Political Engagement in Canadian City Elections directly addresses the dearth of scholarly attention to political engagement at the municipal level, an area that has long lagged behind the study of federal and provincial elections in Canada. The book is built around the Canadian Municipal Election Study (CMES), a dataset focused on the 2017–2018 municipal elections cycle, which provides essential data about not only who participates in municipal elections, but also why and how they do so.
This volume marks a substantial advancement in the study of local political behaviour in Canada. As such, its biggest strength lies in its comprehensive approach to examining political engagement within the Canadian context. By focusing on elections in eight of Canada's largest cities (namely Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Mississauga, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City), the authors provide, one chapter after the other, a detailed examination of voter turnout, political interest and the factors that drive (dis)engagement at the local level across the country.
The main contribution of this book is its challenge to the assumption that findings from federal and provincial elections can be seamlessly applied to the local level. The authors (rightly) argue that even though local politics provides more opportunities for engagement than other levels of government, research in this area remains critically underdeveloped. The research presented in this volume is both timely and necessary, given the increasing importance of understanding political behaviour at the local level. Indeed, as some of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century will inevitably involve local politics, this focus on municipal political engagement is especially relevant.
The volume makes significant contributions to the understanding of the relationship between diversity, economic status, and political engagement in municipal elections. In Chapter 2, Wallace et al. find that immigrants are less likely to vote in municipal elections compared to federal ones. Chapter 3, by Anderson and Stephenson, explores the impact of economic status on political engagement, confirming that home ownership, as a form of wealth, significantly influences local political interest and turnout. In Chapter 4, Daoust examines various forms of diversity (ethnic, economic and linguistic), finding no direct effect on turnout, except in Montreal, where diversity is positively associated with higher voter participation.
Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the factors influencing voting behaviour, particularly in relation to incumbents. In Chapter 6, Bélanger and Dassonneville investigate economic voting in Canadian municipal elections, revealing that voters do hold incumbent mayors accountable for local economic conditions, distinguishing between local and national economic factors. Meanwhile, Chapter 7, by Lucas, examines why voters support incumbent city councillors, finding that factors such as satisfaction with the mayor, risk tolerance and ideological congruence (on the left-right scale) play significant roles.
Finally, the importance of local issues and contexts is explored in the later chapters. In Chapter 5, Erl investigates voter participation in school board elections (which are very rarely studied), finding that local context significantly impacts behaviour, with little uniformity across municipalities. Chapter 8, by Breux and Couture, examines how mobility issues like public transit and traffic congestion affect voters’ preferences, with these issues’ importance varying greatly across cities. Lastly, Chapter 9, by McGregor, Matthews and Stephenson, shows that voters prioritize candidates’ performance and specific issues over ideology.
Despite many strengths, the book does have limitations, which the volume itself acknowledges for the most part. One notable issue is the challenge of generalizability, or in other words, the external validity of these results. The findings, which are drawn from a diverse range of cities and local contexts, sometimes make it difficult to draw broad conclusions about municipal political behaviour across Canada. This variation highlights the heterogeneity of urban electoral environments, raising important questions about the consistency of political engagement across Canadian cities. Much like how political engagement varies across provinces and is not uniform nationwide, some chapters suggest that Canadian cities should be considered distinct entities with unique forms of political engagement. Furthermore, the book's emphasis on elections in larger cities may overlook the full range of political engagement occurring at the local level, particularly in smaller municipalities where nonpartisan systems are much more common. Including these smaller communities and considering other forms of engagement could lead to an even more comprehensive understanding of local political behaviour.
Overall, this volume is an essential contribution to the study of political behaviour in Canadian municipal elections. It provides a much-needed examination of who engages in local politics, why they do so, and how their engagement is shaped. For scholars and practitioners interested in local political behaviour, this book and the dataset it relies on are invaluable resources that lay a strong foundation for future research in the vital yet currently underexplored area of Canadian local political behaviour.
