Support for Political Community: Evidence from Quebec and the Rest of Canada

Despite its diverse makeup and deep divisions, Canada has a fairly solid reputation as a stable democracy and political community but we are repeatedly reminded how fragile this "community of communities" may in fact be. Using new data from the Comparative Provincial Election Project, we examine how Quebecers feel about Canada and Quebec and compare these perspectives to those of other Canadians. We find that support varies provincially, over time and across subnational political communities. And in Quebec, political performance has a strong bearing on support for political communities, even after controlling for other common cultural, structural or contextual explanations

Adaptation to Democracy among Immigrants in Australia

This article examines adaptation to democracy among immigrants who leave authoritarian regimes to settle in Australia. Two questions are addressed. First, do immigrants from authoritarian regimes successfully adapt to democracy, in terms of both supporting democracy and participating in the electoral process? And second, does the pre-migration socialization in authoritarian regimes influence immigrants' democratic transition? Using the 2004 Australian Election Study and the Australian section of the 2005 World Values Survey, the findings indicate that if immigrants from authoritarian regimes lag behind the rest of the population in terms of support for democracy, they tend to participate at least as much as the rest of the population in electoral activities. Overall, the study highlights both the persistence of and the change in immigrants' pre-migration political orientations