Selected publications
Below is a selection of some of my favourite publications that best represent my current research interests.
You can find more information on my Google Scholar page.
Books
[2020] The motivation to vote: Explaining Electoral Participation.
André Blais and Jean-François Daoust.
Vancouver: UBC Press. [Access]
[2000] To Vote or Not To Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice Theory.
André Blais.
Vancouver: Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. [Access]
Book chapters
[2023] Electoral Rules.
André Blais and Damien Bol.
In: A Political Science Experiment. Joshua Tucker and Andrew Rudalevige (Eds). [Access]
Peer-reviewed articles
[2023] Where Should Multinationals Pay Taxes?
Vincent Arel-Bundock and André Blais.
International Studies Quarterly, 67(2), sqad012. [Access]
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The international tax system is a pillar of the post-war economic order, but it faces major challenges with the rise of global value chains, digitalization, and tax avoidance. Debates over international tax reform usually occur within a small epistemic community of experts and technocrats. In this article, we step outside this restricted circle to assess the sources of bottom-up legitimacy and support for the rules that govern where multinationals must report profits and which governments are entitled to tax those profits. We conduct survey experiments in Brazil, France, and the United States to assess mass attitudes toward the allocation of the tax base across countries. We find that people’s views clash with the core principles of the current regime, but are aligned with reform proposals that allocate more taxing rights to market jurisdictions. These findings are strikingly consistent across three countries and three distinct studies. At first glance, the consistency of attitudes across countries could spell good things for international cooperation in this arena. However, we also find a significant level of “home bias” in the public’s views on tax allocation. These results shed new light on the legitimacy of tax reform and on the prospects for cooperation in a key area of international economic relations.
[2023] What Kind of Electoral Outcome do People Think is Good for Democracy?
André Blais, Damien Bol, Shaun Bowler, David M. Farrell, Annika Fréden, Martial Foucault, Emmanuel Heisbourg, Romain Lachat, Ignacio Lago, Peter John Loewen, Miroslav Nemčok, Jean-Benoir Pilet, and Carolina Plescia.
Political Studies, 71(4): 1068-1089. [Access]
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There is perennial debate in comparative politics about electoral institutions, but what characterizes this debate is the lack of consideration for citizens’ perspective. In this paper, we report the results of an original survey conducted on representative samples in 15 West European countries (N = 15,414). We implemented an original instrument to elicit respondents’ views by asking them to rate “real but blind” electoral outcomes. With this survey instrument, we aimed to elicit principled rather than partisan preferences regarding the kind of electoral outcomes that citizens think is good for democracy. We find that West Europeans do not clearly endorse a majoritarian or proportional vision of democracy. They tend to focus on aspects of the government rather than parliament when they pass a judgment. They want a majority government that has few parties and enjoys wide popular support. Finally, we find only small differences between citizens of different countries.
[2023] Am I Obliged to Vote? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Compulsory Voting with Ill-informed Voters.
Mathieu Turgeon and André Blais.
Political Science Research and Methods, 11(1): 207-213. [Access]
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People behave in accordance with social norms when they feel observed or when they know their behaviour is monitored or could be disclosed. Get-Out-The-Vote experiments show that individuals are more likely to vote when told that their behaviour will be disclosed. In everyday life, however, there is much uncertainty about whether people will indeed know if one turns out to vote. I argue that fear of disapproval should only mobilize citizens to vote when they expect that their (non-)voting will be visible to others. Using original survey data from Canada, I measure expectations about whether others will vote, would disapprove if the person abstains, and will know whether they have voted or not. Furthermore, I distinguish between expectations concerning the partner, family, friends, and neighbours. Results suggest that respondents who expect others to vote are themselves more likely to vote, but I find no evidence that disapproval and visibility are related to turnout in everyday life.
[2022] Does Voting in One Election Reduce the Expected Cost of Voting in Subsequent Elections?
Semra Sevi and André Blais.
Canadian Journal of Political Science, 55(2): 486-495. [Access]
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The decision to vote is partly based on the expected cost of voting. We test the hypothesis that voting in one election reduces the expected cost of voting in the following election, as voters learn that the cost of voting is low. Using three different datasets—the National Electors Study conducted during the 2019 Canadian federal election; a two-wave YouGov survey in British Columbia and Quebec in 2008 and 2009, at the time of the federal and subsequent provincial elections; and a five-wave survey conducted for the Making Electoral Democracy Work project in Bavaria in 2013 and 2014, before and after the Land, federal and European elections—we find that voters who voted in a previous election perceive it will be easier to vote in a subsequent election. We also find evidence that voting leads to more accurate estimates of how little time it takes to vote.
[2022] Do people want smarter ballots?
André Blais, Carolina Plescia, and Semra Servi
Research and Politics, 8(4), 20531680211062668. [Access]
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We ascertain whether citizens want to have smart ballots, that is, whether they appreciate having the possibility to express some support for more than one option (expression across options) and to indicate different levels of support for these options (expression within options). We conducted two independent yet complementary survey experiments at the time of the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries to examine which voting method citizens prefer, one with the real candidates in the states holding Democratic primaries and one with fictitious candidates in the whole country. In both surveys, respondents were asked to vote using four different voting rules: single, approval, rank, and point (score). After they cast their vote, respondents were asked how satisfied they were using each voting method. The findings are consistent in both studies: the single vote is the most preferred voting method. We show that this is a reflection of a status quo bias, as citizens’ views are strongly correlated with age.
[2021] Party Preference Representation.
André Blais, Eric Guntermann, Vincent Arel-Bundock, Ruth Dassonneville, Jean-François Laslier, Gabrielle Pélokin-Skulski
Party Politics, 28(1): 48-60. [Access]
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Political parties are key actors in electoral democracies: they organize the legislature, form governments, and citizens choose their representatives by voting for them. How citizens evaluate political parties and how well the parties that citizens evaluate positively perform thus provide useful tools to estimate the quality of representation from the individual’s perspective. We propose a measure that can be used to assess party preference representation at both the individual and aggregate levels, both in government and in parliament. We calculate the measure for over 160,000 survey respondents following 111 legislative elections held in 38 countries. We find little evidence that the party preferences of different socio-economic groups are systematically over or underrepresented. However, we show that citizens on the right tend to have higher representation scores than their left-wing counterparts. We also find that whereas proportional systems do not produce higher levels of representation on average, they reduce variance in representation across citizens.
Reports
[2021] The Burden of Voting in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election.
André Blais and Semra Sevi.
Research report prepared for Elections Canada. [Access]
