We propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspond... more We propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspondence between citizens' party preferences and the party composition of governments that are formed after elections. We develop three criteria for assessing such correspondence: the proportion of citizens whose most preferred party is in government, whether the party that is most liked overall is in government, and how much more positively governing parties are rated than non-governing parties. We pay particular attention to the last criterion, which takes into account how each citizen feels about each of the parties as well as the intensity of their preferences. We find that proportional representation systems perform better on the first criterion. Majoritarian systems do better on the other two.
According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even re... more According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even reversed in most established democracies. Drawing on the existing literature on sex differences in political engagement and on pioneering voter turnout theories, this article questions the conventional assumption and hypothesises that women still participate at lower rates in less important elections. It systematically tests this hypothesis by exploring the impact of sex on voter turnout in different electoral arenas. The empirical analyses of two cross-national datasets (Making Electoral Democracy Work and the European Election Study) demonstrate that although there is generally no gender gap in first-order elections, women tend to vote less than men in second-order contests. This reflects women’s weaker interest in politics and their lower levels of knowledge about politics in second-order electoral arenas.
Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have for long believed that the degree of sa... more Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have for long believed that the degree of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy determines voter turnout. In this article, we use survey data from 24 panel studies and demonstrate that the causal relationship is actually reversed: voter turnout affects satisfaction with democracy and not the other way around. We also show that this reversed relationship is conditioned by election type, electoral system, and election outcomes. These findings are important since: a) They question conventional wisdom and a large body of scientific literature; b) They invite a more nuanced approach in the study of the relationship between evaluations of regime performance and political participation; c) They underline the central role of elections in shaping citizens'
The existing literature on the local level assumes that citizens care about what happens in their... more The existing literature on the local level assumes that citizens care about what happens in their district but that assumption has never been tested. We tackle this question using the Making Electoral Democracy Work data covering 11 elections in Germany, Spain, Canada and France to show that many citizens have strong attachments to their local community and care about the outcome of the election in their local district. Moreover, we specify for whom the local level matters the most (and least). We find that those who are more integrated into their community are more strongly attached to their municipality and attribute greater importance to electoral outcomes in their district.
The Eurovision Song Contest is not only the largest song contest worldwide but also probably the ... more The Eurovision Song Contest is not only the largest song contest worldwide but also probably the world's largest election for a non-political office. In this article, we are interested in the voting behaviour of Eurovision viewers. Do they vote sincerely, strategically according to rational choice assumptions (i.e. for the song they believe will be the likely winner) or for another song? Using data from a large-scale survey carried out in Europe, we find interesting voting patterns with regard to these questions. Roughly one-fourth of the survey participants would vote for either their preferred song or for the song they think will win. However, the percentage of strategic voters is lower (11%). In contrast, many individuals (i.e. 36% of participants) would vote for another song, one that is neither their preferred song, the likely winner, nor a rational choice. The reasoning behind these remaining votes may include neighbourhood voting, ethnic voting, and voting for one's favourite European country.
Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have long believed that the degree of satisf... more Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have long believed that the degree of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy determines voter turnout. We use survey data from 24 panel studies to demonstrate that this causal relationship is actually reversed: voter turnout affects satisfaction with democracy. We also show that this reversed relationship is conditioned by election type, electoral system, and election outcomes. These findings are important because: (1) They question conventional wisdom and a large body of scientific literature; (2) They invite a more nuanced approach towards the study of the relationship between evaluations of regime performance and political participation; and (3) They emphasize the vital role of elections in shaping citizens' perception of the democratic process.
L'objectif de ce numéro spécial est d'o¤rir une série de contributions de synthèse ayant pour amb... more L'objectif de ce numéro spécial est d'o¤rir une série de contributions de synthèse ayant pour ambition de comprendre, dans ses dimensions positives et normatives, le processus électoral. D'une certaine façon, les élections sont aux politologues ce que les marchés sont aux économistes. Comprendre les institutions électorales, leur in ‡uence sur les comportements des principaux acteurs (o¤re et demande de politiques publiques) et les enjeux de possibles réformes est de première importance aussi bien pour les politologues que pour les économistes. Ce numéro spécial s'e¤orce de combiner les traditions intellectuelles propres à la science économique et à la science politique. 1 Toutes les méthodes scienti…ques pour aborder utilement ces questions sont les bienvenues tant il est vrai qu'elles se fertilisent mutuellement : méthodes descriptives, empiriques et statistiques, théoriques et expérimentales. Dans sa dimension méthodologique, ce numéro spécial souhaite rendre justice à cette diversité.
The article examines the individual decision to vote or to abstain in the 2014 European elections... more The article examines the individual decision to vote or to abstain in the 2014 European elections in seven Member States of the EU. We focus on the role of socio-demographic characteristics and attitudinal factors. The empirical analysis draws upon the Comparative EU Election Dataset with 22 000 observations. The main finding is that the explanatory factors that account for participation in European elections hardly differ from those that explain participation in national electoral contests. One difference pertains to the existence of a slight gender gap in the European elections. We also find that European identity favours electoral participation while the perceived performance of the EU exerts no effect. Last but not least, there are no systematic cross-country differences in the determinants of individual turnout between the “North” and the “South”, or the original and more recent EU Member States.
T here is abundant empirical evidence that the plurality rule constrains party competition and fa... more T here is abundant empirical evidence that the plurality rule constrains party competition and favors two-party systems. This reduction of party system fragmentation may be due to parties deciding not to enter elections for which they are not viable and/or voters voting strategically. Yet, no prior research has attempted to estimate the respective role of parties and voters in this process. To fill this gap, we conducted a unique laboratory experiment where some subjects played the role of parties and others played the role of voters, and where the two were able to respond to each other just as in real-life elections. We find that the reduction due to party strategic exit is higher than that due to strategic voting. We conclude that parties play a key role in the effect of the plurality rule on party system fragmentation.
Whether we like it or not, English has become the lingua franca of political science. The symposi... more Whether we like it or not, English has become the lingua franca of political science. The symposium presents three thoughtful essays about the pros and cons of this domination and what can and should be done to mitigate the negative consequences.
We examine strategic voting in the second round of the 2014 French municipal elections. We focus ... more We examine strategic voting in the second round of the 2014 French municipal elections. We focus on the 96 cities where the number of lists remained constant (three, four, or five) in the two rounds, and we examine the evolution of the vote for these 329 lists from the first to the second round. We show that support for the top two lists (in the first round) systematically increases in the second round at the expense of the other lists. The second list makes as much progress as the first list, ruling out a bandwagon effect. Strategic desertion of the non-viable lists is more pronounced when the distance from the second list is high, and there is close competition between the top two lists. This suggests that voters in these cities behave in a second round of a two-round election as they do under FPTP, provided that there are many candidates/parties and that the second round is held under plurality. French Politics (2017) 15, 27-42.
W e propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspon... more W e propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspondence between citizens' party preferences and the party composition of governments that are formed after elections. We develop three criteria for assessing such correspondence: the proportion of citizens whose most preferred party is in government, whether the party that is most liked overall is in government, and how much more positively governing parties are rated than non-governing parties. We pay particular attention to the last criterion, which takes into account how each citizen feels about each of the parties as well as the intensity of their preferences. We find that proportional representation systems perform better on the first criterion. Majoritarian systems do better on the other two.
The moral and political nature of the belief that voting is a duty suggests that it is based on m... more The moral and political nature of the belief that voting is a duty suggests that it is based on more abstract attitudes, acquired previously, such as support for one's political community and democracy. It is also plausibly related to the country's strength of democracy and homogeneity, which moderate the effect of political support. We test these expectations with a sample of 21 countries with data obtained from two Asian Barometer Surveys. We confirm the effects of the individual and contextual factors, as well as cross-level interactions: The impact of support for democracy is stronger in more democratic countries, and the effect of support for political community is more pronounced in ethnically fractionalized countries.
This paper disentangles the relationship between election outcomes and satisfaction with democrac... more This paper disentangles the relationship between election outcomes and satisfaction with democracy. As the first comparative study to employ a measure of satisfaction immediately before and after elections, we can be unusually confident that any changes we observe are attributable to election outcomes. Following previous work, we affirm that voting for parties that win more votes, more legislative seats, and more cabinet seats boosts satisfaction with democracy. In addition, we demonstrate for the first time that voters are sensitive to deficits in representation; satisfaction with democracy decreases when one's party's seat share falls short of its vote share.
This article analyzes how partisanship and political information influence perceptions of governm... more This article analyzes how partisanship and political information influence perceptions of government corruption at national and regional levels and whether information attenuates the impact of partisanship. The data are drawn from surveys of recent elections held in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. Almost everywhere, partisans of the incumbent parties and the most-informed citizens perceive less corruption than their nonpartisan and less-informed counterparts. However, there is no evidence of an interaction effect between information and partisanship. We note one interesting exception: In Quebec, the better informed perceive more corruption, especially those who are also partisans of opposition parties. We discuss how this pattern may be related to the emergence of a corruption scandal before the Quebec election.
It is a standard practice to include a Duty term in explanatory models of turnout. Yet the relati... more It is a standard practice to include a Duty term in explanatory models of turnout. Yet the relationship between duty and voting is not that clear. Does duty really trigger voting or is it the reverse? To address this question, we present cross-lagged panel estimations of the impact of duty on turnout and of turnout on duty with two different datasets: a two-wave panel Canadian survey conducted in 2008 and 2009 and a fourwave Spanish panel conducted between 2010 and 2012. We find evidence that sense of civic duty is a true motivation that affects people's propensity to vote, even though duty may be reinforced by the act of voting.
Downloaded from behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or abse... more Downloaded from behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or absence of candidates from their own country on the lists. If a pan-European district is created, our findings provide an argument in favour of using a closed-list ballot and establishing a maximum number of candidates from each country on the lists.
We propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspond... more We propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspondence between citizens' party preferences and the party composition of governments that are formed after elections. We develop three criteria for assessing such correspondence: the proportion of citizens whose most preferred party is in government, whether the party that is most liked overall is in government, and how much more positively governing parties are rated than non-governing parties. We pay particular attention to the last criterion, which takes into account how each citizen feels about each of the parties as well as the intensity of their preferences. We find that proportional representation systems perform better on the first criterion. Majoritarian systems do better on the other two.
According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even re... more According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even reversed in most established democracies. Drawing on the existing literature on sex differences in political engagement and on pioneering voter turnout theories, this article questions the conventional assumption and hypothesises that women still participate at lower rates in less important elections. It systematically tests this hypothesis by exploring the impact of sex on voter turnout in different electoral arenas. The empirical analyses of two cross-national datasets (Making Electoral Democracy Work and the European Election Study) demonstrate that although there is generally no gender gap in first-order elections, women tend to vote less than men in second-order contests. This reflects women’s weaker interest in politics and their lower levels of knowledge about politics in second-order electoral arenas.
Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have for long believed that the degree of sa... more Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have for long believed that the degree of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy determines voter turnout. In this article, we use survey data from 24 panel studies and demonstrate that the causal relationship is actually reversed: voter turnout affects satisfaction with democracy and not the other way around. We also show that this reversed relationship is conditioned by election type, electoral system, and election outcomes. These findings are important since: a) They question conventional wisdom and a large body of scientific literature; b) They invite a more nuanced approach in the study of the relationship between evaluations of regime performance and political participation; c) They underline the central role of elections in shaping citizens'
The existing literature on the local level assumes that citizens care about what happens in their... more The existing literature on the local level assumes that citizens care about what happens in their district but that assumption has never been tested. We tackle this question using the Making Electoral Democracy Work data covering 11 elections in Germany, Spain, Canada and France to show that many citizens have strong attachments to their local community and care about the outcome of the election in their local district. Moreover, we specify for whom the local level matters the most (and least). We find that those who are more integrated into their community are more strongly attached to their municipality and attribute greater importance to electoral outcomes in their district.
The Eurovision Song Contest is not only the largest song contest worldwide but also probably the ... more The Eurovision Song Contest is not only the largest song contest worldwide but also probably the world's largest election for a non-political office. In this article, we are interested in the voting behaviour of Eurovision viewers. Do they vote sincerely, strategically according to rational choice assumptions (i.e. for the song they believe will be the likely winner) or for another song? Using data from a large-scale survey carried out in Europe, we find interesting voting patterns with regard to these questions. Roughly one-fourth of the survey participants would vote for either their preferred song or for the song they think will win. However, the percentage of strategic voters is lower (11%). In contrast, many individuals (i.e. 36% of participants) would vote for another song, one that is neither their preferred song, the likely winner, nor a rational choice. The reasoning behind these remaining votes may include neighbourhood voting, ethnic voting, and voting for one's favourite European country.
Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have long believed that the degree of satisf... more Political scientists, analysts and journalists alike have long believed that the degree of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy determines voter turnout. We use survey data from 24 panel studies to demonstrate that this causal relationship is actually reversed: voter turnout affects satisfaction with democracy. We also show that this reversed relationship is conditioned by election type, electoral system, and election outcomes. These findings are important because: (1) They question conventional wisdom and a large body of scientific literature; (2) They invite a more nuanced approach towards the study of the relationship between evaluations of regime performance and political participation; and (3) They emphasize the vital role of elections in shaping citizens' perception of the democratic process.
L'objectif de ce numéro spécial est d'o¤rir une série de contributions de synthèse ayant pour amb... more L'objectif de ce numéro spécial est d'o¤rir une série de contributions de synthèse ayant pour ambition de comprendre, dans ses dimensions positives et normatives, le processus électoral. D'une certaine façon, les élections sont aux politologues ce que les marchés sont aux économistes. Comprendre les institutions électorales, leur in ‡uence sur les comportements des principaux acteurs (o¤re et demande de politiques publiques) et les enjeux de possibles réformes est de première importance aussi bien pour les politologues que pour les économistes. Ce numéro spécial s'e¤orce de combiner les traditions intellectuelles propres à la science économique et à la science politique. 1 Toutes les méthodes scienti…ques pour aborder utilement ces questions sont les bienvenues tant il est vrai qu'elles se fertilisent mutuellement : méthodes descriptives, empiriques et statistiques, théoriques et expérimentales. Dans sa dimension méthodologique, ce numéro spécial souhaite rendre justice à cette diversité.
The article examines the individual decision to vote or to abstain in the 2014 European elections... more The article examines the individual decision to vote or to abstain in the 2014 European elections in seven Member States of the EU. We focus on the role of socio-demographic characteristics and attitudinal factors. The empirical analysis draws upon the Comparative EU Election Dataset with 22 000 observations. The main finding is that the explanatory factors that account for participation in European elections hardly differ from those that explain participation in national electoral contests. One difference pertains to the existence of a slight gender gap in the European elections. We also find that European identity favours electoral participation while the perceived performance of the EU exerts no effect. Last but not least, there are no systematic cross-country differences in the determinants of individual turnout between the “North” and the “South”, or the original and more recent EU Member States.
T here is abundant empirical evidence that the plurality rule constrains party competition and fa... more T here is abundant empirical evidence that the plurality rule constrains party competition and favors two-party systems. This reduction of party system fragmentation may be due to parties deciding not to enter elections for which they are not viable and/or voters voting strategically. Yet, no prior research has attempted to estimate the respective role of parties and voters in this process. To fill this gap, we conducted a unique laboratory experiment where some subjects played the role of parties and others played the role of voters, and where the two were able to respond to each other just as in real-life elections. We find that the reduction due to party strategic exit is higher than that due to strategic voting. We conclude that parties play a key role in the effect of the plurality rule on party system fragmentation.
Whether we like it or not, English has become the lingua franca of political science. The symposi... more Whether we like it or not, English has become the lingua franca of political science. The symposium presents three thoughtful essays about the pros and cons of this domination and what can and should be done to mitigate the negative consequences.
We examine strategic voting in the second round of the 2014 French municipal elections. We focus ... more We examine strategic voting in the second round of the 2014 French municipal elections. We focus on the 96 cities where the number of lists remained constant (three, four, or five) in the two rounds, and we examine the evolution of the vote for these 329 lists from the first to the second round. We show that support for the top two lists (in the first round) systematically increases in the second round at the expense of the other lists. The second list makes as much progress as the first list, ruling out a bandwagon effect. Strategic desertion of the non-viable lists is more pronounced when the distance from the second list is high, and there is close competition between the top two lists. This suggests that voters in these cities behave in a second round of a two-round election as they do under FPTP, provided that there are many candidates/parties and that the second round is held under plurality. French Politics (2017) 15, 27-42.
W e propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspon... more W e propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspondence between citizens' party preferences and the party composition of governments that are formed after elections. We develop three criteria for assessing such correspondence: the proportion of citizens whose most preferred party is in government, whether the party that is most liked overall is in government, and how much more positively governing parties are rated than non-governing parties. We pay particular attention to the last criterion, which takes into account how each citizen feels about each of the parties as well as the intensity of their preferences. We find that proportional representation systems perform better on the first criterion. Majoritarian systems do better on the other two.
The moral and political nature of the belief that voting is a duty suggests that it is based on m... more The moral and political nature of the belief that voting is a duty suggests that it is based on more abstract attitudes, acquired previously, such as support for one's political community and democracy. It is also plausibly related to the country's strength of democracy and homogeneity, which moderate the effect of political support. We test these expectations with a sample of 21 countries with data obtained from two Asian Barometer Surveys. We confirm the effects of the individual and contextual factors, as well as cross-level interactions: The impact of support for democracy is stronger in more democratic countries, and the effect of support for political community is more pronounced in ethnically fractionalized countries.
This paper disentangles the relationship between election outcomes and satisfaction with democrac... more This paper disentangles the relationship between election outcomes and satisfaction with democracy. As the first comparative study to employ a measure of satisfaction immediately before and after elections, we can be unusually confident that any changes we observe are attributable to election outcomes. Following previous work, we affirm that voting for parties that win more votes, more legislative seats, and more cabinet seats boosts satisfaction with democracy. In addition, we demonstrate for the first time that voters are sensitive to deficits in representation; satisfaction with democracy decreases when one's party's seat share falls short of its vote share.
This article analyzes how partisanship and political information influence perceptions of governm... more This article analyzes how partisanship and political information influence perceptions of government corruption at national and regional levels and whether information attenuates the impact of partisanship. The data are drawn from surveys of recent elections held in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. Almost everywhere, partisans of the incumbent parties and the most-informed citizens perceive less corruption than their nonpartisan and less-informed counterparts. However, there is no evidence of an interaction effect between information and partisanship. We note one interesting exception: In Quebec, the better informed perceive more corruption, especially those who are also partisans of opposition parties. We discuss how this pattern may be related to the emergence of a corruption scandal before the Quebec election.
It is a standard practice to include a Duty term in explanatory models of turnout. Yet the relati... more It is a standard practice to include a Duty term in explanatory models of turnout. Yet the relationship between duty and voting is not that clear. Does duty really trigger voting or is it the reverse? To address this question, we present cross-lagged panel estimations of the impact of duty on turnout and of turnout on duty with two different datasets: a two-wave panel Canadian survey conducted in 2008 and 2009 and a fourwave Spanish panel conducted between 2010 and 2012. We find evidence that sense of civic duty is a true motivation that affects people's propensity to vote, even though duty may be reinforced by the act of voting.
Downloaded from behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or abse... more Downloaded from behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or absence of candidates from their own country on the lists. If a pan-European district is created, our findings provide an argument in favour of using a closed-list ballot and establishing a maximum number of candidates from each country on the lists.
The paper assesses the influence of electoral rules on vote choice and election outcomes using aq... more The paper assesses the influence of electoral rules on vote choice and election outcomes using aquasi-experiment conducted during a recent Canadian provincial election. Respondents were invitedto vote under three voting systems (first past the post, alternative voting and proportionalrepresentation) and to answer a short questionnaire. We examine how the distribution of votes andseats is affected, and we ascertain how much of the total difference is due to psychological and themechanical effects. We find that a PR system would have increased legislative fractionalization bythe equivalent of one effective party and that the mechanical impact is much more important thanthe psychological effect. As for AV, its mechanical and psychological effects are in oppositedirections
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Papers by André Blais