About this Research Topic

Background

A decade ago, the amount of research dedicated to the municipal level in Canada was far less than that devoted to provincial or federal elections. While this is still the case, there is now a burgeoning body of analysis on municipal representative democracy due to the increased availability of electoral data. In particular, interprovincial research teams have been created to provide comparative perspectives on often similar realities. These analyses aim primarily to explain the electoral behavior of voters and elected officials, and to provide a portrait of the electoral offer. These studies, which are generally quantitative, have led to major advances in a field that was neglected only a few years ago.

These advances now make it possible to open up new, more qualitative fields of reflection in order to gain a more detailed understanding of the way municipal democracy operates today. However, many blind spots remain to be addressed, among them:

• The question of information: How do voters inform themselves? What information is made available to them?
• Longitudinal perspectives on the political history of municipalities.
• Elected officials, their daily functions, their career path, their ambitions.
• The course of the campaigns.
• Ideology (or absence thereof), the political parties or formations, their evolutions.
• Definitions and use of the concept of proximity.
• The voter, his or her behavior, the meaning and symbols associated with voting at the municipal level.

This list is not exhaustive. While focusing on a qualitative look at municipal democracy as it manifests in Canada, mixed approaches are also welcome.

This Research Topic is intended for political scientists interested in municipal representative democracy, electoral behavior, municipal issues and related topics. It will contribute to enriching and specifying current research on municipal elections in Canada. In this sense, it will be of interest to researchers, students and policy makers alike.

Keywords: Municipal, Elections, Qualitative Methods, Voters, Campaigns, Elected Officials

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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