Christopher Kam
Biographic Data
| ID | 600676 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Kam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Kam |
| SIGNATURE | KAM C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2431-4675 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 300 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Nectar of Conscious and Unconscious Interpersonal Complexity Cross-Pollinating in Western and Non-Western Counseling Contexts
As our world becomes more multicultural, there is opportunity to grow wisdom and distribute it in many cross-cultural forms. One element of wisdom that benefits and is benefitted from intercultural cross-pollination is interpersonal complexity. This nectar of wisely acknowledging complexity in interpersonal dynamics has both conscious and unconscious dimensions. Tending to this plants seeds of cross cultural applications for interpersonal well-be…
Countering Political Polarization Through Conscious and Unconscious Integrative Complexity
Political polarization has been growing in many countries, including the United States, within recent years. Scholars note how, if not addressed, growing trends can compromise fundamental pillars of a functioning democratic society. While efforts have grown in researching how integrative complexity can successfully mitigate polarizing tensions in political divides, there is a lack of scholarly attention on how conscious and unconscious dimensions…
Enhancing Enneagram Therapy with Contemporary Research on the Conscious and Unconscious Mind
Combining the enneagram and narrative therapy for adult ego development
Integrating the enneagram and the anthropological structures of the imaginary for multidimensional maturity in the personality
Personality fixations that have had utility in the past can later become problematic for holistic psychological development. Adult Ego Development research combined with psychoanalytic assumptions provide a way to understand multidimensional maturity through addressing and transforming the unconscious. The Enneagram and Gilbert Durand’s Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (ASI) are two frameworks that can be integrated to help clients exp…
Legislative Pensions and Re‐election Seeking: Evidence from Canadian Legislatures
We use data from Canadian legislatures to examine how legislative pension rules affect the propensity of incumbents to seek re‐election. We predict that legislators with defined‐benefits pensions are more likely to seek re‐election than legislators without pensions. Once the legislator is vested (i.e., qualified) in the pension, however, this incentive disappears; indeed, pensions that accrue value quickly and can be collected at an early age, in…
Covid-19 Policy Convergence in Response to Knightian Uncertainty
Domestic policy responses to COVID-19 were remarkably consistent during the early days of the pandemic. What explains this policy convergence? Our formal model suggests that the novel character of COVID-19 produced a period of maximum policy uncertainty, incentivizing political actors to converge on a common set of policies to minimize their exposure to electoral punishment. This convergence is likely to break down as policy feedback produces opi…
Economic Origin of Political Parties
This Element examines how the changing economic basis of parliamentary elections in nineteenth century England and Wales contributed to the development of modern parties and elections. Even after the 1832 Reform Act expanded the British electorate, elections in many constituencies went uncontested, party labels were nominal, and candidates spent large sums treating and bribing voters. By the end of the century, however, almost every constituency …
Growth in Adult Ego Development and Mentalizing Emotions for an Increasingly Multidimensional God Image
Growth in cognitive complexity in the framework of adult ego development has shown to enable sophistication in mentalizing interpersonal emotions. This has implications for cultivating a more multidimensional God Image for spirituality in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The construct of mentalization will be used to understand the integration of these concepts. Empirical findings that support this conceptual integration will be explored. Clinical …
Untangling Spiritual Contradictions Through the Psychology of Lived Paradox: Integrating Theological Diversity in the Old Testament with Durand’s Framework on the Imaginary
The Electoral System, the Party System and Accountability in Parliamentary Government
Electoral accountability requires that voters have the ability to constrain the incumbent government's policy-making power. We express the necessary conditions for this claim as an accountability identity in which the electoral system and the party system interact to shape the accountability of parliamentary governments. Data from 400 parliamentary elections between 1948 and 2012 show that electoral accountability is contingent on the party syste…
Integrating Divine Attachment Theory and the Enneagram to Help Clients of Abuse Heal in Their Images of Self, Others, and God
The Nature of Party Categories in Two‐Party and Multiparty Systems
Categories are one of the primary ways by which people make sense of complex environments. For political environments, parties are especially useful categories. By simplifying political life, party categories enable people to make sense of politics. A fundamental characteristic of party categories is that they minimize perceived differences of members within a party (e.g., two Democrats) and maximize perceived differences between members of diffe…
The Secret Ballot and the Market for Votes at 19th-Century British Elections
This article examines the impact of the secret ballot on the market for votes at parliamentary elections in the 19th-century United Kingdom. I use a formal model of an exchange between a candidate and a voter to predict the impact of the secret ballot on bribe prices, the marginal effect campaign spending on candidates’ electoral prospects, and election turnout. I test these predictions against original data on bribe prices and campaign expenditu…
Predicting majority rule: Evaluating the uncovered set and the strong point
This paper compares two solution concepts for majority rule decision-making in multi-dimensional settings: the uncovered set and the strong point. Our goal is to determine which of these solution concepts is the appropriate generalization of the median voter theorem to more complex (and more realistic) multi-dimensional majority-rule settings. By making this comparison, we also contribute to the debate about the degree of sophisticated decision-m…
Party relevance and party survival in new democracies
We argue that the move to free and fair elections is only the first step in a democratic transition. With this change, competition moves into the legislative arena, where interests are defined not in terms of support or opposition to the old regime, but over competing visions of what government should do. Thus, examining legislative behavior and legislative outcomes helps us to understand the long-term political and policy trajectory of democrati…
Enfranchisement, Malapportionment, and Institutional Change in Great Britain, 1832–1868
This article examines why after 35 years of repeatedly rejecting the secret ballot, the British House of Commons enacted it with the Ballot Act of 1872. Drawing on roll‐call votes, I show that parliamentary opposition to the secret ballot was invariant between 1832 and 1867. In 1867, however, the Second Reform Act significantly extended the electoral franchise and substantially redistributed parliamentary seats; the House elected immediately foll…
Ministerial Selection and Intraparty Organization in the Contemporary British Parliament
This article promotes a characterization of intraparty politics that explains how rank- and-file party members control the delegation of power to their cabinet ministers and shadow cabinet ministers. Using the uncovered set as a solution concept and a measure of party members' collective preferences, we explore the hypothesis that backbenchers' preferences constrain the ministerial selection process in a manner that mitigates agency problems. Spe…
Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics
One of the chief tasks facing political leaders is to build and maintain unity within their parties. This text examines the relationship between party leaders and Members of Parliament in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, showing how the two sides interact and sometimes clash. Christopher J. Kam demonstrates how incentives for MPs to dissent from their parties have been amplified by a process of partisan dealignment that has created el…
Cabinet Reshuffles and Ministerial Drift
A model of policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as delegation between the prime minister and her cabinet ministers is introduced. Cabinet reshuffles can be pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency loss which occurs due to the different preferences of the actors. This work thus explains why prime ministers resort to reshuffles: cabinet reshuffles reduce the moral hazard facing ministers. This answer both augments and distinguishes …
Demotion and Dissent in the Canadian Liberal Party
Those who have not witnessed the making of a government have reason to be happier than those who have. It is a thoroughly unpleasant and discreditable business in which merit is disregarded, loyal service is without value, influence is the most important factor and geography and religion are important supplementary considerations.The Borden Ministry was composed under standard conditions, and was not, therefore, nearly as able, honest, or as indu…
The Timing of Cabinet Reshuffles in Five Westminster Parliamentary Systems
Despite their political prominence, cabinet reshuffles have not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. We provide a theory of cabinet reshuffles that emphasizes both systematic and time-varying causes. In particular, we argue that prime ministers employ cabinet reshuffles to retain power in the face of both intraparty and electoral challenges to their leadership. We use repeated-events duration models to examine the timing of cabinet resh…
Party Competition and Responsible Party Government: A Theory of Spatial Competition Based on Insights from Behavioral Voting Research . James Adams
Not Just Parliamentary ‘Cowboys and Indians: Ministerial Responsibility and Bureaucratic Drift
A strict interpretation of the doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility requires that the minister alone bear public responsibility for her department's actions. Critics charge that it is not sensible to hold a mminister solel responsible for departmental errors when government departments are so large and complex, and senior bureaucrats so powerful in their own right; senior bureaucrats should be made directly accountable to Parliament.…
Cabinet Reshuffles and Ministerial Drift
A model of policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as delegation between the prime minister and her cabinet ministers is introduced. Cabinet reshuffles can be pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency loss which occurs due to the different preferences of the actors. This work thus explains why prime ministers resort to reshuffles: cabinet reshuffles reduce the moral hazard facing ministers. This answer both augments and distinguishes …
Ministerial Selection and Intraparty Organization in the Contemporary British Parliament
This article promotes a characterization of intraparty politics that explains how rank- and-file party members control the delegation of power to their cabinet ministers and shadow cabinet ministers. Using the uncovered set as a solution concept and a measure of party members' collective preferences, we explore the hypothesis that backbenchers' preferences constrain the ministerial selection process in a manner that mitigates agency problems. Spe…
The Timing of Cabinet Reshuffles in Five Westminster Parliamentary Systems
Despite their political prominence, cabinet reshuffles have not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. We provide a theory of cabinet reshuffles that emphasizes both systematic and time-varying causes. In particular, we argue that prime ministers employ cabinet reshuffles to retain power in the face of both intraparty and electoral challenges to their leadership. We use repeated-events duration models to examine the timing of cabinet resh…
The Secret Ballot and the Market for Votes at 19th-Century British Elections
This article examines the impact of the secret ballot on the market for votes at parliamentary elections in the 19th-century United Kingdom. I use a formal model of an exchange between a candidate and a voter to predict the impact of the secret ballot on bribe prices, the marginal effect campaign spending on candidates’ electoral prospects, and election turnout. I test these predictions against original data on bribe prices and campaign expenditu…
The Electoral System, the Party System and Accountability in Parliamentary Government
Electoral accountability requires that voters have the ability to constrain the incumbent government's policy-making power. We express the necessary conditions for this claim as an accountability identity in which the electoral system and the party system interact to shape the accountability of parliamentary governments. Data from 400 parliamentary elections between 1948 and 2012 show that electoral accountability is contingent on the party syste…
Demotion and Dissent in the Canadian Liberal Party
Those who have not witnessed the making of a government have reason to be happier than those who have. It is a thoroughly unpleasant and discreditable business in which merit is disregarded, loyal service is without value, influence is the most important factor and geography and religion are important supplementary considerations.The Borden Ministry was composed under standard conditions, and was not, therefore, nearly as able, honest, or as indu…
Covid-19 Policy Convergence in Response to Knightian Uncertainty
Domestic policy responses to COVID-19 were remarkably consistent during the early days of the pandemic. What explains this policy convergence? Our formal model suggests that the novel character of COVID-19 produced a period of maximum policy uncertainty, incentivizing political actors to converge on a common set of policies to minimize their exposure to electoral punishment. This convergence is likely to break down as policy feedback produces opi…
The Nature of Party Categories in Two‐Party and Multiparty Systems
Categories are one of the primary ways by which people make sense of complex environments. For political environments, parties are especially useful categories. By simplifying political life, party categories enable people to make sense of politics. A fundamental characteristic of party categories is that they minimize perceived differences of members within a party (e.g., two Democrats) and maximize perceived differences between members of diffe…
Not Just Parliamentary ‘Cowboys and Indians: Ministerial Responsibility and Bureaucratic Drift
A strict interpretation of the doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility requires that the minister alone bear public responsibility for her department's actions. Critics charge that it is not sensible to hold a mminister solel responsible for departmental errors when government departments are so large and complex, and senior bureaucrats so powerful in their own right; senior bureaucrats should be made directly accountable to Parliament.…
Integrating Divine Attachment Theory and the Enneagram to Help Clients of Abuse Heal in Their Images of Self, Others, and God
Party relevance and party survival in new democracies
We argue that the move to free and fair elections is only the first step in a democratic transition. With this change, competition moves into the legislative arena, where interests are defined not in terms of support or opposition to the old regime, but over competing visions of what government should do. Thus, examining legislative behavior and legislative outcomes helps us to understand the long-term political and policy trajectory of democrati…
Enfranchisement, Malapportionment, and Institutional Change in Great Britain, 1832–1868
This article examines why after 35 years of repeatedly rejecting the secret ballot, the British House of Commons enacted it with the Ballot Act of 1872. Drawing on roll‐call votes, I show that parliamentary opposition to the secret ballot was invariant between 1832 and 1867. In 1867, however, the Second Reform Act significantly extended the electoral franchise and substantially redistributed parliamentary seats; the House elected immediately foll…
Not Just Parliamentary ‘Cowboys and Indians: Ministerial Responsibility and Bureaucratic Drift
A strict interpretation of the doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility requires that the minister alone bear public responsibility for her department's actions. Critics charge that it is not sensible to hold a mminister solel responsible for departmental errors when government departments are so large and complex, and senior bureaucrats so powerful in their own right; senior bureaucrats should be made directly accountable to Parliament.…
Party Competition and Responsible Party Government: A Theory of Spatial Competition Based on Insights from Behavioral Voting Research . James Adams
The Timing of Cabinet Reshuffles in Five Westminster Parliamentary Systems
Despite their political prominence, cabinet reshuffles have not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. We provide a theory of cabinet reshuffles that emphasizes both systematic and time-varying causes. In particular, we argue that prime ministers employ cabinet reshuffles to retain power in the face of both intraparty and electoral challenges to their leadership. We use repeated-events duration models to examine the timing of cabinet resh…
Demotion and Dissent in the Canadian Liberal Party
Those who have not witnessed the making of a government have reason to be happier than those who have. It is a thoroughly unpleasant and discreditable business in which merit is disregarded, loyal service is without value, influence is the most important factor and geography and religion are important supplementary considerations.The Borden Ministry was composed under standard conditions, and was not, therefore, nearly as able, honest, or as indu…
Cabinet Reshuffles and Ministerial Drift
A model of policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as delegation between the prime minister and her cabinet ministers is introduced. Cabinet reshuffles can be pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency loss which occurs due to the different preferences of the actors. This work thus explains why prime ministers resort to reshuffles: cabinet reshuffles reduce the moral hazard facing ministers. This answer both augments and distinguishes …
Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics
One of the chief tasks facing political leaders is to build and maintain unity within their parties. This text examines the relationship between party leaders and Members of Parliament in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, showing how the two sides interact and sometimes clash. Christopher J. Kam demonstrates how incentives for MPs to dissent from their parties have been amplified by a process of partisan dealignment that has created el…
Ministerial Selection and Intraparty Organization in the Contemporary British Parliament
This article promotes a characterization of intraparty politics that explains how rank- and-file party members control the delegation of power to their cabinet ministers and shadow cabinet ministers. Using the uncovered set as a solution concept and a measure of party members' collective preferences, we explore the hypothesis that backbenchers' preferences constrain the ministerial selection process in a manner that mitigates agency problems. Spe…
Party relevance and party survival in new democracies
We argue that the move to free and fair elections is only the first step in a democratic transition. With this change, competition moves into the legislative arena, where interests are defined not in terms of support or opposition to the old regime, but over competing visions of what government should do. Thus, examining legislative behavior and legislative outcomes helps us to understand the long-term political and policy trajectory of democrati…
Enfranchisement, Malapportionment, and Institutional Change in Great Britain, 1832–1868
This article examines why after 35 years of repeatedly rejecting the secret ballot, the British House of Commons enacted it with the Ballot Act of 1872. Drawing on roll‐call votes, I show that parliamentary opposition to the secret ballot was invariant between 1832 and 1867. In 1867, however, the Second Reform Act significantly extended the electoral franchise and substantially redistributed parliamentary seats; the House elected immediately foll…
Predicting majority rule: Evaluating the uncovered set and the strong point
This paper compares two solution concepts for majority rule decision-making in multi-dimensional settings: the uncovered set and the strong point. Our goal is to determine which of these solution concepts is the appropriate generalization of the median voter theorem to more complex (and more realistic) multi-dimensional majority-rule settings. By making this comparison, we also contribute to the debate about the degree of sophisticated decision-m…
The Secret Ballot and the Market for Votes at 19th-Century British Elections
This article examines the impact of the secret ballot on the market for votes at parliamentary elections in the 19th-century United Kingdom. I use a formal model of an exchange between a candidate and a voter to predict the impact of the secret ballot on bribe prices, the marginal effect campaign spending on candidates’ electoral prospects, and election turnout. I test these predictions against original data on bribe prices and campaign expenditu…
Integrating Divine Attachment Theory and the Enneagram to Help Clients of Abuse Heal in Their Images of Self, Others, and God
The Nature of Party Categories in Two‐Party and Multiparty Systems
Categories are one of the primary ways by which people make sense of complex environments. For political environments, parties are especially useful categories. By simplifying political life, party categories enable people to make sense of politics. A fundamental characteristic of party categories is that they minimize perceived differences of members within a party (e.g., two Democrats) and maximize perceived differences between members of diffe…
Growth in Adult Ego Development and Mentalizing Emotions for an Increasingly Multidimensional God Image
Growth in cognitive complexity in the framework of adult ego development has shown to enable sophistication in mentalizing interpersonal emotions. This has implications for cultivating a more multidimensional God Image for spirituality in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The construct of mentalization will be used to understand the integration of these concepts. Empirical findings that support this conceptual integration will be explored. Clinical …
Untangling Spiritual Contradictions Through the Psychology of Lived Paradox: Integrating Theological Diversity in the Old Testament with Durand’s Framework on the Imaginary
The Electoral System, the Party System and Accountability in Parliamentary Government
Electoral accountability requires that voters have the ability to constrain the incumbent government's policy-making power. We express the necessary conditions for this claim as an accountability identity in which the electoral system and the party system interact to shape the accountability of parliamentary governments. Data from 400 parliamentary elections between 1948 and 2012 show that electoral accountability is contingent on the party syste…
Economic Origin of Political Parties
This Element examines how the changing economic basis of parliamentary elections in nineteenth century England and Wales contributed to the development of modern parties and elections. Even after the 1832 Reform Act expanded the British electorate, elections in many constituencies went uncontested, party labels were nominal, and candidates spent large sums treating and bribing voters. By the end of the century, however, almost every constituency …
Covid-19 Policy Convergence in Response to Knightian Uncertainty
Domestic policy responses to COVID-19 were remarkably consistent during the early days of the pandemic. What explains this policy convergence? Our formal model suggests that the novel character of COVID-19 produced a period of maximum policy uncertainty, incentivizing political actors to converge on a common set of policies to minimize their exposure to electoral punishment. This convergence is likely to break down as policy feedback produces opi…
Combining the enneagram and narrative therapy for adult ego development
Integrating the enneagram and the anthropological structures of the imaginary for multidimensional maturity in the personality
Personality fixations that have had utility in the past can later become problematic for holistic psychological development. Adult Ego Development research combined with psychoanalytic assumptions provide a way to understand multidimensional maturity through addressing and transforming the unconscious. The Enneagram and Gilbert Durand’s Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (ASI) are two frameworks that can be integrated to help clients exp…
Legislative Pensions and Re‐election Seeking: Evidence from Canadian Legislatures
We use data from Canadian legislatures to examine how legislative pension rules affect the propensity of incumbents to seek re‐election. We predict that legislators with defined‐benefits pensions are more likely to seek re‐election than legislators without pensions. Once the legislator is vested (i.e., qualified) in the pension, however, this incentive disappears; indeed, pensions that accrue value quickly and can be collected at an early age, in…
Countering Political Polarization Through Conscious and Unconscious Integrative Complexity
Political polarization has been growing in many countries, including the United States, within recent years. Scholars note how, if not addressed, growing trends can compromise fundamental pillars of a functioning democratic society. While efforts have grown in researching how integrative complexity can successfully mitigate polarizing tensions in political divides, there is a lack of scholarly attention on how conscious and unconscious dimensions…
Enhancing Enneagram Therapy with Contemporary Research on the Conscious and Unconscious Mind
The Nectar of Conscious and Unconscious Interpersonal Complexity Cross-Pollinating in Western and Non-Western Counseling Contexts
As our world becomes more multicultural, there is opportunity to grow wisdom and distribute it in many cross-cultural forms. One element of wisdom that benefits and is benefitted from intercultural cross-pollination is interpersonal complexity. This nectar of wisely acknowledging complexity in interpersonal dynamics has both conscious and unconscious dimensions. Tending to this plants seeds of cross cultural applications for interpersonal well-be…
Law (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (12 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Public Administration (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Psychology (9 works)