Professor Sheldrick studied Political Science at Carleton University before going to law school at the University of Toronto. He then returned to the study of Political Science, completing his MA and PhD at York University in Toronto. He previously taught in the Law department at...
Maureen Mancuso
Email:
m.mancuso@uoguelph.ca
Field:
political ethics and political corruption, comparative political institutions, legislative behaviour, and American politics.
Specialization:
Comparative politics of industrialized states, emphasis on American government, British politics, political corruption and political ethics.
Professor Mancuso's principal thrust of her research agenda has been the areas of political ethics, corruption, and scandal.
As I readily acknowledge, it seems to be a field that never suffers a shortage of new case studies. My principal methodological technique has been empirical survey research, but I have also published theoretical and normative papers, with a special focus on the institutional determinants and consequences of ethical choices.
Through much of the 1990s I was engaged in a major effort as principal investigator for a team of five political scientists from across the country. The SSHRC-funded project centred on a large-scale empirical investigation of standards of conduct in public life. Featuring parallel samples of politicians (250), journalists (200), and the general public (1400), the project has generated a wealth of data I continue to explore. We were fortunate to be able to employ over 40 students, both graduate and undergraduate, as telephone interviewers during the data gathering phase. These students gained first-hand experience and training in survey research, which some have carried forward into career opportunities. I developed a course on Corruption, Scandal, and Political Ethics partly based on the book derived from this project (A Question of Ethics), which analyzed the responses of the public sample, and was launched at a press conference on Parliament Hill.
Professor Mancuso's work in this area has been well-received, and has attracted significant research, government, and media attention, in Canada and worldwide. I have been called to appear before both special and standing committees of the Canadian House of Commons and the Canadian Senate, and asked to submit testimony to the Nolan Commission on Standards in Public Life (U.K), and invited to participate in a Ditchley Foundation/Harvard Kennedy School of Government Conference on Public Trust in Government. I have been engaged as a consultant by the Auditor General of Canada and the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform, and recently was recruited to work with a US consortium of ethics researchers. Academic researchers in other countries, especially Australia, have sought to replicate my methodology in their own contexts, and have used my works as touchstones for embarking on their own analyses. I also get regular media requests for commentary and analysis of Canadian and American political issues, primarily on scandals and legislative issues.
Current Project:
Recent work has focused more generally on legislative and political behaviour in the United States. While scandal has emerged in the last decade as a primary motivating factor behind much of American politics, there are other interesting political pathologies on display as well. I have begun analysis for a project on the effect of external crises on the expression of dissent and partisan bickering in the US Congress. Research assistants have been doing a close-reading of the Congressional Record during periods following major events such as the 9/11 attacks and Pearl Harbor. Recently, my assistants traveled to Washington to investigate additional materials at the Library of Congress.
Recent Publications:
Maureen Mancuso, Richard G. Price, and Ronald Wagenberg, eds., Leaders and Leadership in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1994).
The Ethical World of British MPs (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995).
Maureen Mancuso, Michael Atkinson, André Blais, Ian Greene, and Neil Nevitte, A Question of Ethics: Canadians Speak Out (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998).
“Politicizing Ethics: Scandal and the American Experience,” in Noel Preston and Charles Sampford, eds., Ethics and Political Practice: Perspectives on Legislative Ethics. (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 66-80
“A Thousand Brooms, A Thousand Buckets: Accountability and the Institutional Investigation of Scandal,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 32:3 (2002), pp. 285-300.