Does Participation Matter ? The Impact of Subjective Calculus on Participation

Rapport de rechercheNuméro de référence interne originel : a1.1 g 94

Les conséquences parlementaires du capital politique : le cas de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec

Nous tentons de situer le capital politique dans le contexte québécois en mesurant ses conséquences parlementaires chez les élu.e.s de l’Assemblée nationale qui ont siégé depuis 2003. Pour mesurer les conséquences parlementaires du capital politique, nous étudions principalement l’impact de deux facteurs – l’expérience politique antérieure des élu.e.s à d’autres paliers gouvernementaux et les liens familiaux – sur l’accès à différents postes parlementaires d’importance. Deux séries de modèles de régression sont présentées. La première série analyse l’accession aux fonctions parlementaires des députés tout au long de leur carrière législative, alors que la seconde reprend les variables de la première série en les appliquant uniquement aux recrues parlementaires. Nous concluons que le capital politique ne peut jouer un rôle dans la carrière législative d’un individu que dans certains contextes très spécifiques. Les liens familiaux n’ont pas d’impact sur l’accès aux postes législatifs, alors que l’expérience politique fédérale ou provinciale a un léger effet positif si l’on considère l’ensemble de la carrière des élu.e.s. L’expérience politique locale (municipale ou scolaire) a des effets négatifs significatifs sur les chances d’accéder à différentes fonctions parlementaires.We attempt to situate political capital in the Quebec context by measuring its parliamentary consequences among elected members of the National Assembly who have served since 2003. To measure the parliamentary consequences of political capital, we mainly study the impact of two factors—previous political experience of elected officials at other levels of government, and family ties—on access to various important parliamentary positions. Two sets of regression models are presented. The first set analyzes the accession to parliamentary office of MPs throughout their legislative career, while the second set replicates the variables of the first set, applying them only to parliamentary recruits. We conclude that political capital can only play a role in an individual’s legislative career in certain very specific contexts. Family ties have no impact on access to legislative positions, while federal or provincial political experience has a slight positive effect when considering the entire career of elected officials. Local political experience (municipal or school) has significant negative effects on the chances of accessing different parliamentary positions

Interpreting National Trajectories with Gellner, Anderson and Smith:: The Case of Quebec

Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith have had a significant influence in debates and theoretical discussions concerning the understanding of nations and nationalism. However, one should not accept such classic theories ipso facto without questioning their theoretical assumptions. Hence, we find that one way to better understand the way these theories are still relevant (or not) for the understanding of nations and nationalism is to confront their explanatory potential with a specific case. This is precisely the main objective, and therefore contribution, of this paper. We thus focus on a “problematic” or “abnormal” case relative to a more general understanding of what a nation and nationalism ought to be. We look at the Canadian province of Quebec, a minority nation that possesses its own independent institutional and societal culture, while evolving within a more encompassing sovereign state — the Canadian federation. Our goal is less to provide an exhaustive account of socio-historical settings than to use Gellner, Anderson and Smith’s theories to provide a fair interpretation of the way Quebec has evolved as a minority nation within the Canadian federation. To our knowledge, no other study has applied a similar framework — these theories of nationalism and their testing — to the Quebec case

Les élections partielles au Québec : Caractéristiques et tendances

Les élections partielles ont-elles les mêmes caractéristiques et suivent-elles les mêmes tendances que les élections générales ? Nous proposons une analyse du taux de participation et de la performance des petits partis lors des élections partielles québécoises depuis 1970. Nous examinons également la performance des députés élus lors de partielles aux élections générales subséquentes. Finalement, nous vérifions si les élections complémentaires constituent, comme plusieurs le pensent, des référendums sur le gouvernement. En bref, nous tentons de déterminer les dynamiques électorales propres aux élections partielles ainsi que leur importance dans la vie politique québécoise.Do by-elections have the same characteristics and follow the same tendencies that general elections do? We propose an analysis of the turnout and the performance of minor parties during Quebec’s by-elections since 1970. We also examine the performance of by-election elected incumbents in subsequent general elections. Finally, we verify if by-elections constitute, as many suggest, referendums on the government. In short, we try to determine the dynamics specific to by-elections as well as their importance in Quebec’s political life

Replication Data for "Linking Party Preferences and the Composition of Government: A New Standard for Evaluating the Performance of Electoral Democracy"

We propose a new standard to evaluate 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 PR systems perform better on the first criterion. Majoritarian systems do better on the last two