technologies and the emergence of LGBT active citizenship practices is considered. The paper concludes by emphasizing the decidedly mixed political implications of the increasing reliance on social science and calculative practices in queer activism.

The Politics of Multiscalar Citizenship: The Case of Lesbian and Gay Organizing in Canada

Citizenship is increasingly viewed as a multiscalar social practice, constituted and contested at local, urban, national and transnational scales. This paper attempts to bring this insight to bear on the study of queer social movement politics. A multiscalar perspective, we argue, enriches our understanding of contemporary LGBT citizenship struggles. Using qualitative case studies of lesbian and gay organizing at the pan-Canadian and urban levels in Canada, the paper demonstrates the relationships that exist between and among citizenship struggles and practices across scales. Queer political struggles at the urban level diverge widely from those at the pan-Canadian level. By using a multiscalar approach, we are able to demonstrate these critically important political differences. The paper contributes to an understanding of multiscalar citizenship by showing the different forms of politics that are produced at different scales of social movement organizing.

Bourgeois Revolutions? The Policy Consequences of Resurgent Conservatism

Much of the literature on reform politics has focused on social democratic governments. This article reexamines the dynamics of reform by concentrating on conservative governments in four advanced industrial democracies during the 1980s: Britain, Canada, the United States, and West Germany. Conservative governments have attempted to dismantle well-institutionalized systems of government intervention in market economies. The authors argue that the structure of national political institutions is of central importance in explaining variation across these cases in government goals, strategies, and success rates. This article also stresses the need to consider the distinctive characteristics of different policy arenas. Governments found market-oriented reforms considerably easier to implement in some policy arenas than in others.

Segmented Networks Linguistic Practices in Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Organizing

This article explores the linguistic practices of lesbian and gay social movement networks in Canada. It specifically focuses on Egale, the main advocacy group for lesbian and gay rights issues, describing its linguistic practices with regard to public presentation, recruitment and participation, as well as its relationships to other lesbian and gay rights groups. The main finding is that Frenchspeaking activist networks are largely separated from English-speaking activist networks. The concept of consociationalism is applied to the relationship between the two linguistically based networks and adapted for social movement politics. The linguistically based social movement networks function separately from each other but occasionally cooperate at the elite level in pursuit of common goals.