Publications

Browse the complete list of Canadian Municipal Barometer publications on local democracy and municipal governance in Canada since 2020.

Dillabough, Elliot and Jack Lucas. 2025. “Municipal Politicians and Local Electoral Institutions in Canada: An Overview.” Canadian Public Administration 68 (1): 135-146.

  • Theme: Diverse Representation
  • Description: This research notes provides a comprehensive overview of basic electoral institutions in every elected municipal government in Canada.

Lucas, Jack, and Lior Sheffer. 2025. “What Explains Elite Affective Polarization? Evidence from Canadian Politicians.” Political Psychology 46 (1): 71-84.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This research provides rare evidence on elite affective polarization, revealing that Canadian local politicians are generally less polarized than the public, yet exhibit significant variation driven by ideology, partisanship, and progressive ambition.

Artiles, Alexandra. 2025. “Are Canadian Municipal Politics Ideological? Experimental Evidence from Canadian Municipal Officials.” Urban Affairs Review 46 (1): 71-84.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This study finds that local politicians are more opposed to provincial intervention and more supportive of formal consultation when the provincial government’s ideology differs from their own.

Smith, Alison, and Jack Lucas. 2025. “Municipalities in the Federation.” In Canadian Federalism: Performance, Effectiveness, and Legitimacy, 5th ed., edited by Herman Bakvis and Grace Skogstad. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

  • Theme: Multilevel Governance
  • Description: This chapter provides a broad look at the performance, effectiveness, and legitimacy of intergovernmental relations across Canada.

Lucas, Jack, Lior Sheffer, and Peter Loewen. 2025. “Pathways to Political Representation: Congruence and Knowledge among Canadian Politicians.” Political Behavior 47: 1113–1132.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This study shows that representatives who share their constituents’ opinions are also more likely to understand those opinions accurately, though this varies by policy area.

Artiles, Alexandra, Sandra Breux, Meagan Cloutier, Susan Franceschet, and Jack Lucas. 2024. “Women’s Representation in Canadian Municipalities.” Urban Affairs Review 60 (5): 1577–1593.

  • Theme: Diverse Representation
  • Description: This research note uses a new dataset of 22,333 municipal elected positions in 3,363 municipalities across Canada to provide a systematic analysis of women’s presence in municipal office.

Franceschet, Susan, Jack Lucas, and Erica Rayment. 2024. “Do Women Politicians Know More about Women’s Policy Preferences? Evidence from Canada.” Politics & Gender 20 (3): 579-597.

  • Theme: Diverse Representation
  • Description: This article examines whether gender affects politicians’ knowledge of their constituents’ preferences, finding that all politicians, regardless of gender, are better at predicting women’s policy preferences than men’s.

Linovski, Orly, Jeniffer Dean, Samantha Leger, Abigail McLaren, and Isabel Cascante. 2024. “How Do Elected Officials Think about Transportation Equity?” Policy brief, Mobilizing Justice.

  • Theme: Public Policy
  • Description: This brief shows that elected officials generally focus on system wide public transportation issues and give lower priority to equity-promoting initiatives that target a specific group.

Lucas, Jack. 2024. “Are municipal politicians ideological moderates?” Cities 155 (December): 105350.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This article examines the ideology of local politicians. It finds that local politicians tend to view themselves as more moderate than politicians at other levels of government, but are not generally more moderate in their policy beliefs.

Lucas, Jack. 2024. Ideology in Canadian Municipal Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This book examines ideology in local politics, finding that there is a clear left-right ideological structure and ideological alignment between constituents and politicians at the local level.

Lucas, Jack, Lior Sheffer, and Peter John Loewen. 2024. “Pathways to Substantive Representation: Policy Congruence and Policy Knowledge Among Canadian Local Politicians.” Political Behavior 47 (3): 1113–1132.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This study shows that representatives who share their constituents’ opinions are also more likely to understand those opinions accurately, though this varies by policy area.

Lucas, Jack, Lior Sheffer, and Peter John Loewen. 2024. “Are Politicians Democratic Realists?” European Journal of Political Research 63 (4): 1426–1444.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This study finds that politicians have diverse theories of democracy and that these theories affect how they represent their constituents.

Sheffer, Lior, Peter John Loewen, and Jack Lucas. 2024. “Long-Term Policymaking and Politicians’ Beliefs about Voters: Evidence from a 3-Year Panel Study of Politicians.” Governance 37 (2): 395–410.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This study investigates how politicians make tradeoffs between the long and short terms. It finds that that these trade-offs are influenced by politicians’ own perceptions of voter attention.

Breton, Charles, Jack Lucas, and Zack Taylor. 2023. “Local Autonomy: Unconditional Elites and Conditional Publics.” Local Government Studies 49 (6): 1263-1284.

  • Theme: Multilevel Governance
  • Description: This paper investigates whether citizens agree with their elected representatives about the need for increased power for local authorities.

Eidelman, Gabriel, and Jack Lucas. 2023. “How Do Municipal Mayors and Councillors Communicate with Other Levels of Government? Evidence from a Multi-Level Survey of Canadian Elected Officials.” Canadian Public Administration 66 (1): 78–95.

  • Theme: Multilevel Governance
  • Description: This article investigates how local governments communicate with other levels of government and finds that personal relationships and informal channels are central to intergovernmental relations.

Lucas, Jack. 2023. “The Ideological Structure of Municipal Non-Ideology.” Urban Affairs Review 59 (1): 275–293.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This paper finds that local politicians on the moderate right end of the political spectrum more often think of local politics as non-ideological, while those on the left tend to view local politics as ideological.

Lucas, Jack, R. Michael McGregor, and Aengus Bridgman. 2023. “Spatial Voting in Non-Partisan Cities: A Case Study.” Electoral Studies 82 (April): 102599.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This article tests the spatial voting hypothesis in municipal Canadian elections, finding that municipal policy attitudes and vote choice are ideologically organized.

Wynes, Seth, and H. Damon Matthews. 2023. “Missing Density: Assessing Support for Compact Cities Among Canadian Municipal Officials and Members of the Public.” Climate Policy 23 (8): 1019–1032.

  • Theme: Public Policy
  • Description: This article examines public opinion surrounding city density, finding that support for more density was linked to support for climate action and opposition was highest amongst homeowners.

Andrews, Ben, and Scott Pruysers. 2022. “Does Democracy Die in Darkness? An Examination of the Relationship between Local Newspaper Health and Turnout in Municipal Politics.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 55(4): 958-971.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This article represents the first quantitative analysis of the relationship between local print newspaper health and voter turnout in Canadian municipal elections.

Blidook, Kelly, Royce Koop, and Jack Lucas. 2022. “Municipal Representation Style and Focus: Evidence from Canadian Mayors and Councillors.” Representation 58 (4): 603–622.

  • Theme: Diverse Representation
  • Description: This article examines the representative styles of local politicians, finding that municipal representatives prefer to represent their cities as wholes.

Breux, Sandra. 2022. “Les maires et leur rémunération : une enquête pancanadienne.” Politique et sociétés 41 (1): 85–112.

  • Theme: Public Policy
  • Description: This article provides an overview of mayoral pay in Canada and finds that rates of pay influence whether a mayor is full or part time, but that mayors continue to be white, educated, middle-aged men.

Conrad, Laura. 2022. “It Takes a Village: Candidate Recruitment in Alberta’s Municipalities.” Master’s thesis, University of Calgary.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This thesis examines the process of recruitment at the local level in Alberta, finding that candidates are recruited by personal connections and that women are less likely to be recruited.

Lucas, Jack. 2022. “Do Non-Partisan Politicians Match the Partisanship of Their Constituents?” Urban Affairs Review 58 (1): 103–128.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This article investigates the responsiveness of governments to the ideology of their cities, finding that there is party match across Canadian municipalities.

Merrill, Reed. 2022. “Population Size and Incumbency in Canadian Municipal Elections: Two Essays.” Master’s thesis, University of Calgary.

  • Theme: Elections and Voting
  • Description: This thesis examines the success of incumbents across municipalities of different sizes, finding that, in total, incumbents are less successful in larger municipalities, but that low competitiveness is a major contributor to incumbent success in small-sized municipalities.

Sayers, Anthony, Christopher Alcantara, and David A. Armstrong II. 2022. “Locating Federalism: Non-Financial Assets and Public Policy in Canada.” Canadian Public Administration 65 (2): 314–332.

  • Theme: Multilevel Governance
  • Description: This article examines patterns of asset ownership across different levels of government, finding that response to COVID-19 were shaped by ownership of assets across provincial and municipal governments.

Lucas, Jack, Reed Merrill, Kelly Blidook, Sandra Breux, Laura Conrad, Gabriel Eidelman, Royce Koop, Daniella Marciano, Zack Taylor, Salomé Vallette. 2021. “Women’s Municipal Electoral Performance: An Introduction to the Canadian Municipal Elections Database.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 54(1): 125-133.

  • Theme: Diverse Representation
  • Description: This research note describes the Canadian Municipal Elections Database (CMED), a new publicly available and actively maintained dataset of more than 24,000 municipal elections in Canada.

Loewen, Peter. 2021. “Report 6: Three Areas in Which Pandemic Management Could Have Been Better: A Retrospective Report.” The COVID-19 Vaccine Skepticism in Canada Series, Public Policy Forum.

  • Theme: Public Policy
  • Description: This report analyzes Canadian policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the use of technology, education policy and prioritization of vaccines as areas of shortcoming.

Lucas, Jack, and David A. Armstrong II. 2021. “Policy Ideology and Local Ideological Representation in Canada.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 54 (4): 959–976.

  • Theme: Public Policy
  • Description: This paper applies a new measure of ideology across Canada, finding a strong relationship between citizen and politician ideologies.

Lucas, Jack, and David A. Armstrong II. 2020. “Measuring and Comparing Municipal Policy Responses to COVID-19.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 53 (2): 227–238.

  • Theme: Public Policy
  • Description: This article summarizes the Canadian Municipal Barometer’s COVID-19 survey, which contained a number of factual questions about municipal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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