Suchergebnisse

Résumé
À la lumière de récents développements en politique québécoise, le présent article jette un regard critique sur deux éléments controversés entourant la légitimité du référendum sur la souveraineté du Québec de 1995, soit (1) le rejet de bulletins de vote le jour du scrutin et (2) l'effet du rallye pour l'unité canadienne tenu le 27 octobre 1995. Cette analyse mobilise des données historiques agrégées d'Élections Québec ainsi que des données individuelles de sondage collectées par Canadian Facts Limited en octobre 1995 (n = 930). Les résultats ne révèlent aucun prédicteur attitudinal du rejet de bulletins de vote à travers les circonscriptions québécoises. Des analyses suggèrent cependant l'existence d'un impact statistiquement significatif du rassemblement du love-in qui pourrait avoir profité à la cause fédéraliste à quelques jours du vote, particulièrement à l'extérieur de l'île de Montréal. Cette recherche vise à contribuer au débat public sur la transparence des processus démocratiques en contexte référendaire.

Le Canada moderne a-t-il pour vocation de surpasser ses divisions au point de les sublimer par l'horizon d'une unité indissoluble, d'un unique demos? Aspire-t-il plutôt, comme d'autres démocraties fédérales qui sont traversées par une diversité nationale et régionale profonde, à exister malgré les divisions qui le caractérisent?

AbstractPatterns of social networks in plurinational societies remain understudied in the inter‐group contact literature. In Canada, a significant number of authors have studied political divides between Quebecers and other Canadians, but little is still known about the scope and determinants of the social disconnect between both communities. This paper provides the first quantitative measure of the social networking gap between Canada's 'two solitudes' using behavioural data. Our analysis mobilises the Facebook Connectedness Index (2020), which provides district‐level connectivity estimates between all active Facebook users in Canada. Results obtained via linear regression models show that population size, distance and self‐isolation patterns cannot account for the significant connectivity gap between Quebec and the rest of Canada. However, bilingualism in Quebec is positively correlated with higher inter‐regional networks, suggesting asymmetrical linguistic exchanges. These results empirically confirm decades of anecdotal accounts about the existence of a social disconnect between Canada's French‐ and English‐speaking communities.

The use of negative political communication is a predominant characteristic of modern politics. However, literature doesn't provide an answer to the following question: what explains fluctuations in the use of negative messages within political organisations during a given political campaign? The present paper examines this question in the context of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Data consists of all tweets distributed by the official Twitter account of both campaign organisations (@YesScotlandand@UK_Together) between June 16, 2014 and September 17, 2014. Results are obtained by a non-parametric local regression and by time-series regression analyses. Our model demonstrates that having an advance in the polls had a statistically significant influence on the tweet sentiment of at least one organisation during the referendum campaign: Better Together's messages were more negative when it was ahead in the polls. Meanwhile, Yes Scotland's messages were more negative after each of the leaders' debates.

Abstract
Existing studies of policy diffusion rely on quantitative or qualitative methods depending on the number of cases and the policy at hand. Studies of diffusion in Canada, for instance, almost exclusively use qualitative techniques due to the limited number of subnational units. In this article, we explore whether machine learning techniques can complement qualitative approaches in these contexts. In 2015, the Canadian federal government decided to impose the legalization of cannabis and gave the provinces and territories a short time frame to develop and implement legislation. Previous qualitative research on this case found that within-province policy development was more salient than interprovincial diffusion. Using a plagiarism detection software, we find limited evidence of exact matches between provincial legislation, but a cosine score approach reveals significant similarities across provinces. These results suggest that computational and qualitative techniques together should be used where possible to identify and analyze policy diffusion in certain contexts.

AbstractSecularism—i.e., the separation between the state and religious institutions—is a fundamental characteristic of liberal democracies, yet support for secular arrangements varies significantly across Western countries. In Canada, such attitudinal divergences are observable at the regional level, with citizens from Quebec displaying higher levels of support for secularism than other Canadians. In this paper, we test three hypotheses to account for this regional discrepancy: religiosity, liberal values, and out-group prejudice. Using data from an online panel survey (n = 2,000), our findings suggest that support for secularism in Quebec is mostly explained by the province's lower baseline levels of religiosity, anticlerical feelings, and by its distinctive understanding of liberalism. These factors are likely to result from Quebec's unique religious and sociohistorical history. Results also suggest that while negative feelings toward religious minorities are positively correlated with support for secularism across the entire country, negative feelings toward ethnic minorities are associated with lower support for secularism in Quebec. These findings disprove the commonly held assumption according to which support for secularism is driven by ethnic prejudice in Quebec.

AbstractIn Canada, federal institutions must provide governmental services to all citizens in the country's two official languages: French and English. This paper uses a survey experiment to test exposure to written English as a determinant of support for official bilingualism in the French‐speaking province of Quebec. The data emanate from an exit poll conducted in two Quebec electoral districts during the 2019 Canadian federal elections (n = 430). Results suggest the existence of heterogeneous experimental effects depending on vote choice. Indeed, Bloc Québécois voters—the federal party most strongly supportive of linguistic rights—are disproportionately supportive of institutional bilingualism when randomly exposed to written English on the survey questionnaire. These results are robust to the inclusion of socio‐demographic and attitudinal control variables, including support for Quebec independence. Our paper bolsters causal claims about the contextual determinants of in‐group favouritism and cultural threat in divided societies.