Chaire de recherche du Canada en démocratie électorale

Partisan Semantic Overlaps: Floor-speeches and Ideological Position Benjamin Guinaudeau (University of Konstanz) Estimating the ideological position of Members of Parliaments (MPs) remains a challenge for political scientists. Different approaches have been developed including surveys, roll-call votes and floor speeches. Inspired by the measure of polarization proposed in Peterson and Spirling (2018), we present a new […] Read more

Message Distortion as a Campaign Strategy: Does Rival Party Distortion of Focal Party Position Affect Voters? Zeynep Somer-Topcu (University of Texas at Austin) Margit Tavits (Washington University in St. Louis) Do voters understand party positions? A growing literature is interested in answering this question but has limited its focus on parties’ own policy messages. In real […] Read more

Evolution of Party Polarization and Voter Polarization in European Democracies Semih Cakir (Université de Montréal) Traditionally, party competition in established democracies in Europe is mainly structured around the economic cleavage. However, scholars increasingly argue that political conflicts that motivate party competition and mobilize voters have been under transformation. There is growing evidence that party competition […] Read more

Economic Risks within the Household and Voting for the Radical RightTarik Abou-Chadi (University of Zurich)Thomas Kurer (University of Zurich) This article investigates how unemployment risk within households affects voting for the radical right. Recent advances in the literature demonstrate the role of latent economic threats for understanding the support of radical right parties. We build on […] Read more

Critical Citizens: the Role of Education on Satisfaction with Democracy across Quality of Democracy.  Jean-François Daoust (University of Edinburgh)André Blais (Université de Montréal) The influential ‘critical citizens’ and ‘postmaterialism’ theories have important implications about how citizens react to democratic governance and their levels of satisfaction with the way democracy works. In this research, we argue […] Read more