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In multiparty systems, maintaining a distinct and positive partisan identity may be more difficult for those who identify with minor parties, because such parties lack the rich history of success that could reinforce a positive social standing in the political realm. Yet, we know little about the unique nature of minor partisan identities because partisanship tends to be most prominent in single-member plurality systems that tend toward two dominant parties, such as the United States. Canada provides a fascinating case of a single-member plurality electoral system that has consistently led to a multiparty system, ideal for studying minor party identity. We use large datasets of public opinion data, collected in 2019 and 2021 in Canada, to test a Lasso regression, a machine learning technique, to identify the factors that are the most important to predict whether partisans of minor political parties will seek in-group distinctiveness, meaning that they seek a different and positive political identity from the major political parties they are in competition with, or take part in out-group favouritism, meaning that they seek to become closer major political parties. We find that party rating is the most important predictor. The more partisans of the minor party rate their own party favourably, the more they take part in distinctiveness. We also find that the more minor party partisans perceive the major party as favourable, the more favouritism they will show towards the major party.

In this research note, we document the extent to which negative beliefs about women's capacity to hold public office are widespread in Canada. Using a list experiment, our results demonstrate that many Canadians believe that men are “naturally better” leaders than are women and that women are “too emotional” and “too nice” for politics. While some groups are willing to explicitly own these views when asked directly about them (for example, older people, men, those who are more conservative and religious), others are unwilling to do so unless social desirability is mitigated (for example, younger people, left-leaning). By overcoming concerns with social desirability, we show that women still face explicit, often sexist, barriers in political work.

Previous research has shown that the public tends to see some groups as less deserving of social rights. Our focus in this article is whether they are also seen as less entitled to engage in political claims-making. Recent theorists of inclusive nationalism argue that whether minorities are seen as having the right to codetermine the future may depend on whether the majority believes minorities are morally committed to the nation. Drawing on a unique survey experiment, we test this intuition by analyzing how majority perceptions of a minority's commitment to the larger society influence support for claims-making by immigrants and national minorities. We show that immigrants, French-speaking Quebeckers, and Indigenous peoples are judged more harshly about their right to make claims and that this is in part explained by the majority's views that these groups are not, in fact, committed members of the larger political community.

A small but growing number of people identify as transgender or non-binary. Their political attitudes and behavior are important to examine, but we know little about them. We argue that current survey research practices for identifying transgender and non-binary respondents fall short in treating “transgender” as something to ascribe onto people rather than as a social identity. Current practices likewise show evidence of measurement error. We illustrate the consequences of common conceptualization and measurement issues by analyzing two large-sample online surveys–the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Election Study (CES) online panels. We find that the 2019 CES generates inflated estimates of the percentage of non-binary people and potentially distorts the correlates of non-binary identity because transgender men and women select the same “Other” response category as non-binary respondents. We conclude with recommendations for future political surveys.

The gender gap in voting is one of the most well-documented findings in political behavior across democracies. However, gender gap research has traditionally assumed that everyone is either a man or a woman. How do nonbinary people differ from men and women in their party identification and voting behavior? We answer this question using data from the 2021 Canadian Election Study online panel. Nonbinary people are much less likely to identify with and vote Liberal or Conservative and much more likely to identify with and vote for the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) than both men and women. Many of these gaps persist even when restricting the analysis to LGBTQ respondents, adjusting for demographic variables that predict nonbinary identity, and adjusting for issue attitudes. Nonbinary people’s distinctiveness from men and women suggests that researchers need to incorporate nonbinary people into studies of political behavior.

In this study, we investigate how partisan motivations shape voters’ reactions to a political scandal by drawing on a unique survey experiment fielded immediately after Justin Trudeau’s brownface/blackface scandal broke during the 2019 Canadian election. We thus explore motivated reasoning in real time in a competitive and highly partisan election context. Are voters more willing to forgive politicians for past behavior when their own party leader’s impropriety is cued? To what extent do personal interests, such as cross-pressures or electoral concerns, affect the motivation to forgive? Our findings show that partisan-motivated reasoning is overwhelmingly powerful, producing politically biased judgments of politicians implicated in scandals. Furthermore, voters’ willingness to forgive scandals is also influenced by “strategic” considerations, in that preferences over which political party wins or loses in the election affect opinions about whether someone should be forgiven or whether the scandal is considered important at all. However, we find no evidence that personal involvement in the issue raised by the scandal conditions partisan motivations. We posit that the environment—in this case, a competitive election—is an important consideration for understanding the extent and limits of partisan-motivated reasoning.

In countries with well-developed welfare state systems, it is often claimed that racial or ethnic minorities impose a heavy burden on social assistance programs without contributing to public goods. In this study, we consider the attitudinal effects of anecdotal reports of tax cheating by minorities. We conduct survey experiments in France and the United States to assess if people react more harshly to tax fraud perpetrated by members of a minority group rather than the majority group. We find no evidence that minority status affects judgments and perceptions about tax fraud, including among those on the right end of the political spectrum. Tax fraud is considered unacceptable regardless of the culprit’s origin.

Politics is often seen as a zero-sum game, so understanding how competition affects political behavior is a fruitful, yet underexplored area of study. Reactions to competition are known to be gendered, as women are significantly more aware of and averse to the potential negative effects of competition—risk and loss—than are men. Participants (n = 1296) completed an experiment involving a non-political competitive task, where they were randomly assigned to receive a negative cue about their individual or gendered group's poor performance. Following this, we assessed their levels of political ambition, efficacy, interest, and sexism. We hypothesize that: (1) negative performance feedback on a competitive task will decrease political ambition, efficacy, and interest among women; and (2) men who receive negative feedback about their performance relative to women will report higher levels of sexism. We use a non-binary measure of masculinity/femininity that helps explain how gender identity affects these outcomes. Evidence does not support the conclusion that negative feedback about competition contributes to women’s lower levels of psychological engagement with politics. However, results show that negative performance feedback, particularly when it is relative to women, increases sexism in men. Furthermore, the effect of negative feedback on sexism is larger when men identify more strongly as masculine. We argue that threatening men’s relative performance partly explains larger trends of backlash against women in politics.

Liberal nationalists argue that identification with the nation promotes feelings of mutual obligation, including support for redistribution. Existing attempts to test this hypothesis have focused on whether the higher sense of national identity among the majority increases support redistribution. We argue for a twofold shift in focus. First, beyond the majority’s own national identity, we need to explore their perceptions of whether minorities share this identity. Second, we need to shift from one-dimensional ideals of ‘identity’ to more complex ideas of attachment and commitment. Do members of the majority view minorities as committed to the nation and willing to make sacrifices for it? Drawing on a custom-designed online survey in Canada, we show that three salient out-groups (Aboriginal peoples, French-speaking Canadians and immigrants) are seen by majority respondents as less committed to Canada, and that this is a powerful predictor of support for general and inclusive redistribution.

The 2019 Canadian Election Study (CES) consists of two separate surveys with campaign-period rolling cross-sections and post-election follow-ups. The parallel studies were conducted online and through a random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone survey. Both continue the long tradition of gathering information about the attitudes, opinions, preferences and behaviours of the Canadian public. The online survey, in particular, introduces some important innovations that open up the potential for exciting new research on subgroups in the electorate.

We introduce thePolitics and the Life Sciencesspecial issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences. This issue represents the second special issue funded by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that adheres to the Open Science Framework for registered reports (RR). Here pre-analysis plans (PAPs) are peer-reviewed and given in-principle acceptance (IPA) prior to data being collected and/or analyzed, and are published contingent upon the preregistration of the study being followed as proposed. Bound by a common theme of the importance of incorporating psychophysiological perspectives into the study of politics, broadly defined, the articles in this special issue feature a unique set of research questions and methodologies. In the following, we summarize the findings, discuss the innovations produced by this research, and highlight the importance of open science for the future of political science research.

Women politicians have long faced a gendered media environment, where their novelty, potential (in)competence, family, and appearance have been over-emphasized in comparison to men. Much of this li...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread calls from government officials for people to drastically change their behaviour to slow the spread of the disease. From self-quarantining to maintaining physical distance from others, these measures only work if there is widespread adherence. In this article, we explore how one's sense of duty and one's perception of other people's behaviour shape who follows health recommendations. Drawing on the 2020 Democracy Checkup survey, we show that one's own sense of duty and a belief that most other Canadians are adhering to the rules decrease how often people report breaking the rules. Furthermore, among those who lack a sense of duty, a belief that others are following the rules is particularly important. We conclude by discussing how collective action in a pandemic depends on ensuring a broad sense that Canadians are in the crisis together, with everyone doing their part.

Political tolerance is a core democratic value, yet a long-standing research agenda suggests that citizens are unwilling to put this value into practice when confronted by groups that they dislike. One of the most disliked groups, especially in recent times, are those promoting racist ideologies. Racist speech poses a challenge to the ideal of political tolerance because it challenges another core tenet of democratic politics – the value of equality. How do citizens deal with threats to equality when making decisions about what speech they believe should be allowed in their communities? In this article, we contribute to the rich literature on political tolerance, but focus on empathy as a key, and understudied, personality trait that should be central to how – and when – citizens reject certain types of speech. Empathy as a cognitive trait relates to one’s capacity to accurately perceive the feeling state of another person. Some people are more prone to worry and care about the feelings of other people, and such empathetic people should be most likely to reject speech that causes harm. Using a comparative online survey in Canada (n = 1,555) and the United States (n = 1627) conducted in 2017, we examine whether empathetic personalities - as measured by a modified version of the Toronto Empathy Scale - predict the tolerance of political activities by “least-liked” as well as prejudicially motivated groups. Using both a standard least-liked political tolerance battery, as well as a vignette experiment that manipulates group type, we test whether higher levels of trait empathy negatively correlate with tolerance of racist speech. Our findings show that empathy powerfully moderates the ways in which citizens react to different forms of objectionable speech.

This chapter explores the sources of an inclusive solidarity in diverse societies, building on the intuition in liberal nationalism that solidarity is rooted in a sense of shared membership in a national community, but moving beyond the focus on the national identity of the majority population which dominates existing research. The chapter examines the public’s perceptions of the deservingness of minorities for social support. If nationhood entails an ethic of membership, the public’s judgements of deservingness will depend on whether these groups are seen as committed to the national community, as willing members of ‘us’. Empirical support is drawn from a custom-designed survey in Canada, which explored majority perceptions of immigrants and ethnic minorities. The findings confirmed that judgements of deservingness for social support reflect whether the majority thinks newcomers and minority groups identify with the national community, accept the community’s rules, and are prepared to contribute to thesharing of resources when they can. The chapter reflects on the empirical issues and normative dilemmas raised by these findings.

Research on gendered political behaviour has been heavily influenced by feminist scholarship in understanding gender inequalities. Yet it has been more difficult to integrate the insights of more recent waves of feminist critics, notably among intersectional scholars. The focus has been on differences between women and men, rather than among differently situated women. This article addresses the difficulties of integrating intersections into large-n style studies of political behaviour using “situated comparisons” (Dhamoon, 2010). It then provides an analysis of gender gaps in turnout and civic engagement across ethnoracial groups in Canada using the Ethnic Diversity Survey (2002).It concludes by arguing that the study of gender and political behaviour must find a place for intersectional feminist approaches.

Employing a comparative experimental design drawing on over 18,000 interviews across eleven countries on four continents, this article revisits the discussion about the economic and cultural drivers of attitudes towards immigrants in advanced democracies. Experiments manipulate the occupational status, skin tone and national origin of immigrants in short vignettes. The results are most consistent with a Sociotropic Economic Threat thesis: In all countries, higher-skilled immigrants are preferred to their lower-skilled counterparts at all levels of native socio-economic status (SES). There is little support for the Labor Market Competition hypothesis, since respondents are not more opposed to immigrants in their own SES stratum. While skin tone itself has little effect in any country, immigrants from Muslim-majority countries do elicit significantly lower levels of support, and racial animus remains a powerful force.

In this article, we report on the results of an experimental study to estimate the effects of delivering information about racial disparities in COVID-19-related death rates. On the one hand, we find that such information led to increased perception of risk among those Black respondents who lacked prior knowledge; and to increased support for a more concerted public health response among those White respondents who expressed favorable views towards Blacks at baseline. On the other hand, for Whites with colder views towards Blacks, the informational treatment had the opposite effect: it led to decreased risk perception and to lower levels of support for an aggressive response. Our findings highlight that well-intentioned public health campaigns spotlighting disparities might have adverse side effects and those ought to be considered as part of a broader strategy. The study contributes to a larger scholarly literature on the challenges of making and implementing social policy in racially-divided societies.

Past work suggests that support for welfare in the United States is heavily influenced by citizens' racial attitudes. Indeed, the idea that many Americans think of welfare recipients as poor Blacks (and especially as poor Black women) has been a common explanation for Americans’ lukewarm support for redistribution. This article draws on a new online survey experiment conducted with national samples in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, designed to extend research on how racialised portrayals of policy beneficiaries affect attitudes toward redistribution. A series of innovative survey vignettes has been designed that experimentally manipulate the ethno-racial background of beneficiaries for various redistributive programmes. The findings provide, for the first time, cross-national, cross-domain and cross-ethno-racial extensions of the American literature on the impact of racial cues on support for redistributive policy. The results also demonstrate that race clearly matters for policy support, although its impact varies by context and by the racial group under consideration.

Multicultural policy is an increasingly salient, and contested, topic in both academic and public debate about how to manage increasing ethnic diversity. In spite of the longstanding commitment to multiculturalism policy in Canada, however, we have only a partial understanding of public attitudes on this issue. Current research tends to look at general attitudes regarding diversity and accommodation–rarely at attitudes towards specific multicultural policies. We seek to (partly) fill this gap. In particular, we focus on how support for multiculturalism policy varies across benefit types (for example, financial and other) and the ethnicity/religiosity of recipient groups. Using a unique survey experiment conducted within the 2011 Canadian Election Study (CES), we examine how ethnic origin (Portuguese vs. Turkish) and religious symbols (absence and presence of the hijab) influence support for funding of ethno-religious group activities and their access to public spaces. We also explore whether citizens’ general attitudes toward cultural diversity moderate this effect. Results provide important information about the state of Canadian public opinion on multiculturalism, and more general evidence about the nature, authenticity and limits of public support for this policy.

Increasing interest in the political consequences of exposure to politically divergent viewpoints has revealed contrary findings. Although there is reason to believe that politically diverse networks should mobilize people into participation, some research finds inhibiting or negative effects on political participation. In recent work, this discrepancy has been explained by different measures of political diversity. In this article, we reconsider these two perspectives and offer a theoretical synthesis of the effects of political diversity by differentiating between individual and collective characteristics of different participatory acts. Drawing on the Canadian Youth Study, we test these assumptions among young people, who are particularly susceptible to peer influence. The results show that young people, who report higher levels of interpersonal political diversity are more likely to be engaged in a variety of political acts performed individually. However, there is no evidence that political diversity negatively affects more collective forms of political action that are based on face-to-face interactions. Thus, it is important to make distinctions between not only different measures of exposure to political diversity or disagreement but also the different nature of political actions that might be affected.

Using data collected in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this article examines the determinants of attitudes toward immigrants. In particular, we draw on the literature in social psychology to explore the role of locus of control in promoting more ethnocentric and restrictive attitudes towards immigration. We conceptualize control at three levels: (1) perceptions of individual locus of control (i.e., feeling that one can control one’s own circumstances), (2) perceptions of societal control (i.e., feeling that one’s country has control over immigration), and (3) perceptions of an outgroup’s locus of control (i.e., feeling that an outgroup’s social circumstances are attributable to dispositional rather than external factors). Results show that all three measures of control are important predictors of negative attitudes toward immigrants: Those who feel in control (personally or as a society) are less hostile towards immigrants, while those who attribute negative outcomes to immigrants’ predispositions are also more hostile. Results also suggest that measures of control are related to, but distinct from, both partisanship and racial prejudice.

Since the development of modern survey methods, political scientists have identified gender-based differences in the political behavior of men and women. Early research found women to be less politically engaged than men and to be more likely to vote for right-wing parties (Lipset 1963). Beginning in the 1980s, however, these differences in political participation dissipated, and the gender-based pattern in vote choice was reversed (DeVaus and McAllister 1989; Inglehart and Norris 2000). These gender differences in political behavior, and the many others that could be added here, are commonly referred to as “gender gaps.”

This article builds on the insights of the contact hypothesis and political socialization literatures to go beyond recent findings that racial and ethnic diversity have overwhelmingly negative effects on social capital, particularly generalized trust. Using the Canadian General Social Survey (2003), our results show that despite a negative relationship among adults, younger Canadians with racial and ethnic diversity in their social networks show higher levels of generalized trust. The results seem to confirm that youth socialization experiences with rising diversity and the normalization of diversity in a multicultural environment contribute to beneficial (instead of detrimental) effects of diverse social networks.

Past research suggests that citizens' attitudes toward immigration are driven by perceptions of immigrants' (a) economic status and (b) ethnicity. In this study, we use an online survey conducted with a representative sample of Canadians to test to what extent economic and cultural cues influence support for individual immigrants. In particular, by drawing on a parallel US survey, we explore whether Canadians' relatively unique (positive) attitudes toward immigration make them more immune to economic and cultural threat manipulations than their American counterparts. The analysis is based on an experimental design embedded in a series of immigrant vignettes that vary the ethnoracial background and social status of an individual applying for immigration. We examine overall support for immigration, as well as the extent to which both ethnic and economic status cues affect support for individual immigrants. We also explore variance within Canada, specifically, in Quebec versus the rest of the country. Results offer new and unique information on the structure of attitudes on diversity and immigration in Canada. Most importantly, they suggest the relative importance of economic cues in support for immigration in both countries.Résumé. Divers travaux de recherche ont suggéré que les attitudes des citoyens au sujet de l'immigration sont influencées par leur perception (a) du statut économique et (b) de l'ethnie des immigrants. Afin de tenter de savoir jusqu'à quel point les informations socioéconomiques et culturelles ont effectivement un impact sur le soutien des citoyens envers les immigrants, la présente étude fait usage d'un sondage mené en ligne avec un échantillon représentatif de la population canadienne. En nous appuyant sur un sondage américain similaire, nous cherchons plus précisément à savoir si l'attitude (positive) relativement unique des Canadiens vis-à-vis de l'immigration les rend moins susceptibles d'être manipulés par l'évocation de menaces économiques et culturelles que leurs voisins américains. Notre analyse se fonde sur une expérience utilisant une série de vignettes qui modifient les caractéristiques ethnoraciales ainsi que le statut social d'un individu procédant à une demande d'immigration. Nous examinons non seulement le soutien pour l'immigration en général, mais aussi la mesure dans laquelle les informations relatives à l'ethnie et au statut économique d'un immigrant affectent le soutien que les citoyens lui offrent. Nous étudions aussi la variance à l'intérieur du Canada, plus spécifiquement entre le Québec et le reste du pays. Les résultats ainsi obtenus fournissent de l'information nouvelle et unique ayant trait à la structure des attitudes par rapport à la diversité et l'immigration au Canada. De surcroît, ces résultats suggèrent le rôle relativement important que jouent les informations d'ordre socioéconomique dans le soutien de l'immigration tant aux États-Unis qu'au Canada.

Social capital researchers have suggested that bridging ties are important for political participation. However, thus far the literature lacks testing on the direction of this relationship: do diverse ties stimulate political participation or does political participation stimulate political diversity among friends and acquaintances? This article examines how ethno-cultural and political diversity within social networks influence political participation among a unique panel of 4,235 young people in Belgium. The results reveal a reciprocal cross-lagged effect. In particular, having politically diverse social networks increases political participation, which in turn promotes meeting politically diverse others.

In recent years, there has been increasing popular and academic debate about how ethnic and racial diversity affects democratic politics and social cohesion in industrialized liberal democracies. In this introduction, different interdisciplinary theoretical approaches for understanding the role of diversity for intergroup relations and social cohesion are reviewed and four extensions to the current literature are proposed. These include taking advantage of a comparative framework to understand how generalizable the consequences of diversity are. A comparative country approach also helps to reveal which policies might be able to mitigate any potential negative consequences of diversity. Most importantly, we propose that the research in this area should include other aspects of social cohesion beyond measures of generalized trust, such as solidarity, attitudes about the welfare state and redistributive justice, as well as political and social tolerance. Finally, research on the effects of diversity might gain more insights from taking less of a majority-centric approach to include the effects on various minority groups as well.Résumé.Ces dernières années ont procuré un sol fertile au débat populaire et universitaire autour des effets de la diversité ethnique et raciale sur la politique démocratique et sur la cohésion sociale dans les démocraties libérales industrialisées. Dans cette introduction, nous passons en revue diverses approches théoriques interdisciplinaires permettant de clarifier le rôle de la diversité dans les relations entre les groupes et dans la cohésion sociale et nous proposons quatre ajouts à la littérature courante. Nous suggérons, entre autres, de tirer profit d'un cadre comparatif pour comprendre à quel point les conséquences de la diversité sont généralisables. Une étude comparative des pays aide également à cerner les politiques qui pourraient atténuer les conséquences négatives potentielles de la diversité. Par-dessus tout, nous avançons que la recherche dans ce domaine devrait inclure d'autres aspects de la cohésion sociale à part les mesures de la confiance généralisée, des aspects tels que la solidarité, les attitudes envers l'État-providence et la justice redistributive, ainsi que la tolérance politique et sociale. Finalement, la recherche sur les effets de la diversité pourrait devenir plus instructive en adoptant une approche moins centrée sur la majorité afin d'inclure également les effets sur divers groupes minoritaires.

Conventional measures of political tolerance have tended to assume that people see all forms of speech as equally legitimate (or equally illegitimate). This article develops an alternative view, and measure, of political tolerance to account for individual distinctions across types of speech. Political tolerance is conceptualized using three individual-level dispositions. The intolerant reject speech rights for all objectionable groups; absolute tolerators endorse speech rights for all groups viewed as objectionable; and multicultural tolerators support free speech except when such freedoms are used to target racial and ethnic minorities. Survey data from close to 10,000 youth in Canada and Belgium show that multicultural tolerance reflects civil liberties attitudes among many young citizens. These youth do see exclusionary speech as a special category of “intolerable” speech, consistent with legal restrictions on hate speech in many industrialized democracies. Such target group distinctions are an under-studied and under-specified component of contemporary political tolerance judgments.Résumé.Les mesures conventionnelles de la tolérance politique tendent à présumer que les gens perçoivent tous les discours comme étant également légitimes (ou également illégitimes). Cet article développe une perspective différente et une mesure plus nuancée de la tolérance politique en relevant des distinctions entre les types de propos. On distingue trois dispositions individuelles en matière de tolérance politique. Les intolérants rejettent la liberté d'expression pour tous les groupes ou propos perçus comme importuns; les gens absolument tolérants appuient la liberté d'expression pour tous les groupes ou propos perçus comme importuns; et les adhérents de la tolérance multiculturelle appuient la libre expression publique des idées, sauf quand celle-ci sert à bafouer les minorités ethniques et raciales. Les résultats d'une enquête menée auprès d'environ 10 000 jeunes au Canada et en Belgique indiquent qu'un grand nombre de jeunes citoyens pratiquent la tolérance multiculturelle. Ces derniers considèrent les propos empreints d'exclusion comme une catégorie spéciale de propos «intolérables», conformément aux lois contre la propagande haineuse adoptées dans la plupart des pays développés. Les distinctions de ce genre sont des facteurs négligés dans notre compréhension des jugements contemporains sur la tolérance politique.

Previous research has indicated that opposition toward LGBT rights remains quite prevalent among Western populations. In this article we investigate the determinants of anti-gay attitudes among adolescents in two liberal democracies, Belgium (n=6,330) and Canada (n=3,334). The analysis indicates that hostile feelings toward LGBT rights are particularly widespread among boys, while the effects of socio-economic status and parental education remain rather limited. Various religious denominations proved to have a strong and significant negative impact on tolerance, with especially high scores for Islam. Religious practice, too, contributes to a negative attitude toward LGBT rights. The consequences of these findings with regard to tolerance for gay rights among Islamic youth in Western democracies are discussed. ispartof: Journal of Homosexuality vol:57 issue:3 pages:384-400 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Conventional models of voter turnout lead us to expect men to vote in greater numbers than women. Yet in advanced industrialized democracies, women tend to participate in elections as much, or more, than men do. This study addresses this puzzle by drawing on the social capital literature to help explain the paradox of voter turnout for women. Women are in fact “rich” in various forms of social capital, especially more informal networks of reciprocity which are often viewed as apolitical and not measured in resource models of voter turnout. Drawing on the Canadian National Survey of Giving, Volunteering, and Participating (NSGVP), the findings show that informal social capital helps explain why women turn out to vote at similar levels as men, despite having fewer traditional resources at their disposal. Hence, this study provides evidence that women's path to participation is different than men's. The author would like to thank Jillian Evans who provided helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Concerns about immigration and the rising visibility of minorities have triggered a lively scholarly debate on the consequences of ethnic diversity for trust, cooperation, and other aspects of social cohesion. In this accessibly written volume, leading scholars explore where, when, and why ethnic diversity affects social cohesion by way of analyses covering the major European immigration countries, as well as the United States and Canada. They explore the merits of competing theoretical accounts and give rare insights into the underlying mechanisms through which diversity affects social cohesion. The volume offers a nuanced picture of the topic by explicitly exploring the conditions under which ethnic diversity affects the ‘glue’ that holds societies together. With its interdisciplinary perspective and contributions by sociologists, political scientists, social psychologists, as well as economists, the book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the link between ethnic diversity and social cohesion that is currently available.

Drawing on a unique experimental design, this paper examines the ways in which racialized images influence attitudes toward redistributive policy. While work in the US points to a strong racialization of welfare attitudes, little research explores the ways in which race may structure attitudes about welfare elsewhere. In the Canadian context, our results suggest that support for redistribution is lower when recipients are Aboriginal than when they are portrayed as white or from another racial minority. As we have seen in the US, then, support for welfare is related to perceptions about the race of the recipient, as well as the type of benefit received.

Building on Mark Granovetter's concept of weak ties, we argue that diverse social networks can enhance the propensity of women to vote for a party of the Left. Using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study, we test two hypotheses: First, the wider the range of women known, the more likely women are to vote for the Left, and second, the wider the range of higher-status women known, the more likely married women are to vote for the Left. We argue that socially communicated cues may be particularly consequential for women because they tend to know less about the parties and their platforms than men do. Accordingly, casual acquaintances can be an important source of new information for women. Women with more diverse ties to other women, we argue, are more likely to encounter women who are voting for the party of the Left and to recognize their shared interest in voting similarly. Our second hypothesis builds on Susan Carroll's argument that women require sufficient autonomy to express their gender-related interests in their choice of party. We argue that married women's political autonomy can be enhanced if their social networks include a range of women who do enjoy such autonomy. Ties with higher-status women can be a source of psychological resources that facilitate voting for a party of the Left. We find support for both of these hypotheses.