While Quebec is well known for its provincial-level party politics and thriving nationalism, voting behaviour and electoral campaigning at the municipal level have failed to gain much attention to date.Voting in Quebec Municipal Elections seeks to transform the state of municipal elections research in Quebec through a systematic study of the 2017 Montreal and Quebec City elections. Drawing upon data from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, the authors demonstrate not on...

The majority of policymakers, academics, and members of the general public expected British citizens to vote to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum. This perception was based on the well-established idea that voters don't like change or uncertainty. So why did the British public vote to take such a major economic risk? Framing Risky Choices addresses this question by placing the Brexit vote in the bigger picture of EU and Scottish independence referendums. Drawing from exte...

The majority of policymakers, academics, and members of the general public expected British citizens to vote to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum. This perception was based on the well-established idea that voters don't like change or uncertainty. So why did the British public vote to take such a major economic risk? Framing Risky Choices addresses this question by placing the Brexit vote in the bigger picture of EU and Scottish independence referendums. Drawing from exte...

The Michigan model, named after the institution where it was first articulated, has been used to explain voting behavior in North American and Western European democracies. In Latin American Elections, experts on Latin America join with experts on electoral studies to evaluate the model’s applicability in this region. Analyzing data from the AmericasBarometer, a scientific public opinion survey carried out in 18 Latin American nations from 2008 to 2012, the authors find that, like...

Heated debate surrounds the topic of health care in both the US and in Canada. In each country, these debates are based in some measure on perceptions about health care in their neighboring country. The perceptions held by Canadians about the US health care system, or those held by Americans about Canada, end up having significant impact on health policy makers in both countries.Health Care Policy and Opinion in the United States and Canada examines these perceptions and their effe...

In Quebec and Scotland, questions of constitutional change, national identity, and national grievance play an important role in the electoral calculations of political parties and voters. Taking a strong stance on the national question can have strategic benefits both for parties pushing for greater autonomy and for those endorsing the status quo.In this in-depth look at issue voting, authors Éric Bélanger, Richard Nadeau, Ailsa Henderson, and Eve Hepburn examine how the national q...

With the ever-increasing interdependence across individuals, groups, international organizations, and nation-states an increasingly significant policy concern in the contemporary turbulent world of globalization is the question of state failure. There has been a growing academic interest in the determinants of state failure and an acute awareness across the international community of the need for dealing with issues of instability in states.The contributors to this volume represent...

As Wall Street rose to dominate the U.S. economy, income and pay inequalities in America came to dance to the tune of the credit cycle. As the reach of financial markets extended across the globe, interest rates, debt, and debt crises became the dominant forces driving the rise of economic inequality almost everywhere. Thus the "super-bubble" that investor George Soros identified in rich countries for the two decades after 1980 was a super-crisis for the 99 percent-not just in the U.S. but...

Why policymaking in the United States privileges the rich over the poorCan a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy—but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the U...

Paradigms and Sand Castles demonstrates the relationship between thoughtful research design and the collection of persuasive evidence in support of theory. It teaches the craft of research through interesting and carefully selected examples from the field of comparative development studies.Barbara Geddes is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

'A valuable corrective to the fraying narrative of [African] failure.'Foreign AffairsNot so long ago, Africa was being described as the hopeless continent. Recently, though, talk has turned to Africa rising, with enthusiastic voices exclaiming the potential for economic growth across many of its countries.What, then, is the truth behind Africa's growth, or lack of it? In this provocative book, Morten Jerven fundamentally reframes the debate, challenging main...

Social policy shapes the daily lives of every Canadian citizen and should reflect the beliefs of a majority of Canadians on just approaches to the promotion of health, safety, and well-being. Too often, those on the front lines—social workers, nurses, and teachers—observe that policies do not work well for the most vulnerable groups in society. In the first part of this new edition of Canadian Social Policy, Westhues and Wharf argue that service deliverers have discretion in how p...