In a seminal article published in 2003, Blais et al. demonstrated that local candidates mattered for about 5 per cent of voters in the 2000 Canadian federal election. This study's reliance on a single election raises external validity concerns. We replicate Blais et al.'s original analyses on four elections from 2000 to 2008 using a decade's worth of data from the Canadian Election Study. The local candidate effect first uncovered by Blais et al. is not specific to a single election. Local candidates are a decisive consideration for about 5 to 8 per cent of voters outside Quebec and for about 2 to 5 per cent of voters in Quebec.

Voters are deterred from casting a vote and more likely to vote strategically if their preferred choice is less competitive in their electoral district. We use 2019 Canadian Election Study data to show that respondents’ answers to a “how likely are you to vote” question depend on their estimate of their preferred party's local chances of winning, relative to other parties. This deterrent effect on turnout from the competitiveness of a voter's preferred party is concentrated among certain parties (NDP, Green, People's Party of Canada). Under first-past-the-post (FPTP), voters with particular policy perspectives are systematically deterred from voting, relative to other voters. Furthermore, we find that despite supporters of all parties having an incentive to vote strategically if their party is outside the top two in the district, strategic voting is heavily concentrated among voters who prefer parties other than the nationally most competitive two parties.

Depuis un an, le Parti conservateur du Québec (PCQ) a fait des gains considérables dans les sondages d'intention de vote. Le parti peut-il encore faire des gains ou a-t-il atteint son plein potentiel? Dans cette note de recherche, nous tentons de répondre à cette question en utilisant un nouvel indicateur, l'index relatif de confiance (IRC), qui permet de mesurer le potentiel de croissance et la solidité du vote des partis.

Do voters use information about and preferences over who will form government in their vote choices? Voters might have preferences over both which party wins the most seats and what type of government that party can form, which they can use to inform their vote choice. To answer this question, we examine the influence of preferences over government types and compare them to trends in party support in the 2019 Canadian federal election. Using rolling, daily cross-sectional survey evidence from the Canadian Election Study, we find that preferences over government type are strongly related to vote choice and that this relationship depends on the perceived viability of the preferred party. We also find that this relationship differs outside and within Quebec: outside Quebec, only the Liberal Party suffers among voters preferring minority governments, while within Quebec, the Liberal Party, New Democratic Party and Conservative Party all struggle to hold on to voters who prefer minority governments.

The decision to vote is partly based on the expected cost of voting. We test the hypothesis that voting in one election reduces the expected cost of voting in the following election, as voters learn that the cost of voting is low. Using three different datasets—the National Electors Study conducted during the 2019 Canadian federal election; a two-wave YouGov survey in British Columbia and Quebec in 2008 and 2009, at the time of the federal and subsequent provincial elections; and a five-wave survey conducted for the Making Electoral Democracy Work project in Bavaria in 2013 and 2014, before and after the Land, federal and European elections—we find that voters who voted in a previous election perceive it will be easier to vote in a subsequent election. We also find evidence that voting leads to more accurate estimates of how little time it takes to vote.

The existing literature underestimates the contribution of federated entities to international environmental agreements. This research note introduces a novel dataset on the role of federated entities in 2,077 environmental agreements. We demonstrate the value of this dataset by revisiting unexamined assumptions that stem from the literature. According to conventional wisdom, (1) federated entities’ participation in environmental agreements is a recent phenomenon, (2) this phenomenon is led by federated entities in Western democracies, (3) it has accelerated as a response to the climate crisis and (4) it is driven by the same movement that favours the participation of diverse stakeholders. This research note questions these preconceived ideas and illustrates how the new dataset sheds light on the role of federated entities in environmental governance.

The revelation, via a leaked draft, that the Supreme Court of the United States was going to overturn the landmark decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) sparked immediate questions about whether a similar retrenchment of abortion rights could occur in Canada. Key legal, structural, and political cultural factors mitigate the forces of American-style erosion of norms on the Supreme Court of Canada and in our broader politics surrounding abortion rights. Despite this generally optimistic comparative context, complacency about the status of abortion rights in Canada would be unwise. This short Currents article canvasses factors crucial for not only preserving the policy status quo in criminal law (that is, the absence of criminal law abortion regulation in Canada), but also for advancing the scope of abortion rights in the positive sense, as serious barriers to access persist at the provincial level.

Alors que le clivage portant sur l'indépendance du Québec est en déclin, on aurait tort de croire que ce phénomène s'accompagne aussi d'un déclin du nationalisme québécois. Dans les faits, le nationalisme québécois structure toujours le débat politique. Pour une majorité de répondants, l’État québécois a toujours un rôle important à jouer en matière d'identité. Le nationalisme demeure pertinent et nécessaire. À ce jour, il est également toujours associé au caractère francophone du Québec. Ce nationalisme a cependant pris une nouvelle forme. À l'aide de données de sondages originales, ce texte permet de mieux comprendre l’évolution du nationalisme québécois contemporain porté par la Coalition avenir Québec et sa dynamique autonomiste. Enfin, ces données illustrent aussi certaines lignes de fractures sur le plan linguistique et partisan. Celles-ci peuvent contribuer à expliquer les difficultés posées au Parti libéral du Québec pour renouer avec l’électorat francophone, sans pour autant décevoir sa base électorale anglophone.

In response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the West imposed a package of unprecedented sanctions that has failed to generate meaningful domestic backlash against Putin's war. Leveraging extant research on the survival of authoritarian regimes under economic sanctions, I show that their devastating economic costs notwithstanding, sanctions are unlikely to destabilize Putin's regime or pressure him to withdraw his troops from Ukraine. The key to explaining this outcome is to zero in on the incentive structure of the groups of individuals that make up Putin's inner circle.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant disruptions in Canada's public school system as provincial and territorial governments have enacted sudden and prolonged school closures. We compare the different school closure decisions in Alberta and Ontario during spring 2021, using official public briefings and publicly available data about rates of COVID-19 cases. We ask if provincial policy decisions can be explained by different epidemiological contexts and risks. We find that key epidemiological indicators such as the rate of cases were not directly linked to school closure decisions. This is important for policy makers and experts: it problematizes the assumption of a straight line between evidence and decisions and has implications for transparency and public trust in pandemic policy choices. A systematic description of the gap between evidence and policy is an important starting point for asking, What does drive decisions to close schools?

For three weeks in early 2022, the streets of downtown Ottawa were occupied by protestors associated with the so-called Freedom Convoy. The inability of Ottawa's municipal police to end the protest was not only a spectacular failure of local policing but also a failure of national security policy. This article brings together literatures on Canadian federalism, multilevel politics and federal capitals to argue that the occupation of Ottawa demonstrates a misalignment between the political and jurisdictional responsibility for Ottawa's public and national security. Potential reforms range from the expansion of federal authority over the Parliamentary Precinct to the restructuring of the National Capital Region as a federal district or territory.