Research Group on Constitutional Studies

10/08/2026

New from former RGCS postdoc Samuel Bagg 2017-19, now Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, in the American Political Science Review, coauthored with Udit Bhatia

"When Can Clientelism Serve Democratic Ends? A Democratic Theory of Distributive Politics"

Abstract: This article employs normative democratic theory to examine a counterintuitive suggestion raised repeatedly by empirical scholars of clientelism: namely, that practices of particularistic exchange might sometimes serve democratic ends. Certainly, most particularistic practices are widely agreed to undermine democracy, on both intrinsic and instrumental grounds. Yet some observers resist blanket condemnation—and in particular, many highlight the redeeming democratic virtues of certain practices that seem to facilitate collective organization among disempowered groups. Drawing on “realist” approaches to democratic theory, we vindicate this basic insight while clarifying its scope conditions. Countervailing power is a crucial democratic priority, and programmatic methods of promoting it sometimes face serious obstacles: as when clientelist practices are deeply entrenched, or incumbents capture the tools of programmatic competition. Under such conditions, we conclude, democracy-seeking leaders may justifiably employ particularistic practices to promote countervailing power—but only if they respect five constraints tethering them strictly to that goal.

When Can Clientelism Serve Democratic Ends? A Democratic Theory of Distributive Politics

10/08/2026

Congratulations to former John MacNaughton Professor of Classics at McGill Anne Carson, winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize for Literature!

10/05/2026

14 years today since the first RGCS Lecture— by Jeremy Waldron, NYU Law, "Constitutionalism: A Skeptical View." Introduced by then-Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi, followed by dinner at Europea.

There have been 51 lectures and debates in the series total: https://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/events/past-years

43 lectures and 5 debates have been recorded and posted on YouTube (though not Waldron's or the first few).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpqJMd_Xkm_uNGA1X5t5gPnHS3n0Q8PVi

09/29/2026

09/29/2026

On Thursday September 24, students, alums, postdocs, and faculty of RGCS came together to celebrate the naming of our central shared intellectual space as the Judith Nisse Shklar (BA '49 MA '50) reading room, and the shared effort that has seen 265 donors— more than half of them Student Fellowship alums, but also including large numbers of faculty, postdocs, PhD students, other McGill alums from before RGCS days who are now faculty, Fellows' parents, and many others— raise an endowment of $250,000 so far, for the combined RGCS Charles Taylor Student Fellowship and the Shklar Reading Room.

The Fellowship and the Reading Room go together, as one shared part of the core of RGCS. The Fellowship meets in the Reading Room every week. The books are there for the students, and the students are there to talk about the books.

Our scheduled visiting speaker wasn't able to make the trip, but Lin Centre Director Catherine Lu and RGCS Coordinator Jacob Levy both offered some remarks before the group toasted to Professor Shklar, born 98 years before, to the day.

Photos by Lea Grahovac.

(The Fellowship met in its reading group afterwards, and pictures of that will follow in a second post.)

09/29/2026

Two new articles from RGCS alum Mary Jo MacDonald BA '17, now Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Mount Allison University, in the two major journals of the American Political Science Association!

“Marriage as Slavery: Oroonoko, the Slave Trade, and the Origins of English Feminism." American Political Science Review.

Abstract: This article investigates Mary Astell’s controversial comparison of marriage to slavery. While existing scholarship situates this analogy within the neo-Roman republican framework, which defined slavery as subjection to absolute rule, I investigate another paradigm: the transatlantic slave trade. To make this case, the article traces the influence of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) on early feminist thought. By foregrounding the market logic underpinning chattel slavery, Behn popularized the idea that slavery’s harms were rooted, not in absolute power, but in the commodification of human beings. Astell appropriated this insight, showing that marriage resembled slavery not because husbands wielded power over wives but because the institution had been commodified: women were treated as things to be bought and sold. In uncovering this genealogy of feminist thought, the article highlights the enduring contributions of the “first” English feminists—insights that are entangled with, and shaped by, the development of the slave trade.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055426101890
“From Courtiers to Courtship: Tory Feminism and the Dangers of Flattery,” co-authored with Geertje Bol, in Perspectives on Politics.

Abstract: Flattery appears to be a trivial vice, yet it receives a curious amount of attention in contemporary political analysis. Scholars often view flattery as a symptom of autocratic regimes, an association with a much longer history. In seventeenth-century England, republicans likewise understood the courtier’s flattery as a humiliating sign of slavish dependence on the ruler. This article complicates this position by turning to an understudied perspective in the history of political thought: Tory feminism. We show how two Tory feminists, Mary Astell and Judith Drake, challenged the standard republican narrative by drawing on a broader set of experiences—namely, the dynamics of flattery in courtship. We argue that they used the example of courtship to isolate the true wrong of flattery: its employment to subordinate the flattered. Astell and Drake applied this insight to the political realm, contending that the most morally troubling forms of flattery emerge not in monarchical courts, but in republican political spaces. Recovering the perspectives of Astell and Drake is not merely a matter of diversifying the canon; it also shows how gendered assumptions have shaped our conceptual history of flattery. A more complete account of flattery—its value, dangers, and the political environments in which it flourishes—requires attention to the insights of these Tory women.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592726105945

Marriage as Slavery: Oroonoko, the Slave Trade, and the Origins of English Feminism

09/28/2026

Erin Crandall , RGCS PhD alum '13

Professor in the Department of Politics and the Coordinator for the Law and Society Program at Acadia University

Online event from the Centre for Constitutional Studies

October 15, 12 pm MST (2 pm EST):

"Referendum Question 6
Judges on the Ballot: Alberta Courts and the Politics of Federalism"

Registration link:
https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IF-ymvfhTZ6aWlq5UP8s1g #/registration

09/18/2026

RGCS postdoc Alexis Bibeau-Gagnon interviewed on Radio Canada: "Les actions perturbatrices pour le climat arrivent-elles à convaincre?"

Écoutez l’épisode de l’émission La croisée : Mercredi 16 septembre 2026

09/14/2026

The Rosenblum lecture is unfortunately cancelled.