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Tom McDowell

Contract Lecturer
EducationPhD (Policy Studies): Ryerson
Phone(416) 979-5000 x TBD

Biography

Dr. Tom McDowell completed his PhD in October 2016 from the Policy Studies program at Ryerson.  In addition to his PhD, Tom holds a MAJ (Journalism) and an MA (Political Science) from Western University, and a BA (Political Science and History) from Laurentian University.  Tom has been a Contract Lecturer with the Department of Politics and Public Administration since 2018. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and Politics at Algoma University from 2007 to 2011.

Tom's research on the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism has also led him to examine policy solutions to the issue of precarious work and increasing inequality. He was a lead author of Southern Ontario's Basic Income Experiment, a public report that reported the outcomes of the prematurely cancelled Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP). He is also an editor of Rising Up: The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada, which provides the first comprehensive analysis of the living wage movement in Canada. Tom is Book Reviews Editor for Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research.

 

Books

  • Neoliberal Parliamentarism: The Decline of Parliament at the Ontario Legislature, 1981 to 2021. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.
  • Rising Up: The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada (ed. with Bryan Evans and Carlo Fanelli). Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021.

Public Reports

Journal Articles

  • “The People vs. Parliament: Hayek and the Role of Parliamentary Sovereignty in the Brexit Crisis.” Work for Change – Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 32:1 (2021): 14-32.
  • “The Impacts of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot: A Comparative Analysis of the Findings from the Hamilton Region” (with Mohammad Ferdosi). Basic Income Studies. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/bis-2020-0034 (external link) 
  • “The Origins of Authoritarian Neoliberalism: The Role of the Legislature in Implementing Fiscal Retrenchment British Columbia, 1983.” Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory 48:4 (2020): online first (external link) .
  • “More than Welfare: Basic Income and 21st Century Labour Markets" (with Mohammad Ferdosi). Basic Income Studies 15:2 (2020): 1-39.
  • “Neoliberal Parliamentarism: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Decline of Parliament at the Ontario Legislature, 1981 to 2019.” Studies in Political Economy 100:2 (2019): 132-149.
  • “The NDP’s Neoliberal Turn and the Decline of the Role of Parliament at Queen’s Park 1990 to 1995.” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 11:3 (2019): 570-594.

Research Notes

  • “The Experiences of Social Assistance Recipients on the Ontario Basic Income Pilot” (with Mohammad Ferdosi). Canadian Review of Sociology 57:4 (2020): 681-707.

Book Chapters

  • “Resisting Low-Waged Work: The Struggle for Living Wages” (with Bryan Evans and Carlo Fanelli). Ch. 1 in Rising Up: The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada, ed. Bryan Evans, Carlo Fanelli and Tom McDowell, 3-28. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021.
  • “The Low Waged Economy in the Age of Neoliberalism: What can be Done?” (with Sune Sandbeck and Bryan Evans). Ch. 13 in Rising Up: The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada, ed. Bryan Evans, Carlo Fanelli, and Tom McDowell, 251-278. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021.
  • “Experiments of Basic Income in Worlds of Welfare” (with Mohammad Ferdosi). In Institutional, Economic, and Social Impacts of Globalization and Liberalization, ed. Yilmaz Bayar, 117-137.  Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2020.

Book Reviews

  • Review of The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada by Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman, with a foreword by David McNalley (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2015): 146 pp. Canadian Journal of Political Science 51:2 (Jun 2018): 478-480.
  • Review of How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System by Wolfgang Streeck (New Delhi: Juggernaut Books, 2016): 381 pp. Canadian Journal of Political Science 50:4 (Dec. 2017): 1119-1120.
  • Review of Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada’s Radical Makeover by Michael Harris (Toronto: Viking Penguin, 2014): 544 pp. Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 11:3 (2017): 765-770.

Dr. McDowell's research explores the contours of neoliberalism’s legitimation crisis, most specially its impact upon democratic institutions. Tom's recent work surveys the extent to which “authoritarian neoliberalism” originated from early neoliberal and ordoliberal thinkers.

Dr. McDowell teaches some combination of

  • CPPA101: Canadian Public Administration I: Institutions
  • CPPA102: Canadian Public Administration II: Processes
  • C\PPA319: Politics of Work and Labour

He developed online versions of all of the above courses.