Jean-François Daoust

Satisfaction with democracy is a vastly studied research topic. In this Element, the authors aim to make sense of this context by showing that elections (electoral processes and outcomes) influence citizens' satisfaction with democracy in different ways according to the quality of a democratic regime. To do so, they leverage the datasets from the Comparative Study on Electoral Systems (CSES) and uphold the belief that social scientists must take advantage of the increased availability of rich comparative datasets. The Element concludes that elections do not only have different impacts on citizens' satisfaction with democracy based on the quality of the democratic regime that they live in, but that the nature of the meaning attributed to electoral processes and outcomes varies between emergent and established democracies.

Satisfaction with democracy is a vastly studied research topic. In this Element, the authors aim to make sense of this context by showing that elections (electoral processes and outcomes) influence citizens' satisfaction with democracy in different ways according to the quality of a democratic regime. To do so, they leverage the datasets from the Comparative Study on Electoral Systems (CSES) and uphold the belief that social scientists must take advantage of the increased availability of rich comparative datasets. The Element concludes that elections do not only have different impacts on citizens' satisfaction with democracy based on the quality of the democratic regime that they live in, but that the nature of the meaning attributed to electoral processes and outcomes varies between emergent and established democracies.

Elections are at the heart of our democracy. Understanding citizens' decisions to vote or to abstain in elections is crucial, especially when turnout in so many democracies is declining. In The Motivation to Vote, André Blais and Jean-François Daoust provide an original and elegant model that explains why people vote. They argue that the decision to vote or abstain hinges on four factors: political interest, sense of civic duty, perceived importance of the election, and ease of voting. Their findings are strongly supported by empirical evidence from elections in five countries. The authors also test alternative explanations of voter turnout by looking at contextual factors and the role of habit, but find little evidence to support these hypotheses. This analysis is compelling and further demonstrates the power of their model to provide a provocative and parsimonious explanation of voter turnout in elections.