One of the most peculiar features of municipal politics in Canada is how frequently local politicians, activists, and scholars disagree about how to describe the municipal arena. For some, municipal politics is distinct from other levels of government, a world of non-ideological elections, pragmatic and technical policymaking, and issue-by-issue policy coalitions. Others argue that municipal politics is similar to politics at other scales, with persistent axes of political disagreement and a recognizable “left” and “right.” This recurring debate features prominently in municipal election campaigns across Canada. In Ideology in Canadian Municipal Politics, Jack Lucas investigates municipal ideology in Canada. Using data from original surveys of municipal politicians and the Canadian public, the book reveals how municipal politics is clearly structured by left-right ideology. It shows that municipal politicians represent their constituents’ ideological preferences quite well: they understand their constituents’ ideological perspectives, they align with their constituents’ preferences, and they are elected in part because of their ideological alignment with voters. A lively and accessible study, Ideology in Canadian Municipal Politics will appeal to readers interested in municipal politics, political ideology, and political representation.

Written by one of Canada's foremost authorities on municipal government, this comprehensive introduction to urban local government explores how Canadian municipal governments are defined, why we have them, what they do, and how power is attained and distributed within them.

Municipal elections in Canada don’t look much like those held at the federal and provincial levels. A key difference is a significant discrepancy in voter turnout, but relatively little is known about why far fewer people vote in city elections. Voters show less interest in local government, seeing it as less influential than other levels, yet they believe their views matter more to local politicians. Political Engagement in Canadian City Elections explores this apparent contradiction by asking who participates in politics, how they go about it, and why. Drawing from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, a novel survey of electors in eight large cities across the country in 2017 and 2018, contributors consider factors ranging from the universal – such as the demographic profile of voters or how economic conditions affect them – to the specific – for example, participation in school board and council elections. There are more municipal elections than any other kind in Canada. The discoveries in Political Engagement in Canadian City Elections collectively represent a major leap forward in our understanding of voter activity at the community and municipal level.

Local elections are an increasingly popular area of research among scholars of Canadian political behaviour, offering invaluable insights into the attitudes and motivations of Canadian electors. The Canadian Municipal Election Study (CMES) has collected unparalleled individual-level survey data in eight major Canadian municipal elections: Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Mississauga, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. These elections, which took place in 2017 and 2018, were high-profile, contentious, and often surprising, featuring mayoral defeats, record-breaking turnouts, provincial-municipal tensions, and the first ranked-ballot election in Canada in decades. Combining unprecedented individual-level survey data from the CMES with local expertise from political scientists across Canada, Big City Elections in Canada provides a data-driven overview of each election, while also highlighting the more general lessons the elections teach us about municipal politics and voting behaviour. The chapters in this book make substantial empirical and theoretical contributions to the voting behaviour and urban political science subfields and will appeal to students, journalists, and engaged citizens who are interested in learning more about municipal elections in their cities.

City Politics in Canada offers a new perspective on Canadian municipal politics. It concerns the practice of politics at the local level. Its focus, moreover, is on seven specific political systems at the heart of what are arguably the most important metropolitan areas in Canada.

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