About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
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Description
Elections are at the heart of our democracy. Understanding citizens’ decisions to vote or to abstain in elections is crucial, especially when turnout is declining. In this book, André Blais and Jean-François Daoust provide an original and elegant model that explains why people vote, based on four factors: political interest, sense of civic duty, perceived importance of the election, and ease of voting. Their findings are strongly supported by empirical evidence from elections in five countries. The analysis is compelling and demonstrates the power of their model to provide a provocative and parsimonious explanation of voter turnout in elections.
Contributor Notes
André Blais is one of the world’s leading experts on voting behaviour and electoral systems. He is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal where he holds the Research Chair in Electoral Studies. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a research fellow with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC), former president of the Canadian Political Science Association, and past chair of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).
Professor Blais was the principal co-investigator of a Collaborative Research Initiative project (Making Electoral Democracy Work) with economists, political scientists, and psychologists from Canada, Europe, and the United States on the impact of electoral systems on the behaviour of voters and political parties. He was also a co-investigator of the Canadian Election Study from 1988 to 1993 and the principal investigator from 1997 to 2006. He has published twenty-two books, eight edited volumes, more than two hundred journal articles, and more than one hundred chapters in edited volumes.
Jean-François Daoust studies political behaviour and public opinion. He is a lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Previously, he was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship at McGill University (2018-20) and a visiting scholar at Harvard University (Winter 2018).
Professor Daoust combines a comparative approach with a specialization in Canadian politics. He has published many articles, appearing in journals such as the Journal of Politics, Party Politics, West European Politics, Electoral Studies, Representation, Government and Opposition, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and Perspectives on Politics.
