Why and how does secession happen? How do different levels of government interact with each other? Why do some multilevel governments work better than others? What makes political extremism so virulent in today's society? These are some of the most pressing questions in political science today.These questions and research areas – secession, multilevel government, and political economy – were the focus of the writing and scholarship of Robert (Bob) Andrew Young (1950–2017), Canada R...

A burgeoning literature studies compulsory voting and its effects on turnout, but we know very little about how compulsory voting works in practice. In this Element, the authors fill this gap by providing an in-depth discussion of compulsory voting rules and their enforcement in Australia, Belgium, and Brazil. By analysing comparable public opinion data from these three countries, they shed light on citizens' attitudes toward compulsory voting. The Element examines citizens' perceptions, t...

Elections are at the heart of our democracy. Understanding citizens’ decisions to vote or to abstain in elections is crucial, especially when turnout in so many democracies is declining.In The Motivation to Vote, André Blais and Jean-François Daoust provide an original and elegant model that explains why people vote. They argue that the decision to vote or abstain hinges on four factors: political interest, sense of civic duty, perceived importance of the election, and eas...

Anatomy of a Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the Vote in the 2000 Canadian Election provides a compressive account of the factors that led Canadians to vote the way they did in the Fall 2000 Canadian election, which resulted in a third consecutive Liberal majority government. The book explains the overall impact that these factors had on how well or poorly each of the parties did in the election. The authors address in particular the following questions: Why was turnout so low? W...

Anatomy of a Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the Vote in the 2000 Canadian Election provides a compressive account of the factors that led Canadians to vote the way they did in the Fall 2000 Canadian election, which resulted in a third consecutive Liberal majority government. The book explains the overall impact that these factors had on how well or poorly each of the parties did in the election. The authors address in particular the following questions: Why was turnout so low? W...

National-level elections receive more attention from scholars and the media than elections at other levels, even though in many European countries the importance of both regional and European levels of government has grown in recent years. The growing importance of multiple electoral arenas suggests that scholars should be cautious about examining single levels in isolation. Taking the multilevel structure of electoral politics seriously requires a re-examination of how the incentives crea...

In parliamentary systems like Canada, voters directly contribute to the election outcome only in their own riding. However, the focus of election campaigns is often national, emphasizing the leader rather than the local candidate, and national rather than regional polls. This suggests that elections are national contests, but election outcomes clearly demonstrate that support for parties varies strongly by province.Focusing on the 2015 Canadian election campaigns in British Columbi...

In parliamentary systems like Canada, voters directly contribute to the election outcome only in their own riding. However, the focus of election campaigns is often national, emphasizing the leader rather than the local candidate, and national rather than regional polls. This suggests that elections are national contests, but election outcomes clearly demonstrate that support for parties varies strongly by province.Focusing on the 2015 Canadian election campaigns in British Columbi...

Coming out of the 2000 Canadian federal election, the dominance of the Liberal Party seemed assured. By 2011 the situation had completely reversed: the Liberals suffered a crushing defeat, failing even to become the official opposition and recording their lowest ever share of the vote. Dominance and Decline provides a comprehensive, comparative account of Canadian election outcomes from 2000 through to 2008. The book explores the meaning of those outcomes within the context of the...

This book presents a collection of papers illustrating the variety of "experimental" methodologies used to study voting. Experimental methods include laboratory experiments in the tradition of political psychology, laboratory experiments with monetary incentives, in the economic tradition, survey experiments (varying survey, question wording, framing or content), as well as various kinds of field experimentation. Topics include the behavior of voters (in particular turnout, vote choice, an...

Maurice Duverger is arguably the most distinguished French political scientist of the last century, but his major impact has, strangely enough, been largely in the English-speaking world. His book, Political Parties, first translated into English in 1954, has been very influential in both the party politics literature (which continues to make use of his typology of party organization) and in the electoral systems literature. His chief contributions there deal with what have come to be call...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is scarcely ten years old, but even in these early years of its existence it has generated debate, controversy and even outrage. Rulings on beef hormones and tuna-dolphin cases provide graphic examples of how the organization regulates and intrudes into areas of individual consumer choice, ethical preferences, and cultural habits. This deep and far-ranging impact of the WTO on peoples' everyday lives means that it is not just an institution of interest to...