Research

Centre members have an active research agenda focused on the following three core themes:

Elections, Parties, and Public Opinion. Free and fair elections are at the heart of the modern democratic process. They are the primary mechanism to ensure that policy outcomes reflect the will of the people, as citizens periodically cast their ballots for the party or candidate that they believe best represents their interests. This research theme is focused on the systematic study of the key actors in modern elections, citizens and political parties, and the role that campaigns, public opinion, the media, and institutions play in shaping electoral outcomes.

Challenging the State: Theory and Practice. The failure of government to represent the will of the people is a concern of theorists and practitioners alike. Some scholars propose internal changes to the practice of democracy, such as deliberative forums, as a way to remedy the potential ills of representative democracy.  Other scholars look outside conventional politics, examining social movements and protest to understand how they give voice to marginalized groups, influence political elites, and affect social change.

Democratic Governance and Public Policy. Democratic governance is the process of aggregating citizen preferences, interpreting the public will, and transforming this will into policy outcomes. It is a complex process that requires an understanding of key political institutions, how power is distributed and exercised within government, and the relationship between governmental actors and non-governmental actors and civil society.

Projects

These are Genome BC ($270,000, 2008-2010) and Genome Canada ($486,000, 2010-2012) funded projects that examine biotechnology policy in Canada, the United States, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, and South Africa, particularly as it relates to the wine industry. There are three components of the study: genomics regulation, genomic innovations, and public opinion toward biotechnologies, regulatory actors, and stakeholders. A significant part of the funding goes to graduate training and a postdoctoral research fellow position. To date, we have produced four refereed journal articles, organized a major conference, and presented papers at conferences. Additional manuscripts are in progress, including an edited volume to be published as a part of Routledge’s Genomics and Society series.

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The Canadian Election Study (CES) is a world-class study of Canadian elections and related attitudes of key importance to the study and understanding of democratic processes and elections. In terms of global research stature, it is comparable to other national efforts such as the American National Election Studies and the British Election Study, among others. Funding provided by SSHRC and Elections Canada for $850,000.

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Tamir was named a Carnegie Scholar for the 2009-2011 period. This project examines the public debates that are generated as a result of dual constitutional commitments to Islamic law and liberal rights in Malaysia and Egypt. In both countries, constitutional provisions enshrining Islamic law and liberal rights lay the seeds for legal friction, and courtrooms serve as important sites of contention between groups with competing visions for their states and societies. The project explores how litigation provokes and shapes competing conceptions of national and religious identity, resolves or exacerbates contending visions of Islamic law, and ultimately bolsters or undermines public perceptions of government legitimacy.

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This is a SSHRC Canadian Environmental Issues (CEI) project undertaken with collaborators at several universities across Canada examining government capacity to adapt to climate change in four sectors: finance, transportation, forestry and infrastructure.

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Funded by a SSHRC research grant, this is a study about the ideological and organizational evolution of the New Democratic Party and other social democratic political parties in a changing and increasingly volatile electoral environment. It examines three broad questions: (1) How have the NDP’s official ideological and programmatic orientations changed since 1993? (2) What is the current structure of intra-party opinion on policy issues: has it changed in the last decade? To what extent have the NDP’s programmatic orientations been constrained by members’ opinions? (3) To what extent have the NDP’s variable electoral results and support within groups in the electorate been linked to changing political values and opinion on policy issues, especially those issues most associated with social democracy? Our research involves a national mail survey of NDP party members, interviews with current and past party elites, analysis of party documents and publications, and analysis of survey data from the Canadian Elections studies from 1988 to 2006.

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Funded by a SSHRC standard research grant, this project attempts to fill significant gaps in our understanding of the effects of polls on electoral outcomes by answering two questions. First: how do voters use the information contained in polls as they make their voting decisions? Second: given the way citizens use poll information, does the departure of polling information from actual collective intentions—a result of pure sampling error, polling firms’ different polling practices, and the media’s use of polls—create bias in electoral outcomes?

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This is a study of international forest policy governance undertaken for the Vienna-based International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). It examines alternatives to the creation of an international forest treaty in the sector, focusing on the potential use of EU-type multi-level governance arrangements such as subsidiary and the Open Method of Coordination (OMC).

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This is a SSHRC-funded project examining the policy analytical capacity of the federal, provincial and territorial governments through large-n survey research.

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This project examines the following research questions in a comparative context. When do governments choose to emphasize policy priorities in line with public preferences? Specifically, to what extent does government responsiveness to public opinion depend on the electoral cycle, electoral uncertainty and institutional, legislative constraints? The major contribution of the project is the testing of the causal mechanisms of policy responsiveness, including a previously unconsidered causal mechanism – public opinion as a veto. A SSHRC seed grant for this project has been provided by Simon Fraser University. Applications for additional funding are being prepared.

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The Polling Observatory provides an analysis and discussion of Canadian Federal vote intention polls and their media coverage. It also acts to disseminate the latest research on polling accuracy and poll effects on voters. The site is funded by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, The University of British Colombia and hosted by The Department of Politics and International Relations, The University of Oxford.

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