Jon MacKay (PhD, Waterloo) has worked as a software developer at BlackBerry, an economist in the microsimulation and modeling division of Statistics Canada and most recently as an academic researcher. His current research interests include examining how social, business and political landscape has changed due to the growing importance of technology sector. Methodologically, he makes use of network theory to approach these complex problems.

He has also sought to understand ideological divisions within political parties in order to better understand the changing relationships between businesses and government. To that end, his recent research has asked: What are the tensions that exist within political parties? And how do these tensions affect the strategic decisions political leaders make?

Working with collaborator William Bendix, the two researchers took a complex systems approach to map the factional structure of the Republican Party that was active in the US House of Representatives between 2001 and 2012. They used annual ratings of politicians from nearly 300 interest groups to estimate the ideological locations of Republican legislators. Based on the distribution of interest-group support, they detect three Republican factions that they characterize as worker oriented, pro-business, and ethno-radical. The findings from this line of research will appear in Legislative Studies Quarterly. (An older working paper is available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2700233) The authors believe that these findings also have important implications for understanding the rise of Donald Trump as Republican Party leader, his likely strategies when in power, and his likely weaknesses.

Further information can be found at http://www.jgmackay.com/

 

jgmackay_cv

Subscribe to our mailing list

Notable WICI Pages

Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Meet our International Scientific Advisory Council (ISAC) Members here.

Yaneer

ISAC Member Yaneer Bar-Yam.

Featured

Blake LeBaron's WICI Talk. Jan. 24, 2017

WICI Occasional Paper

Exergonic Innovations: The History of Britain’s Coal Exploitation
By Clayton J. M. Dasilva

This essay investigates the technological relationship between humanity and its environment, using the Industrial Revolution in Britain as a case study of exergonic innovation, where the invention of the Newcomen steam engine transformed Britain’s conception of coal and its potential, as well as that of British society.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter