Scaling MP Ideology from Campaign Donations: Can donors tell us where individual candidates and MPs stand?

The Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity presents: "Scaling MP Ideology from Campaign Donations: Can donors tell us where individual candidates and MPs stand?" with Dr. Paul Gardner, Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University

Abstract: Party discipline makes roll-call votes nearly uninformative about where individual Canadian politicians stand. Adapting Adam Bonica's donor-network scaling to Elections Canada records, we estimate ideal points for federal candidates, 1993–2025.
The talk develops the logic and framework of measuring ideology from campaign contributions in Canada but is largely exploratory with its applications. What do campaign contributions reveal (or not) in Canada? What limitations does the Canadian campaign financing regime place on ideological interpretations? When might such ideology scores be useful in the study of Canadian politics?

Biography: I am Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Studies on Democracy and Diversity at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. My research centers on the politics of law and courts in the U.S. and, increasingly, Canada. I study how courts are constrained by the separation of powers: the executive's role in shaping U.S. Supreme Court decision making, how Parliament constrains constitutional review in the Supreme Court of Canada, and how elected officials make choices about empowering courts.