1,721,007 research outputs found
Nouvelles valeurs et gouvernance au Canada
No full textCet ouvrage constitue une réflexion sur la manière dont les Canadiens font face aux changements éthiques et politiques qui se produisent dans la société. Les citoyens sont aujourd'hui davantage conscients des différents problèmes qui se posent dans leurs environnements et ne limitent plus leurs décisions politiques à une simple participation électorale. La gouvernance dès lors doit changer de style et s'adapter à la nouvelle culture sociale et politique. Ces changements s'inscrivent dans un cadre nouveau, celui d'une transformation commerciale et financière importante, où les accords de libre-échange (ALE, ALENA, ZLEA) jouent un rôle décisif. En s'appuyant sur des études statistiques canadiennes et internationales, les auteurs mettent en évidence les différentes perceptions que se font les électeurs de la représentation parlementaire et leurs conceptions d'une gouvernance efficace
Left/Right Asymmetries in a Multidimensional Universe: Citizens, Activists, and Parties
No full textPolitical scientists have sought to unify under a single theoretical umbrella the explanations for the patterns of public opinion in the electorate and the patterns of party policy. Yet, these models have not taken account of potential differences between left-wingers and right-wingers in the ways that policy preferences are bundled together across multiple dimensions of political disagreement. The dissertation examines the origins and structure of political opinions on three dimensions of left/right disagreement: wealth redistribution, social morality, and immigration. The overall argument is that the content and structure of opinions are fundamentally intertwined. As a result, left/right disagreement is multidimensional and asymmetrical. Left-wingers and right-wingers derive from different sources, and structure in different ways, their opinions about policy. These asymmetries appear in the patterns of public opinion, the preferences of party activists, and in the positioning of political parties.Ph
Political Learning and the Pathways to Political Engagement
Get PDFThis thesis addresses two central questions: How in the long run do Canadian citizens learn about politics? And how does long term experience with politics influence democratic political engagement? The theoretical framework employed in this study makes four basic assumptions about citizens: they are intendedly rational, they use cognitive shortcuts, they are adaptive, and they often face deep uncertainty about the political world. These core assumptions generate a broad set of expectations about how long term experience with politics systematically affects citizen behaviour. This evidence indicates that years of accumulated experience with Canadian politics fundamentally shapes the political outlooks and behaviours of Canadian citizens. Political experience affects whether citizens vote, whether they get the requisite political information that helps them to make reasoned political judgments, and how different considerations enter into their vote choices. Moreover, and despite their different backgrounds, long term experience with Canadian politics influences democratic political engagement among Canadian born citizens and immigrant Canadians in strikingly similar ways.Ph
Absent Mandate? The Role of Positional Issues in Canadian Elections
Get PDFPositional issues are political issues that generate disagreement among citizens and divide the electorate. Voting theories conventionally assume that positional issues have little effect on how individuals vote and that parties have little incentive to develop issue-based electoral strategies. Such a characterization of electoral dynamics is particularly prevalent in Canada. An enduring view holds that Canadian parties engage in "brokerage politics" wherein they avoid taking clear policy stances in order to avoid alienating segments of a fragmented electorate.This thesis challenges the conventional characterization of Canadian electoral dynamics by revisiting the role and impact of positional issues on electoral strategy. First, the results show that once measure- ment accuracy is improved and the heterogeneity of issue effects is taken into consideration, positional issues have non-negligible effects on individual vote choice. Second, the thesis demonstrates that the behaviour of Canadian political parties does not fully correspond to the brokerage party model. Parties can and do engage in behaviour prescribed by political marketing theory, to which positional issues are central. Positional issues are at the core of an exchange between citizens who care about a small set of issues and political parties who target these citizens using micro-campaigns. Ultimately, this thesis shows that political parties can use positional issues to increase their room for electoral manoeuvre.Ph.D
Political-Financial Scandal, Political Disaffection, and the Dynamics of Political Action
Get PDFThis thesis examines whether and to what extent political-financial scandals shape public attitudes toward the political system and citizensâ patterns of participation in political action. The investigation employs a combination of Canada-focused case studies and large-N cross-national analyses. The findings indicate that while political-financial scandals do seem to contribute to an erosion of specific and intermediate forms of political support, they also suggest that scandals do not vitiate public support for broader democratic principles. With respect to the impact of scandals on political participation, the thesis highlights and investigates a puzzle. The Canadian case studies presented here suggest that revelations of political actorsâ ethical transgressions serve as a catalyst for both traditional and non-traditional forms of political participation in the short and medium-term. Even so, multi-level analyses of cross-national individual and aggregate-level data suggest that persistently high perceptions of corruption in government undermine citizensâ intrinsic motivation to vote, and that political-financial scandals might well suppress voter turnout over longer time horizons.Ph.D
Political-Financial Scandal, Political Disaffection, and the Dynamics of Political Action
No full textThis thesis examines whether and to what extent political-financial scandals shape public attitudes toward the political system and citizensâ patterns of participation in political action. The investigation employs a combination of Canada-focused case studies and large-N cross-national analyses. The findings indicate that while political-financial scandals do seem to contribute to an erosion of specific and intermediate forms of political support, they also suggest that scandals do not vitiate public support for broader democratic principles. With respect to the impact of scandals on political participation, the thesis highlights and investigates a puzzle. The Canadian case studies presented here suggest that revelations of political actorsâ ethical transgressions serve as a catalyst for both traditional and non-traditional forms of political participation in the short and medium-term. Even so, multi-level analyses of cross-national individual and aggregate-level data suggest that persistently high perceptions of corruption in government undermine citizensâ intrinsic motivation to vote, and that political-financial scandals might well suppress voter turnout over longer time horizons.Ph.D
Policy Change, Public Benefit, and the Charities Act 2006 - A Case of the Emperor's New Clothes?
Get PDFThis thesis analyses the policy-making processes leading to the Charities Act 2006 that introduced a renewed focus on the "public benefit" that charities need to provide. It addresses the empirical puzzle why a period of over 400 years of stability in the definition of charitable status ended in 2006 and what factors caused the charity reform that culminated in the 2006 Act. The discussion centres on the two most affected groups of charities, which are fee-charging education and healthcare charities. For this purpose, the thesis compares two radical change theories, i.e. punctuated equilibrium theory (Baumgartner et al., 2011) and path dependency (Pierson, 2000a), and evaluates how they perform against the alternative account of gradual transformation theory (Streeck and Thelen, 2005). Empirical evidence is presented for each of the key stakeholders, the government, the charitable sector, the legal community, and the media. Throughout, the thesis adopts an interdisciplinary multi-method research outlook, including a specifically designed survey, systematic review, statistical analysis, content analysis and archival research. These data are corroborated through in-depth elite interviews with key personalities who were involved in the charity policy reform process. The "crucial case study" (Eckstein, 2009) is then juxtaposed to the parallel Scottish charity policy reform, leading to the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, to corroborate the findings. In the light of the evidence, the thesis concludes that policy change theories need to differentiate between the concept of legal and political change in order to provide meaningful explanations. Moreover, it finds that welfare state traditions play a key role in charity policy change and that the English Charities Act 2006 is a further instance of the increased judicialisation of politics and the politicisation of judicial bodies. On a theoretical level, the thesis introduces a classification of change at different stages of the policy process.Ph.D
Political Learning and the Pathways to Political Engagement
No full textThis thesis addresses two central questions: How in the long run do Canadian citizens learn about politics? And how does long term experience with politics influence democratic political engagement? The theoretical framework employed in this study makes four basic assumptions about citizens: they are intendedly rational, they use cognitive shortcuts, they are adaptive, and they often face deep uncertainty about the political world. These core assumptions generate a broad set of expectations about how long term experience with politics systematically affects citizen behaviour. This evidence indicates that years of accumulated experience with Canadian politics fundamentally shapes the political outlooks and behaviours of Canadian citizens. Political experience affects whether citizens vote, whether they get the requisite political information that helps them to make reasoned political judgments, and how different considerations enter into their vote choices. Moreover, and despite their different backgrounds, long term experience with Canadian politics influences democratic political engagement among Canadian born citizens and immigrant Canadians in strikingly similar ways.Ph
Party Strategies and Voter Behavior in Multi-national States: Electoral Competition in a Multi-dimensional Issue Space
Get PDFThis dissertation is about electoral competition in countries where the center-periphery dimension is salient alongside the traditional left-right dimension. The focus is on the strategic choices of ethno-regional parties in response to greater support for decentralization by their state-wide rivals. It focuses on 3 questions. 1) How do ethno-regional parties respond to their state -rivals’ efforts to co-opt their primary issue of regional autonomy? 2) Under what conditions and how much weight do voters attach to ethno-regional parties’ position on non-center-periphery issues? 3) What factors do ethno-regional parties have to consider when deciding which positions take on non-center-periphery issues. The data cover Western European countries and Canada over a period of close to thirty years, from the early 1990s to 2019. The dissertation tests the effect of greater support for regional autonomy by state-wide parties on the strategic behavior of ethno-regional parties and the response of voters to greater party convergence on the issue of regional autonomy. It then focuses on the Scottish National Party and the Bloc Quebecois. Qualitative data, panel data, and evidence from election studies are used to show that positioning on left-right ideological issues is crucial to the electoral fortunes of these ethno-regional parties. Finally, it uses simulations based on hypothetical party positions and voter preferences to explain the strategic constraints ethno-regional parties and their statewide rivals face when deciding where to position in a multidimensional issue space.
The project advances our understanding of political behavior in multi-national states, electoral competition in multi-dimensional issue spaces, and the research on niche parties.Ph.D
La dynamique référendaire : pourquoi les Canadiens ont-ils rejeté l'Accord de Charlottetown ?
No full textThe referendum dynamics : why did canadians reject the charlottetown accord ?
The paper examines voting behaviour in the October 1992 Canadian referendum on the Charlottetown Accord. The study shows that the key event of the campaign was a forceful speech by former Prime Minister Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, which made the "No" vote legitimate among English Canadians who were until then resigned to vote Yes even if they did not like many elements of the Accord. The study also shows that better educated and informed voters were more supportive of the Accord. It appears that the better informed adopted a more deliberative approach and that the Yes would have obtained more votes if voters had been better informed. This made only a small difference, however. The majority of English Canadians were unwilling to make concessions to Quebec, and the complexity of the Accord was not a major factor in the defeat.La dynamique référendaire: pourquoi les canadiens ont-ils rejeté l'accord de charlottetown ?
Le texte propose une analyse du comportement des Canadiens lors du référendum sur l'Accord de Charlottetown, en octobre 1992. L'étude démontre que le moment clé de la campagne a été un discours percutant de l'ancien Premier ministre Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, qui a eu pour effet de légitimer le «Non» chez un grand nombre d'électeurs canadiens-anglais qui étaient jusqu'alors résignés à voter Oui même s'ils n'aimaient pas plusieurs aspects de l'Accord. L'étude montre également que les électeurs plus scolarisés et plus informés ont davantage appuyé l'Accord. Il semble que les électeurs plus informés ont adopté une perspective plus « deliberative » et que le Oui aurait récolté un peu plus de votes si les électeurs avaient été plus informés. Cet effet fut cependant mince. La majorité des Canadiens anglais étaient peu disposés à faire des concessions au Québec et le caractère complexe de l'Accord n'a pas été un facteur déterminant.Johnston Richard, Gidengil Elisabeth, Nevitte Neil, Blais André. La dynamique référendaire : pourquoi les Canadiens ont-ils rejeté l'Accord de Charlottetown ?. In: Revue française de science politique, 46ᵉ année, n°5, 1996. pp. 817-830
- …
