Canada's 23rd general election was held on January 23, 2006. Only 20 months earlier, on June 28, 2004, the governing Liberals—in power continuously since 1993—had been reduced to a minority in Parliament, winning 135 of 308 seats and 37% of the popular vote. Minority governments in Canada typically have quite short half-lives, and the Liberal government formed in 2004 was no exception. After narrowly avoiding defeat on its budget bill in May 2005, the government lost a vote of confidence in the House of Commons on November 28, and Canadians faced the prospect of a winter trek to the polls. And, since the holiday season was fast approaching, Election Day was deferred until late January, making the campaign an atypically long one by Canadian standards. It also proved to be a very exciting one.

This essay describes two very different survey projects that investigate the political attitudes, values, and behavior patterns of ordinary men and women in the Arab world. One is the Arab Democracy Barometer, an American-Arab collaborative project being carried out in five countries. The other is a survey in Palestine conducted as part of the fieldwork for a doctoral dissertation. These projects illustrate the emerging opportunities for political attitude research in the Arab world. The essay begins, however, with a brief reflection on the history of political surveys in the Arab world, which is necessary to appreciate the significance of the opportunities now emerging.

The Spanish, French, Dutch, and Luxembourg referenda on the Constitutional Treaty are the latest, but certainly not the last, flashpoints in a contentious European Union. The era in which EU politics was determined by national and European elites ended about 15 years ago. With the Maastricht Accord of 1991, decision making on European integration entered the contentious world of party competition, elections, and referenda.

American society has witnessed an extraordinary widening of economic inequality in the period since World War II that is unmatched among advanced industrialized countries. In 2003, the most affluent fifth received 47.6% of family income, the middle class (the third and fourth fifths) earned 15.5% and 23.3%, respectively, while the bottom two quintiles each received less than 10%. (Twenty-one percent of family income went to the top 5%.) In other words, the richest 20% obtained nearly half of the country's income. That income (and wealth) is unevenly distributed is neither new nor necessarily disturbing. What is remarkable is the large and unmistakable increase in the concentration of income at the top (Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto 2005).

On June 7th, 2004 the American Political Science Association (APSA) issued a Media Advisory announcing, “Leading Political Scientists Warn of Threat to American Democracy in Rare Nonpartisan Statement” (APSA Press Release 2004). The subtitle reiterated this alarmist tone: “New Study will Report Economic Disparities Deny Many Americans A Political Voice; Money Buys Access; Gains in Civil Rights Threatened as Well.” Note, we are speaking of “threats” (to democracy) that are “profound.” Furthermore, “research shows a devastating erosion of political equality in America” (italics added). Have these distinguished professors possibly discovered a conspiracy to cancel elections, repeal the First Amendment, or otherwise impose a racist plutocracy? Are retired generals and multinational CEOs about to launch a coup d'état?

In many people's minds, the Middle East stands out as the world's most dangerous place. I often remark to my colleagues and friends, however, that I feel safer doing field research in most Middle Eastern countries than I would in much of Africa or Latin America. To begin with, few parts of the Middle East suffer from high rates of random crime. Rather, the region's violence is mostly political in nature, and, with the right approach, a researcher can take several steps to minimize risks. I have conducted research in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq (before and after the 2003 war), in Lebanon, and in Israel-Palestine during the first Intifadah. In this article, I discuss various strategies and issues one faces while “in the field” in regions such as these.The author would like to acknowledge research support provided by the Canadian Department of National Defence, the Inter-University Consortium for Arab and Middle East Studies (ICAMES), and the University of Montreal's Centre d'Études et de Recherches Internationales.

The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe is widely regarded as a turning point in the history of European integration. It was designed to reconcile two key dimensions of the European construction: the deepening of integration and the need to ensure the democratic character of the European Union (EU). The Constitution provides for the convergence of the model of regional integration and that of democratic government. It contains simplified legal instruments and procedures which enhance the status of the Union as a political system. The open deliberations on the constitutional text and its ratification through popular referenda or parliamentary endorsement extend democratic principles and procedures typical of domestic politics to regional integration.

On September 11, 2001, the turbulence that is characteristic of the post-Cold War international system came to bear fully on the Canadian-American relationship. Rumors that the highjackers entered the U.S. from Canada put Canadians immediately on the defensive. Though erroneous, these rumors reflected a willingness on the part of Americans to see the Canadian border as a source of vulnerability. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American officials intensified their criticism of Canada for the laxness of the latter's immigration and refugee policies and for their failure to adequately police the country's borders.

Over 40 years ago, Leon Epstein (1964) published a comparative study of Canadian political parties in the American Political Science Review that still merits a careful read. His aim in that essay was to juxtapose the Canadian experience against the American in order to learn something of the latter, but in doing so, he provided a succinct analysis of important dynamics structuring the Canadian party system. His account reminds us that, like the United States, Canada is “a diverse nation in a large land area,” has “developed a structural federalism,” has an “American-style social and economic class structure,” and uses “a single-member, simple-plurality election system.” Perhaps reflecting these underlying similarities, Canadian parties' (like their American counterpart's) “extra-parliamentary organizations are loose and non-doctrinal at every level” and structured federally.

All manner of political observers are fascinated by “gaps” in voting behavior. Whether it is the now-famous gender gap, the newly discovered religion gap, or the once-prominent generation gap, sharp differences in partisanship and voting behavior often emerge around commonplace demographic characteristics such as gender, worship attendance, and age. These gaps are not just intrinsically interesting; they also offer a potent way to understand election results. Like batting averages in baseball, such simple statistics offer the power of language in describing the political world.

Many Americans were shocked and shamed by the televised images of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Scenes of physical devastation were juxtaposed with even more disturbing scenes of human devastation. Thousands of residents, mostly Black and poor, seemed to be trapped in a Hobbesian state of nature, abandoned by government and civilized society. An untold number starved to death; for days their corpses floated in the streets.

I spent the 2004–2005 academic year in France, culminating with the May 29th referendum on the European Union constitutional treaty. Fifty-five percent of voters rejected it. Three days later, 62% of Dutch voters followed suit. These were unexpected results, especially in France, a country where 80% declare themselves in favor of European integration. In other member states, a simple rule generally applies: those whose priority is to strengthen the EU are on the “yes” side, while the “no” is identified with those who emphasize national interests. In the Netherlands, though the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic radical was a factor, the “no” forces won essentially because they persuaded enough people that the direction the Constitution would take the Netherlands went against Dutch interests. To do so, they played on the resentment that Brussels took their money but ignored Dutch concerns—“the same people who fooled you with the euro are fooling you now with this constitution.”

Gender differences in political behavior are a source of ongoing interest for political pundits, campaign advisors, and students of American politics. In a closely divided nation, even small shifts in the political choices of men and women can have significant electoral consequences. In politics, the gender gap refers to male-female differences in party identification and voting behavior. As a practical matter, the contemporary gender gap (with women more aligned with the Democratic Party) emerged in 1964 with the election of Lyndon B. Johnson. The gender divide has grown incrementally over time, hitting a contemporary high of 14 percentage points in 1996 (see Figure 1). Since then, the size of the political difference between men and women has declined somewhat; the 2004 gender gap in party identification and voting fell to 9.5 and 7 points, respectively. The 2004 vote gap was half of what it was at its apex in 1996, and while one hesitates to make too much of a single point on this larger time series, a sustained contraction of the gender gap could pose rather dire circumstances for the Democratic Party, or, conversely, great fortune for the Republicans.

The APSA Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy's Report (2004), American Democracy in an Age of Inequality, concludes that progress toward realizing our ideals of democracy “may have stalled, and in some arenas reversed” as a result of growing inequality. Political participation, whether through voting, or campaign contributions, or organizational activities, reflects the distribution of economic resources, and as resources come to be more unequal, so is participation increasingly skewed toward the better-off. As a result, the Report goes on to argue, the issues and positions of the affluent are heard by politicians, and louder voices give the affluent greater influence. I agree with this conclusion, so far as it goes. Disparities in voting, money, and organization matter in the political process, and economic inequalities inevitably affect these disparities. None of this is new, of course. While inequalities have increased during the past three decades, they have increased during earlier periods in American history. This is normal politics in the United States, sometimes worse, sometimes better.

For the second time in the history of the French Vth Republic, the first having led to the resignation of Charles De Gaulle in 1969, a president lost a national referendum. On May 29, 2005, 54.7% of French voters rejected the European Constitutional Treaty, even though France was one of the major proponents of the European Convention which led to the Constitution's drafting. The victory of the “no” vote had been foreseen, but neither the margin of victory, nor the high turnout (almost 70.5%) were expected. The rejection of the Constitution raised two concerns: the first related to the position of France in Europe, the second to its domestic impact. Why did the French electorate vote as it did? Did voters make up their minds based on national cues, the European issue being generally of little importance even in European elections (Franklin, Marsh, and McLaren 1994; Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996)? Is the referendum result the consequence of a growing anti-European attitude, which could cause considerable damage to the process of EU integration? Will a new cleavage grounded on attitudes to Europe and capable of altering the traditional left-right organization emerge in the French political system?Our warmest thanks to our colleagues, Chantal Barry, Arianne Chebel d'Appolonia, and Manlio Cinnalli for their remarks on and their help with this piece.

Political representatives in Canada have traditionally been selected using a first-past-the-post electoral system. The major problem with this process of determining “who governs” is that larger parties are often rewarded the majority of seats in legislatures without winning a majority of popular support. Recently, the debate on electoral reform in Canada has begun to gain steam, as several provinces have started to look more seriously at alternatives (Milner 2004). Declining voter turnout may explain why even governments that benefit from the current electoral system are finding it increasingly difficult to simply sideline this issue. But what accounts for the Canadian public's more recent frustration with their traditional electoral system?We would like to thank Nicki Doyle for her research assistance and Concordia University for its financial support.

On the evening of May 26, 2005, with the polls suggesting that the European Constitution was veering toward defeat, Jacques Chirac made a final exhortation to the French public. He argued that the French were voting not on a sectarian political issue but on an issue that would determine the future of themselves, their children, France, and Europe. Chirac characterized the choice before French citizens as “neither right nor left.” His use of a phrase more commonly associated with Vichy displayed an uncharacteristic historical amnesia and suggests that Chirac and his party were grabbing at straws in those final days.

Because of its mix of institutions and practices, the fundamental nature of the government of Canada is a problematic case for scholars. A reconsideration of the Canadian polity needs to be undertaken because of events over the past quarter century, such as the development of executive federalism; the repatriation of a revised Constitution from the supervision of the United Kingdom over the objections of Quebec; the rejection of the constitutional settlements in the Meech Lake Accord (1990) and the Charlottetown Accord (1992); increased attention to the claims of Aboriginal peoples; increased movements for relaxing party discipline in Parliament and for a more proportional electoral system; increased controversy over the use of judicial review in interpreting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and, above all, the ongoing problem of national unity, especially stemming from the Quebec separatist movement.An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference of the Association of Canadian Studies, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Thanks to Arend Lijphart for data and comments.

The members of the Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy were not of one mind about any of the subjects they took up—and this is one reason, among many, that it was the most vibrant and stimulating professional collaboration I have had the privilege to be part of. It would be presumptuous of me to speak for anyone but myself in explaining and justifying the Task Force's work. And yet, there does seem to me at least one note of common explanation required up front. All the members of the Task Force, I am certain, saw their work as only the beginning of a discussion within the discipline—and, indeed, more broadly—about the relationship between inequality and contemporary American governance. Although we hoped to showcase and integrate the best existing research and theory, our main goal was to spark new questions, new research, new thinking, and new debates. And judging from this forum, as well as from the recent scholarship showcased in Larry Bartels's (2006) and Kay Schlozman's (2006) essays, we have.

As the 2004 presidential election approached, journalists discovered an apparently new political phenomenon: the “religion gap,” or the tendency of the most religious Americans to espouse conservative political beliefs and prefer Republican candidates. As a typical news story put it, “Want to know how Americans will vote next Election Day? Watch what they do the weekend before. If they attend religious services regularly, they probably will vote Republican by a 2-1 margin. If they never go, they likely will vote Democratic by a 2-1 margin” (Thomma 2003). The religion gap was illustrated frequently and clearly by public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center (2003) study, for example, found the American public sharply divided between the Republicans and Democrats on the eve of the 2004 campaign, with frequency of worship attendance emerging as a powerful predictor of party preference. In fact, most evidence of the religion gap was linked to differences in worship attendance.