L’étendue sans précédent des flux migratoires des dernières décennies parmi les démocraties occidentales n’est pas sans créer des ramous au sein des pays hôtes. La hausse de l’immigration transforme petit à petit le tissu social des sociétés, entrant parfois en conflit avec les mouvements nationalistes traditionnels2. La présence accrue d’immigrants force, d’une certaine façon, une redéfinition des rapports culturels et politiques entre la majorité et les minorités.

Issue Salience, Issue Ownership, and Issue-Based Vote Choice (summary). Electoral Studies 27 (3): 477-491.
Éric Bélanger and Bonnie M. Meguid (2008)

According to the issue ownership theory of voting, voters identify the most credible party proponent of a particular issue and cast their ballots for that issue owner. Despite the centrality of this voter-level mechanism to ownership theories of party behaviour, it has seldom been examined in the literature. We explore this model and offer a refinement to its current understanding and operationalization. Returning to the roots of ownership theory, we argue that the effect of issue ownership on vote choice is conditioned by the perceived salience of the issue in question. Through individual-level analyses of vote choice in the 1997 and 2000 Canadian federal elections, we demonstrate that issue ownership affects the voting decisions of only those individuals who think that the issue is salient.

Explaining the Rise of the LPF: Issues, Discontent, and the 2002 Dutch Election. Acta Politica 41 (1): 4-20.
Éric Bélanger and Kees Aarts (2006)

Scholarly accounts of the dramatic breakthrough of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the 2002 Dutch parliamentary election have emphasized two structural factors behind the success of that party. It has first been argued that the LPF brought a distinct issue profile to the electoral arena, which made it attractive for voters with similar policy views. The second hypothesis, that feelings of discontent with politics also fuelled support for the LPF, remains contested because of the possible endogeneity bias of cynicism attitudes. We re-examine these questions using survey data from the 1998 to 2002 panel of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study. Our approach’s novelty is to link respondents’ 2002 vote choice to their issue priorities and cynical attitudes as measured in the 1998 wave of the panel. The findings suggest that policy preferences and, to a lesser extent, attitudes of political discontent both contributed to the LPF vote, thus providing support for both interpretations of the rise of this party. These results are consistent with most existing works on non-established party voting which show that new salient political issues and a lack of confidence towards government and politics are fertile ground for these party movements.

Party, Ideology, and Vote Intentions: Dynamics from the 2002 French Electoral Panel. Political Research Quarterly, 59 (4): 503-515.
Éric Bélanger, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Jean Chiche, and Vincent Tiberj (2006)

The debate over the relative importance of ideology versus party for vote choice in France is enduring. Resolution of the debate would have much value, for the light shed on sources of stability and change in multiparty electoral systems generally. The main reason the debate continues is that previous studies examining that question have been plagued by difficulties pertaining to variable measurement, model specification, election type, and research design. We address these problems and provide new evidence from the 2002 French Electoral Panel. Most notably, these data allow stronger causal inference because party identification and ideological identification are both measured in the first wave of the survey, that is, before the declaration of vote actually occurs. We estimate a multi-equation model of first-round legislative vote intention—as measured in the second wave of the panel—using two-stage least squares, ordered logit, as well as binomial and multinomial logit techniques. The results indicate that ideological identification systematically outweighs party identification in shaping the French voter’s choice.

La montée des tiers partis au Québec à l’élection de 2007: conjoncture ou tendance? IRPP Choices. 14 (17): 1-36.
Éric Bélanger and Richard Nadeau (2008)

The Causes and Consequences of the Cumul des Mandats. French Politics (4): 266-268.
André Blais (2006)

Accounting for the Electoral Success of the Liberal Party in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science 38 (4): 821-840.
André Blais (2005)

Je montre que le succès électoral du Parti libéral fédéral au Canada découle en bonne partie de l'appui des catholiques et des citoyens d'origine non européenne. Sans l'appui solide de ces deux groupes, le Parti libéral n'aurait pas remporté les succès électoraux remarquables qu'il a connus. Pourtant, nous n'avons toujours pas d'explication satisfaisante des raisons qui amènent les catholiques et les citoyens d'origine non européenne à voter pour le Parti libéral. Je soutiens que ces tendances sociologiques lourdes devraient nous inciter à remettre en question l'interprétation habituelle selon laquelle les succès libéraux sont attribuables aux positions centristes du parti.

Measuring Expectations: Comparing Alternative Approaches. (summary) Electoral Studies 27: 337-343.
André Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, Patrick Fournier, Neil Nevitte, Bruce M. Hicks (2008)

The paper compares three alternative approaches employed by the Canadian Election Study to measure voters’ perceptions of parties’ chances of winning in their local constituency. The first approach, used in 2000, consists of asking respondents to rate parties’ chances on a 0 to 100 scale in a random sequence. The second, used in 2004, entails first asking whether each party had a chance of winning and then inviting people to rate the chances. In the third approach, adopted in 2006, respondents are first asked which two parties had the best chance of winning and, then, if any other party has a chance, before requesting that they rate the mentioned parties. By comparing ‘‘objective’’ and ‘‘perceived’’ chances of winning, the paper concludes that the third approach provides a more valid measure of voters’ expectations. The paper discusses the implications for the measurement of expectations in different types of electoral systems.

Do Voters Vote for Government Coalitions? Party Politics 12 (6): 691-705.
André Blais, John H. Aldrich, Indridi H. Indridason and Renan Levine (2006)

In many countries, elections produce coalition governments. Downs points out that in such cases the rational voter needs to determine what coalitions are possible, i.e. to ascertain their probability and to anticipate the policy compromises that they entail. Downs adds that this may be too complex a task and concludes that ‘most voters do not vote as though elections were government-selection mechanisms’ (Downs, 1957: 300). We test Downs’ ‘pessimistic’ conclusion in the case of the 2003 Israeli election, an election that was bound to produce a coalition government and in which the issue of what the possible coalitions were was at the forefront of the campaign. We show that voters’ views about the coalitions that could be formed after the election had an independent effect on vote choice, over and above their views about the parties, the leaders and their ideological orientations. We estimate that for one voter out of ten, coalition preferences were a decisive consideration, that is, they induced the voter to support a party other than the most preferred one. For many others, they were a factor, though perhaps not the dominant one. Furthermore, the least informed were as prone to vote on the basis of coalition preferences as the most informed. Our evidence disconfirms Downs’ pessimistic view that voters will decide not to care about the formation of government. When they are provided with sufficient information about the possible options, voters think ahead about the coalitions that may be formed after the election.

How Do Voters Form Expectations About the Parties’ Chances of Winning the Election? Social Science Quarterly 87 (3): 477-493.
André Blais and Marc André Bodet (2006)

This article examines the factors that form voters’ perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning at both the national and the local levels. Method. We make use of the 1988 Canadian Election Study and we employ a HLM model to estimate the effect of individual-level and contextual-level variables. Results. It is shown that voters’ expectations are affected by a combination of ‘‘objective’’ contextual information and personal preferences (projection effects). Conclusion. The basic contextual information that is utilized to ascertain local chances is the outcome of the previous election in the local constituency, whereas polls are crucial in the case of perceived national chances. We also find that the most politically aware are more strongly influenced by ‘‘objective’’ indicators.

Direct or Indirect? Assessing Two Approaches to the Measurement of Strategic Voting. Electoral Studies 24 : 163-176.
André Blais, Robert Young, and Martin Turcotte (2005)

This paper fits into a growing literature about the conceptualisation and measurement of strategic voting. Here we compare the results obtained by applying a ‘direct’ method of measurement based on respondents’ reported preferences and behavior with those produced by an ‘indirect’ method that relies on modeling the voting act in both the absence and presence of variables about the parties’ chances of winning. Our data are derived from a three-party contest in an single-member plurality system, the 1999 election in the province of Ontario. We find that the two methods converge closely in predicting the aggregate amount of strategic voting, a surprisingly low 4–6%. The direct method, however, is more useful when it comes to identifying which particular individuals did and did not vote strategically.

Testing Zaller’s Reception and Acceptance Model in an Intense Election Campaign. (summary) Political Behavior 30: 259-276.
Agnieszka Dobrzynska and André Blais (2008)

The paper provides a test of Zaller’s reception and acceptance model. The theory describes conditions under which a political message is received, and, if received, accepted or rejected. The study deals with the 1988 Canadian election that was fiercely fought over one central issue, the Free Trade Accord with the United States. We use the 1988 Canadian Election Study campaign rolling cross-section survey, and we test Zaller’s propositions about who is most likely to receive and then accept party messages. Our findings provide little support for the model. We suggest that when an issue is hotly debated in an election campaign voters who receive party messages are able to connect these messages to their values and predispositions whatever their level of political awareness.

Beyond the Gender Gap. Canadian Journal of Political Science 40 (4): 1-17.
Elisabeth Gidengil (2007)

Explaining the Gender Gap in Support for the New Right : The Case of Canada. Comparative Political Studies 38 (10): 1171-1195.
Elisabeth Gidengil, Matthew Hennigar, André Blais and Neil Nevitte (2005)

This article uses data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study to examine a variety of possible explanations for the gender gap in support for the new right. The authors find structural and situational explanations to be of little help in accounting for the gap. What matters are values and beliefs. The gender gap in support for Canada’s new right party reflects differences in views about the appropriate role of the state, law and order, and traditional moral values. It also appears to reflect differences in the salience of politics in men’s and women’s lives. When all of these attitudinal factors are taken into account, the gender gap ceases to be significant. The implications of the findings are considered in light of comparative analyses of gender gaps in vote choice and support for radical right-wing populist political parties in Western Europe.

How Sophisticated Can a Voter Be to Make Causal Attributions? A Response to Gomez and Wilson’s Comment. Political Research Quarterly, 60 (3): 559-560.
Jean-François Godbout, and Éric Bélanger (2007)

The authors present a response to Gomez and Wilson’s comments related to their article “Economic Voting and Political Sophistication in the United States: A Reassessment,” published in this issue of Political Research Quarterly.

Economic Voting and Political Sophistication in the United States: A Reassessment. Political Research Quarterly 60 (3): 541-554.
Jean-François Godbout, and Éric Bélanger (2007)

The authors propose a reexamination of the conditioning effect of political sophistication on economic voting in U.S .presidential elections. Replicating Gomez and Wilson’s (2001) analysis with survey data from the past five American presidential elections (1988–2004), they show that low sophisticates strictly rely on sociotropic economic judgments in their intention to support the incumbent party’s candidate. For their part, high sophisticates appear to use both sociotropic and pocketbook evaluations in their voting intention, but only in elections where the sitting incumbent is running for reelection (1992, 1996, and 2004). Most of these findings do not hold, however, once the postelectoral reported vote is used as the dependent variable. Indeed, the authors find that pocketbook evaluations do not have a significant impact on high sophisticates’ reported vote choice, and they also find important variance in economic voting effects among low sophisticates. The results indicate that high sophisticates continue to use sociotropic evaluations in their voting decision, but only in incumbent elections. Overall, the analysis raises doubts about some of the previous studies’ conclusions and underlines the importance of considering the moderating role of contextual factors such as incumbency and political campaigns in economic voting studies.

Economics, Party, and the Vote: Causality Issue and Panel Data. (summary). American Journal of Political Science 52 (1): 84-95.
Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Richard Nadeau et Angelo Elias (2008)

Conventional wisdom argues that national economic perceptions generally have an important impact on the vote choice in democracies. Recently, a revisionist view has arisen, contending that this link, regularly observed in election surveys, is mostly spurious. According to the argument, partisanship distorts economic perception, thereby substantially exaggerating the real vote connection. These causality issues have not been much investigated empirically, despite their critical importance. Utilizing primarily American, and secondarily British and Canadian, election panel surveys, we confront directly questions of the time dynamic and independent variable exogeneity. We find, after all, economics clearly matters for the vote. Indeed, once these causality concerns are properly taken into account, the impact of economic perceptions emerges as larger than previously thought. As well, the actual impact of partisanship is clearly reduced.

Election Campaigns as Information Campaigns: Who Learns What and Does It Matter? (summary) Political Communication 25 : 229-248.
Richard Nadeau, Neil Nevitte, Elisabeth Gidengil, et André Blais (2008)

During election campaigns political parties compete to inform voters about theirleaders, the issues, and where they stand on these issues. In that sense, election campaigns can be viewed as a particular kind of information campaign. Democratic theory supposes that participatory democracies are better served by an informed electorate than an uninformed one. But do all voters make equal information gains during campaigns? Why do some people make more information gains than others? And does the acquisition of campaign information have any impact on vote intentions? Combining insights from political science research, communications theory, and social psychology, we develop specific hypotheses about these campaign information dynamics. These hypotheses are tested with data from the 1997 Canadian Election Study, which includes a rolling cross-national campaign component, a post-election component, and a media content analysis. The results show that some people do make more information gains than others; campaigns produce a knowledge gap. Moreover, the intensity of media signals on different issues has an important impact on who receives what information, and information gains have a significant impact on vote intentions.

Les politiciens maîtrisent-ils leur image ? Analyse des représentations visuelles souhaitées et projetées par les leaders politiques canadiens dans le débat télévisé francophone de l’élection fédérale de 2000. Communication 25 (1): 46-83.
Theirry Giasson (2006)

La préparation de la représentation visuelle des leaders politiques. Le cas du débat télévisé francophone de l’élection parlementaire fédérale canadienne de 2000. Questions de communication 9 (1): 357-381.
Theirry Giasson (2006)

Comment les leaders politiques préparent-ils leur image en prévision d’un débat télévisé ? Quel rôle jouent leurs conseillers dans cet exercice stratégique ? Quelle est l’importance de la communication non verbale dans la préparation de la performance télévisuelle du candidat. L’article répond à ces questions en étudiant le cas du débat télévisé francophone de l’élection fédérale canadienne en 2000. Deux préoccupations ancrent l’analyse. Premièrement, étudier le rôle des conseillers politiques et leur interaction avec les chefs de parties dans l’exercice de préparation au débat. Deuxièmement, porter une attention particulière à cette interaction dans l’ajustement des composantes de la représentation visuelle, de la communication non verbale des dirigeants politiques. Des entrevues menées auprès des principaux conseillers en communication des cinq leaders politiques ayant participé au débat de 2000 montrent que, au Canada, la préparation d’un débat, l’ajustement de l’image du candidat, ou l’élaboration stratégique de toute autre manifestation de communication politique se réalisent dans un contexte de collaboration et de discussion entre le chef du parti et les stratèges qui le conseillent.

Débats televises et evaluations des candidates: la representation visuelle des politiciens canadiens agit-elle dans la formation des preferences de l’électorat québécois? Canadian Journal of Political Science 38 (4): 867-895.
Thierry Giasson, Richard Nadeau and Éric Bélanger (2005)

Systemic Effects of Televised Candidates’ Debates. (summary) The International Journal of Press/Politics 13 (4): 451-464.
André Blais and Andres M. L. Perrella (2008)

Almost an entire generation of election survey data was pooled together from the United States and Canada to assess the systemic effects of televised debates. Four questions were posed: (1) Is there a general tendency for evaluations of candidates to improve or deteriorate after a debate? (2) Do evaluations of one candidate negatively correlate with changes in evaluations of opponents? (3) Do debates disadvantage incumbents? (4) Do debates advantage less popular candidates? Using “feeling thermometer” items to measure voter evaluations, four patterns are revealed. First, candidates generally gain points. The supposed mudslinging that characterizes a debate appears not to feed into any notion of cynicism. Instead, voters appear to gain an appreciation for the debaters. Second, a candidate’s gain is not earned at the expense of those deemed to have “lost” the match. Third, a debate does not disadvantage an incumbent. A candidate with a record to defend stands about as much chance of benefiting from a debate as a challenger. And fourth, any evaluation gaps before a debate become narrower following a debate. This final effect, which is particularly true of American presidential debates, may reflect a debate’s ability to raise awareness of less popular candidates.

Political Trust and the Vote in Multiparty Elections: The Canadian Case. European Journal of Political Research 44 (1): 121-146.
Éric Bélanger and Richard Nadeau (2005)

While the causes of declining political trust have been investigated extensively in the literature, much less empirical effort has been devoted to the study of its behavioural implications. This article focuses on the decline of trust in Canada during the period 1984 to 1993, and on its effect on Canadian voting behaviour. We build upon M.J. Hetherington’s (‘The effect of political trust on the presidential vote, 1968–1996’, American Political Science Review 93 (1999): 311–326) work to explore the impact of political trust on the vote and on abstention in a multiparty electoral context. Multinomial logit estimations are performed using individual-level survey data from three Canadian federal elections. While distrust is shown to significantly affect electoral participation, thus acting as an alienating factor, the results indicate that decreasing trust acts more as a motivation to support third-party alternatives. The study further demonstrates that, in a multiple party setting, ‘old-line’ major parties electorally suffer from declining political trust, but some third parties benefit more from this phenomenon than others. Contrary to what was the case in the previous two elections, distrustful individuals in 1993 were more likely to vote for the Reform Party or the Bloc Québécois than support the New Democratic Party.

Winning, Losing and Satisfaction with Democracy. (summary). Political Studies 55: 425-441.
André Blais and François Gélineau (2007)

Previous research has shown that those who won an election are more satisfied with the way democracy works than those who lost. What is not clear, however, is whether it is the fact of winning (losing), per se, that generates (dis)satisfaction with democracy. The current study explores this winner/loser gap with the use of the 1997 Canadian federal election panel study. It makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to our understanding of the factors that foster satisfaction with democracy. At the theoretical level, we argue that voters gain different utility from winning at the constituency and national levels in a parliamentary system, and that their expectations about whether they will win or lose affect their degree of satisfaction with democracy. On the methodological front, our analysis includes a control group (non-voters) and incorporates a control for the level of satisfaction prior to the election. The results indicate that the effect of winning and losing on voters’ satisfaction with democracy is significant even when controlling for ex ante satisfaction before the election takes place, and that the outcome of the election in the local constituency matters as much as the outcome of the national election. They fail to show, however, that expectations about the outcome of the election play a significant role in shaping satisfaction with democracy.

What Affects Voter Turnout? Annual Review of Political Science (9): 111-125.
André Blais (2006)

Why is turnout higher in some countries and/or in some elections than in others? Why does it increase or decrease over time? To address these questions, I start with the pioneer studies of Powell and Jackman and then review more recent research. This essay seeks to establish which propositions about the causes of variations in turnout are consistently supported by empirical evidence and which ones remain ambiguous. I point out some enigmas and gaps in the field and suggest directions for future research. Most of the research pertains to established democracies, but analyses of non-established democracies are also included here.

Network Diversity and Vote Choice: Women’s Social Ties and Left Voting in Canada. (summary).Politics and Gender (3): 151-177.
Elisabeth Gidengil, Allison Harell and Bonnie Erickson (2007)

Building on Mark Granovetter’s concept of weak ties, we argue that diverse social networks can enhance the propensity of women to vote for a party of the Left. Using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study, we test two hypotheses: First, the wider the range of women known, the more likely women are to vote for the Left, and second, the wider the range of higher-status women known, the more likely married women are to vote for the Left. We argue that socially communicated cues may be particularly consequential for women because they tend to know less about the parties and their platforms than men do. Accordingly, casual acquaintances can be an important source of new information for women. Women with more diverse ties to other women, we argue, are more likely to encounter women who are voting for the party of the Left and to recognize their shared interest in voting similarly. Our second hypothesis builds on Susan Carroll’s argument that women require sufficient autonomy to express their gender-related interests in their choice of party. We argue that married women’s political.

The Gender Gap in Self-Perceived Understanding of Politics in Canada and the United States (summary). Politics & Gender 4: 535-561.
Elisabeth Gidengil, Janine Giles and Melanee Thomas (2008)

Despite the gains women have made since the advent of second-wave feminism, women remain less confident than men of their ability to understand politics. This gender gap has remained unchanged for decades, yet it has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention in recent years. This article uses data from the 2000 American and 2004 Canadian election studies to assess whether differences in women’s and men’s socioeconomic resources help to explain the gender gap. We also examine whether there are differences in the ways that socioeconomic resources affect women’s and men’s self-perceived ability to understand politics. We focus particular attention on the effects of parenthood on women’s confidence in their understanding of politics. Finally, we consider the role of feminism and gender role conceptions.

Did Bill C-24 Affect Voter Turnout? Evidence from the 2000 and 2004 Elections. Canadian Journal of Political Science 39 (4): 935-943.
Peter John Loewen and André Blais (2006)

Mobilizing Consumers to Take Responsibility for Global Social Justice. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611(1): 157-175.
Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle (2007)

This article studies the antisweatshop movement’s involvement in global social justice responsibility-taking. The movement’s growth (more than one hundred diverse groups) makes it a powerful force of social change in the new millennium. The rise of global corporate capitalism has taken a toll on political responsibility. As a response, four important movement actors—unions, antisweatshop associations, international humanitarian organizations, and Internet spin doctors—have focused on garment-production issues and mobilized consumers into vigilant action. The authors examine these actors, their social justice responsibility claims, and their views on the role of consumers in social justice responsibility-taking. The authors determine four paths of consumer action: (1) support group for other causes, (2) critical mass of shoppers, (3) agent of corporate change, and (4) ontological force for societal change. The authors find that the movement mobilizes consumers through actor-oriented and event-specific (episodic) framing and offer a few results on its ability to change consumer patterns and effect corporate change.

Fashioning Social Justice through Political Consumerism, Capitalism, and the Internet. (summary) Cultural Studies 22 (5): 749-769.
Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle (2008)

Consumers, consumer goods, brand names, logos, and corporations are increasingly important in global struggles for social justice. Global social justice networks use a variety of innovative means to encourage shoppers to consider the hidden politics behind consumer goods and corporate brand names. They are using this power of mobilization to push transnational corporations to take more responsibility for the social consequences of their policy and practice. There is also a ‘pull factor’ in late market capitalism in the form of new market actors, structures, and vulnerabilities that are pulling global corporations into progressive social change. This article studies the role of the outside (market external) push factor of political consumerism and the role of the inside (market internal) capitalist pull factor in fashioning global social justice. It discusses the three basic forms of political consumerism and why political consumerism has become a global political force. It uses the contemporary anti-sweatshop movement to illustrate how political consumerism puts claims on the global economy. By drawing on historical scholarship on the importance of the rise of capitalism for anti-slavery in the 1700s and 1800s, the article argues that late capitalism makes buyer-driven corporations consider global social values in their production practices. A special section focuses on how a particular case of culture jamming combines the push and pull factors to capitalize on the vulnerabilities of late capitalism by using innovative corporate Internet marketing to communicate global anti-sweatshop politics.

The State and Social Capital: An Institutional Theory of Generalized Trust. Comparative Politics 40 (4): 441-467.
Bo Rothstein and Dietlind Stolle (2008)

In the discussion of the sources of social capital, it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. This approach has run into conceptual problems, and empirical evidence has provided only mixed support. An alternate approach is to highlight how social capital is embedded in and linked to formal political and legal institutions. Not all political institutions matter equally, however. Trust thrives most in societies with effective, impartial, and fair street-level bureaucracies. The causal mechanism between these institutional characteristics and generalized trust is illustrated in a cross-national context.

Does Low Turnout Matter? Evidence from the 2000 Canadian Federal Election. (summary). Electoral Studies 26: 589-597.
Daniel Rubenson, André Blais, Patrick Fournier, Elisabeth Gidengil, Neil Nevitte (2007)

We examine whether turnout has a partisan bias; specifically whether higher turnout would benefit parties and policies of the left. Using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study, we analyze differences in opinion between voters and non-voters across a wide spectrum of policy areas in order to assess the extent of divergent views between voters and abstainers. Next, by simulating universal turnout we test the hypothesis that the outcome of the 2000 Canadian Federal Election would have been appreciably different if all citizens were to have voted. We find scant evidence for a partisan effect of turnout in Canada. Voters’ opinions are, by and large, representative of the larger population and universal turnout would not have changed the election result.

Review Article: Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant? The Debate about the Alleged Decline of Social Capital and Civic Engagement in Western Societies. British Journal of Political Science 35 (1): 149-167.
Dietlind Stolle and Marc Hooghe (2005)

Politics in the Supermarket: Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation. International Political Science Review 26 (3): 245-269.
Dietlind Stolle, Marc Hooghe, and Michele Micheletti (2005)

Both anecdotal and case-study evidence have long suggested that consumer behavior such as the buying or boycotting of products and services for political and ethical reasons can take on political significance. Despite recent claims that such behavior has become more widespread in recent years, political consumerism has not been studied systematically in survey research on political participation. Through the use of a pilot survey conducted among 1015 Canadian, Belgian, and Swedish students, we ascertain whether political consumerism is a sufficiently consistent behavioral pattern to be measured and studied meaningfully. The data from this pilot survey allow us to build a “political consumerism index” incorporating attitudinal, behavioral, and frequency measurements. Our analysis of this cross-national student sample suggests that political consumerism is primarily a tool of those who are distrustful of political institutions. However, political consumers have more trust in other citizens, and they are disproportionately involved in check-book organizations. They also tend to score highly on measures of political efficacy and post-materialism. We strongly suggest including measurements of political consumerism together with other emerging forms of activism in future population surveys on political participation.