1 Black, Jerome H., “Reforming the Context of the Voting Process in Canada: Les-sons from Other Democracies,” in Herman, Bakvis, ed., Voter Turnout in Canada, Research Study of the Canadian Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991Google Scholar). See also Jackman, Robert W. and Miller, R. A., “Voter Turnout in Industrial Democracies during the 1980s,” Comparative Political Studies 27 (1995), 467–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Note that if we calculate turnout as a percentage of age eligible rather than enrolled, as is done in the US but seldom elsewhere, Canadian turnout comes closer to American levels. According to figures provided by the Washington, D.C.-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), more than 10 per cent of potential Canadian voters are not registered.

2 Wolfinger, Raymond E. and Rosenstone, Steven, Who Votes? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980Google Scholar); and Texiera, R. A., The Disappearing American Voter (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1992Google Scholar).

3 Green, Donald P. and Shapiro, Ian, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 69.Google Scholar

4 Junn, Jane, “Participation in Liberal Democracy: What Citizens Learn from Political Activity,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1995, 9.Google Scholar See also Jon H. Pammett, “Voting Turnout in Canada,” in Herman Bakvis, ed., Voter Turnout in Canada.

5 Cited in Archer, K., Gibbins, R., Knopff, R. and Pal, L., Parameters of Power: Canada's Political Institutions (Toronto: Nelson, 1995), 387.Google Scholar

6 Downs, Anthony J., An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957), 229.Google Scholar

7 Sanders, Elizabeth, “On the Costs, Utilities, and Simple Joys of Voting,” Journal of Politics 42 (1980), 854–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Filer, John, Kenny, Lawrence and Morton, Rebecca, “Redistribution, Income, and Voting,” American Journal of Political Science 37 (1993), 63–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Aldrich, John, “Rational Choice and Turnout,” American Journal of Political Science 37 (1993), 246–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Monroe Eagles, “Voting and Non-voting in Canadian Federal Elections: An Ecological Analysis,” in Bakvis, ed., Voter Turnout in Canada.

11 Wolfinger and Rosenstone, Who Votes?

12 Typical is Verba, S. and Nie, N., Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper & Row, 1972Google Scholar).

13 See Black, “Reforming the Context.”

14 Franklin, M., Van Der Eijk, C. and Oppenhuis, E., “The Motivational Basis of Electoral Participation: European Elections Provide a Crucial Test,” paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research, Joint Sessions, Bordeaux, 1995.Google Scholar

15 Blais, André and Carty, R. K., “Does Proportional Representation Foster Voter Turnout?” European Journal of Political Research 18 (1990), 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 See Carpini, Michael Delli, “Measuring Political Knowledge: Putting First Things First,” Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (1993), 583–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 For example, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) group (see Rosenstone, S. J., “Electoral Institutions and Democratic Choice,” paper presented at the Workshops of the European Consortium on Political Research, Bordeaux, April 1995Google Scholar) had as one objective to compare knowledge about politics in its samples of the population in 50 countries by asking the same or parallel questions in each. In response to my query on whether the ongoing pilot studies would be seeking out that information, the coordinator, Steven Rosenstone, replied: “The political information items were not asked on the pilot studies. The planning committee thought that those items should be moved to the ‘background’ section, meaning that each nation will ask an appropriate set of political information items so as to produce a 5-point political information scale within their polity. It is a hopeless task to come up with items that will work in a comparable fashion across polities. Instead, the hope is to have a scale in each polity that divides the population into quintiles of information” (emphasis added).

18 Because of the almost inevitable bias in any such questionnaire, national differences must be treated with great caution. In this case, a perfect score of 5 out of 5 meant the respondent knew who Boris Yeltsin, Boutros-Boutros Ghali, the Serbs, the PLO and North Korea were. The Germans’ performance was so far superior that questionnaire content cannot be the only explanatory factor at play. Fifty-nine per cent of the Germans, compared with almost 25 per cent of the French, answered 4 or 5 correctly. At the bottom was the US with 16 (Bennett, S. E. et al., “The Impact of Personal Characteristics and Mass Media Exposure on Citizens’ Knowledge of Foreign Affairs: A Five-Nation Study,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1995Google Scholar).

19 Rae, Douglas, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971Google Scholar).

20 Studlar, D. T. and Matland, R. E., “The Growth of Women's Representation in the Canadian House of Commons: A Reappraisal,” this Journal 27 (1994), 53–80Google Scholar; and Matland, R. E., “How the Election System Structure Has Helped Women Close the Representation Gap,” in Karvonen, L. and Selle, P., eds., Women in Nordic Politics (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1995Google Scholar).

21 There is a wide literature linking political institutions, including the type of electoral system, with political consensus and economic performance. See, for example, Lijphart, Arend, “Democracies: Forms, Performances, and Constitutional Engineering,” European Journal of Political Research 25 (1995), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jankowski, Richard, “Responsible, Irresponsible and Westminster Parties: A Theoretical and Empirical Evaluation,” British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), 107–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Quirk, Paul J., “The Cooperative Resolution of Policy Conflict,” American Political Science Review 83 (1989), 905–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 See Landry, Réjean, “The Imperfect Political Market for a Constitutional Deal,” Inroads 1 (Summer 1992), 40–54.Google Scholar

23 Amy, Douglas J., Real Choices/New Voices (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989Google Scholar). Blais and Gidengil found 80 per cent of Canadians surveyed agreed that most candidates make promises they have no intention of keeping, and that those elected to parliament soon lose touch with the people (Blais, André and Gidengil, Elizabeth, Making Representative Democracy Work, Research Study of the Canadian Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing [Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991Google Scholar ]).

24 Typical is the following: “in our interviews with representatives of the parliamentary parties, we found that they agreed that the pension question was such a large issue affecting the long term future of Swedish citizens that… compromise which transcended the political blocs was essential” (Huber, Evelyn and Stephens, J. D., “The Swedish Welfare State at the Crossroads,” in Current Sweden, no. 394 [New York: Swedish Information Service, 1993], 3Google Scholar). I am not suggesting that the transformation toward collaboration among parties and classes takes place overnight; a change in political culture is necessarily a slow process. The argument is rather that, as demonstrated by societies highly polarized by class such as Finland, over time, such cooperation will become accepted and, indeed, expected.

25 Rogowski summarizes the arguments of British industrialists who favour electoral reform as fostering a business climate favourable to long-term investment. He goes on to argue that there is a relationship between reliance on international trade and PR since states that can provide the required continuity and stability of policy are better able to engage effectively in international trade. One measure of the comparative instability and stability is the extent to which governing parties (irresponsibly) use their macroeconomic powers to strengthen their position with voters at the end of their mandates (see Rogowski, Ronald, “Trade and the Variety of Democratic Institutions.” International Organization 41 [1987], 203–04CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The presence of this “political business cycle” is found less in countries using PR (see Tufte, E., Political Control of the Economy [Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1978Google Scholar ]).

26 In fact, the mandate is no more solid under FPP than it is under PR. Despite expectations to the contrary, the “manifesto group” found, in its detailed study of party programmes and government policies in 10 Western countries, that PR-based parties are at least as good at turning their programmatic commitments into government policy as those in FPP-based systems (see Hofferberg, Richard I. “Parties, Policies, and Democracy: An Overview,” in Klingemann, H. D., Hofferberg, R. I. and Budge, I., eds., Parties, Policies, and Democracy [Boulder: Westview, 1994Google Scholar ]). It turns out that the “clear mandate” under FPP is not really clear; the outcome under FPP is clear only in being numerically decisive at the cost of distorting the voters’ wishes.

27 For example, Bakvis cites a German study which found the legislators elected from single-member districts to be far more disposed towards obtaining and locating specific government projects than those elected from the list (Bakvis, Herman, “Regional Boondoggles and Electoral Reform,” Policy Options 14 [1993], 29–31Google Scholar).

28 Irvine, William, Does Canada Need a New Electoral System? (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen's University, 1979), 77.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 30. Irvine cites figures showing only 10 per cent of defeated Canadian party candidates standing in the subsequent elections.

30 See Carty, R. K., Political Parties in the Constituencies, Research Study of the Canadian Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991Google Scholar).

31 Each province sets its own rules on this matter and Quebec is used as an example here. Not only is there provincial variation in the link between school board and municipal elections, but also between political parties at the federal and provincial levels, with Quebec's institutions among the most discontinuous.

32 Carty finds that only 40 per cent of local organizations of federal parties are in any way concerned with provincial politics (Political Parties, 47).

33 Gustavsson, Agne, Local Government in Sweden (Stockholm: Swedish Institute, 1988Google Scholar).

34 Election campaigns under the Scandinavian PI system are far more party-platform oriented, and far less candidate-personality oriented than in North America. See Siune, Karen, “The Political Role of the Mass Media in Scandinavia,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 12 (1987), 395–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This, of course, raises a related factor that cannot be elaborated upon here, that is, the distinct role of the mass media in the Nordic countries. See Milner, Henry, Social Democracy and Rational Choice: The Scandinavian Experience and Beyond (London: Routledge, 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

35 Jackman, Robert W., “Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in Industrial Democracies,” American Political Science Review 81 (1987), 405–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Rokkan, Stein et al., Citizens, Elections, Parties (New York: David McKay, 1970), 190–203.Google Scholar

37 Andreas Ladner of the University of Bern has studied turnout for municipalities in the canton of Bern, comparing those using PR and those using majoritarian methods of electing civic executives. He finds a significant positive correlation of turnout, but only for communes under 5,000 in population (Ladner, Andreas, “Majorz Oder Proporz—Die Auswirkungen des Wahlverfahrens auf die politische Partizipation und das politische Interesse,” Berner Tatung: Die politischen Systeme Deutschlands, Osterreichs und der Schweiz im Vergleich 1 [January 19–21, 1996]Google Scholar).

38 Morlan, Robert L., “Municipal vs. National Election Voter Turnout: Europe and the United States,” Political Science Quarterly 99 (1984), 457–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 I am indebted to Kimmo Kuusela of the University of Turku for these figures.

40 The figures represent 28 of the 53 municipalities with over 20,000 in population, including the five largest. There is no evident bias to the sample, apart from the fact that it excludes the 40 per cent of the population that lives in smaller municipalities. A glance at the figures of the smaller municipalities shows a somewhat higher turnout but also more frequent acclamations.

41 Bjorklund, Tor, “The Norwegian Local Elections: A Protest Election with a Swing to the Right,” Scandinavian Political Studies 13 (1988), 211–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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43 Railings, Colin and Thrasher, Michael, “Turnout in English Local Elections—An Aggregate Analysis with Electoral and Contextual Data,” Electoral Studies 9 (1990), 79–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Junn, “Participation in Liberal Democracy.”