Upcoming talks: Midwest Political Science Association #MPSA2016 (Chicago)

I do not know how I decided that it would be a good idea to do WPSA, MPSA, CPSA, and LASA, and two academic workshops by invitation, but well, I’m getting close to my last few weeks of extended academic travel. At least, I’m not missing any of my classes (I fly back to Aguascalientes so I don’t miss my lectures). But I’m definitely getting physically tired. Anyways, if you would like to catch me in Chicago next week for MPSA, here is my schedule:

Thursday and Friday I’ll be a Faculty Mentor at the MPSA 2016 networking sessions.

My two papers are the following:

Thursday April 7th, 4:45-6:15pm
58-500 Symposia:
Environmental Politics and Policy

The comparative politics of institutional diversity in water policy reforms: Six case studies in private water supply remunicipalization

In recent years, remunicipalization has been hailed as a policy reform that enables the implementation and operationalization of the human right to water. By bringing back the public into public service delivery, remunicipalization is perceived to ensure water policy objectives’ robust implementation. Remunicipalization of public water supply at the local level has been proven successful in at least six major cities worldwide: Atlanta, Berlin, Paris, Grenoble, Hamilton and Buenos Aires. In this paper, I assess whether human-right-to-water-inspired policy reforms could have played a role in the de-privatization of municipal water supply in these cities. I also explore whether any patterns have emerged from published studies on remunicipalizations worldwide, and from these six case studies. I test the hypothesis that remunicipalization can be used as a policy reform to implement the human right to water. I examine six case studies of remunicipalization in five countries and link across the human right to water literature with the policy outcomes that came out of it.

Saturday, April 9th, 3:00-4:30pm
58-9 Interest Mobilization in Environmental Politics

The comparative politics of environmental mobilizations against bottled water companies in Canada and the United States

The governance of bottled water offers an interesting challenge given its pervasiveness worldwide, in the face of increasing global water stress. Swiss company Nestlé controls 70% of the global bottled water market of around 200 billion dollars. Many of the protests that Nestlé faced occurred in two currently drought-stricken areas: California, in the United States of America, and British Columbia, in Canada. Alarming figures around how much water Nestlé was extracting practically for free in both regions circulated on social media, news sites, and newspapers, giving rise to a series of online mobilizations to rally against the multinational. This paper explores the political dynamics of online activism in California and British Columbia, and evaluates Nestlé’s response to civil society pressure in the face of a global water crisis. In this paper, I compare strategies of anti-water privatization environmental non-governmental organizations and their impact in the US and Canada. I argue that subnational politics interacts with global-agenda setting to bring bottled water into the policy agenda.

I will also be participating in a roundtable on integrating research and teaching

66-110 Roundtable: Integrating Teaching with Your Research
Friday, April 8 11:30 am
Roundtable(s): Integrating Teaching with Your Research
Discussion on integrating teaching and research
Chair: Michaelene D. Cox, Illinois State University
Panelists:
Amber Dickinson, Oklahoma State University
Kellee J. Kirkpatrick, Idaho State University
Elizabeth Wheat, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay
Raul Pacheco-Vega, CIDE

I will be there from Wednesday through Sunday evening so feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat.

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