Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Dropping these here as a convenient place to keep them. The issue of ranked choice voting versus first-past-the-post voting is a hot one in Canada right now -- its profile has been raised by former prime minister Justin Trudeau, who appears remorseful about not having done anything to  move the country in the ranked direction. Here is some literature on the controversy.  Martin Horak (2021) Adopting Ranked-Choice Voting in London, Ontario .  Michael Cowan (2025), “Ranking Bad: The Chemistry of Ranked‑Choice Voting.” ResPublica: Undergraduate Journal of Political Science. Rivard & Lockhart (2022), “Government Preferences, Vote Choice and Strategic Voting in Canada.”   Canadian Journal of Political Science. Examines how voters use expectations about government formation to guide their choices. Highly relevant because strategic voting is one of the main behaviors RCV aims to reduce . Donovan, Todd, Caroline Tolbert & Kellen Gracey (2019). “Self‑Reported Underst...

 This is the sort of come-from-nowhere figure who can really enliven politics, even in the eyes of jaded folks who think they've seen it all. Mamdani was a nobody when he entered the race for the Democrati Party's nomination for Mayor of New York City.  He was a member of the New York State Assembly, 36th district, a district within NYC, hugging the East River from the Queens side. In the last two elections for that seat, he ran for re-election unopposed. When Mamdani first entered the race for the Mayoral nomination, he was laughed off and the pollsters were giving him 1 percent. His opponents included a former Governor of the State, Andrew Cuomo [not merely a former Gov., but the son of the Gov. the state recently named a bridge for] and Brad Lander, the incumbent Comptroller of NYC.  Lander went so far as to get himself arrested in the act of protesting Trump deportation policies during the campaign. It looked for 15 minutes like a brilliant political move.  It d...