Erin Tolley, Ph.D.
erin.tolley@carleton.ca
Associate Professor
Carleton University
About Me:
I study racial and gender inequality in Canadian politics, and I provide expert commentary on elections, representation, and political participation. My analysis is informed by an attentiveness to racialized, gendered, and intersectional dynamics. I am also an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Carleton University where I teach in the areas of Canadian politics, gender and politics, and race and politics.
Research Interests
Gender and Politics
Political Participation
Race, Ethnicity and Politics
Canadian Politics
Political Elites
Candidate Selection
Electoral Politics
News Media
Political Representation
Countries of Interest
Canada
My Research:
My research examines how socio-demographic diversity affects Canadian politics. Primarily, this has involved a focus on race and gender, and I have looked at the impact of both on electoral representation, vote choice, political institutions, and candidates' media coverage. I am the author of Framed: Media and the Coverage of Race in Canadian Politics, which showed how candidate race influences media coverage. I am currently working on projects that explore the impact of race and gender in candidate selection, racialized and gendered online abuse, and racial and gender gaps in political participation.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Although Canada’s first documented case of COVID-19 appeared in mid-January 2020, it was not until March that messaging about the need to contain the virus heightened. In this research note, we document the use of the media’s construction of risk through framing in the early stages of the pandemic. We analyze three dimensions – severity, authority and proximity – of the health risk narratives related to COVID-19 that dominated Canadians’ concerns about the virus. To capture these narratives, we examine print and online news coverage from two nationally-distributed media sources. We assess these frames alongside epidemiological data and find there is a clear link between media coverage, epidemiological data, and risk frames in the early stages of the pandemic. It appears that the media relied on health expertise and political sources to guide their coverage and was responsive to the public health data presented to Canadians.
Gender gaps in voter turnout and electoral representation have narrowed, but other forms of gender inequality remain. We examine gendered differences in donations: who donates and to whom? Donations furnish campaigns with necessary resources, provide voters with cues about candidate viability, and influence which issues politicians prioritize. We exploit an administrative data set to analyze donations to Canadian parties and candidates over a 25-year period. We use an automated classifier to estimate donor gender and then link these data to candidate and party characteristics. Importantly, and in contrast to null effects from research on gender affinity voting, we find women are more likely to donate to women candidates, but women donate less often and in smaller amounts than men. The lack of formal gendered donor networks and the reliance on more informal, male-dominated local connections may influence women donors’ behavior. Change over a quarter century has been modest, and large gender gaps persist.
Despite increased attention to ethnic differences in political behaviour, there is little research on ethnic minorities as political donors and almost none outside the United States. We draw on an administrative dataset of contributions to candidates, which we augment with donors’ ethnicity. Focusing on the 2015 Canadian election, we find ethnic minorities are generally less likely to donate than other Canadians, but South Asian Canadians donate at astonishingly high rates. Contrary to previous research, there are only modest differences in the size of donations across ethnic groups. Linking donation data to candidate characteristics and census data reveals substantial co-ethnic affinity effects among Chinese and South Asian Canadians. Even in the absence of co-ethnic candidates, however, South Asians donate at a substantial rate. The proportion of donations to out-of-district and weaker candidates is also quite high, which could signal symbolic considerations are especially important to ethnic minority donors. The substantial heterogeneity between ethnic groups and the different effects on rates versus size of donations add important nuance to our knowledge of ethnicity and political behaviour.
Textbooks frame students’ understanding of the discipline and signal which topics are important. Research suggests political science textbooks lack diverse perspectives, but much of this literature has focused on American texts. Do these findings travel? My analysis of Canadian politics textbooks shows although there is considerable diversity content, immigrants and minorities rarely appear as key political actors and almost never in the context of Parliament, the judiciary, or bureaucracy; rather, most of their coverage is siloed in the textbooks’ diversity-specific chapters. Issues related to inequality are largely glossed over, and exclusion is presented as a historical artefact. The findings suggest students’ first introduction to Canadian politics is generic and quite narrow, with insufficient attention to immigrants’ and minorities’ political contributions and experiences. These portrayals may limit students’ understanding of diversity and produce scholars who are ill-equipped to address questions of marginalization and injustice in broader society.
There is growing attention to the descriptive representation of racialized minorities in politics. Because of a systematic lack of data on nomination contestants’ racial backgrounds, most research looks at outcomes on election day, thus ignoring the crucial stages that help to shape minority candidate emergence. Using a unique data set on nomination contestants and local party presidents in a recent Canadian election, this study demonstrates that while district diversity is one determinant of minority candidate emergence, the presence of a racialized local party president is also substantively important. The findings show that racialized party gatekeepers play a key role in the emergence of minority candidates, and these networks matter most in districts with lower levels of racial diversity. The findings further suggest that the general pattern of left-center parties facilitating minority candidate emergence may not apply in the Canadian context.
The annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) is a disciplinary bellwether that helps us trace the evolution of political science scholarship. This article analyzes research presented at the conference between 1965 and 2015. It shows growth in the gender and politics sub-field and in the presence of women in leadership positions in the CPSA. At the same time, gender-related research is often presented in gender-focused panels and not incorporated across the discipline's sub-fields. This means that gender scholars typically present their work to like-minded researchers, and scholars in other sub-fields have little exposure to gender perspectives. That such siloing occurs at the earliest stages of research dissemination is an important contextual factor in understanding gendered citation patterns, departmental hiring and rates of tenure and promotion. For Canadian political science to remain relevant, more needs to be done to incorporate gender perspectives across the discipline's sub-fields.
With its relatively high immigration levels and comparatively favorable public opinion, Canada is often seen as a bastion of support for immigrants and refugees. We argue that support is uneven because Canadians differentiate between economic immigrants and those who arrive on humanitarian grounds. Our conclusion is supported by an automated content analysis of Canadian print media coverage over a 10-year period, an approach that allowed us to capture a wide swath of discourse. We found distinct differences in the framing of immigrants and refugees. Immigrants are framed in economic terms, whereas greater attention is focused on the validity of refugee claims, potential security threats, and the extent to which refugees “take advantage” of social programs. More focus is also given to refugees’ national origins, and that framing is disproportionately negative. Our analysis illustrates the discursive distinctions that are drawn between immigrants and refugees and the hierarchy of preferences for the former over the latter.
This article examines the electoral presence of women in federal, provincial and municipal governments. It casts doubt on the notion of a municipal advantage—a prevalent theme in the women in politics literature—and suggests, instead, that female legislators are increasingly present in roughly equivalent proportions across all three levels of government. Unlike prior analyses that have tended to focus on a limited number of provinces, a distinct time period or a select group of larger urban centres, this article uses longitudinal data that encompass all provinces and territories, as well as nearly all of Canada's 3750 municipalities. The findings demonstrate that female legislators often find greater electoral success at the higher levels of government but that the proportion of women elected rarely exceeds 25 per cent at any level. The article thus challenges a pervasive theme in the literature on women in politics.
Books Written:
Framed is a wake-up call for those who think that race does not matter in Canada. Awarded the 2017 Donald Smiley Prize, Framed pushes the field of Canadian political science in new directions. This groundbreaking work combines an empirical analysis of print media with in-depth interviews of elected officials, former candidates, political staffers, and journalists to reveal the connections between race, media coverage, and politics in Canada. As Erin Tolley shows, overt racism rarely occurs in the pages of Canadian newspapers, but assumptions about race and diversity often influence media coverage. Consequently, as reporters go about selecting which political issues and events to cover, who to quote, and how to frame stories to make them resonate with the public, they give visible minorities less prominent and more negative media coverage than their white counterparts. Further, visible minority politicians are more likely to be portrayed as products of their socio-demographic backgrounds, as uninterested in pressing policy issues, and as less electorally viable. The resulting news coverage weakens Canada’s commitment to a robust, inclusive democracy. The problem is systemic, but Tolley offers recommendations to politicians, pundits, journalists, and the public for challenging the racial assumptions that underpin news coverage. By drawing attention to the ways in which race continues to matter, this book provides a new foundation for thinking about diversity and equality in Canada.
Book Chapters:
We present attitudinal data showing that although Canadians are generally supportive of immigration and ethnic diversity, there are some—perhaps as many as one-third—who have clearly negative views. Another third are what we call “conditional multiculturalists”: they approve of immigration and ethnic diversity, but only under certain conditions. The era of positive attitudes toward immigration is both recent, dating only to the mid-1990s and, we suggest, is driven by economic factors rather than generalized acceptance. In fact, for much of Canada’s recent history, most Canadians have wanted fewer immigrants. Attitudes toward racial diversity are also significantly less positive than those toward immigrants, and arguably have not improved significantly in the last three decades. Despite this, there has never been a successful anti-immigrant party in Canada, and political parties have generally not used immigration or multiculturalism as wedge issues. We point to several political institutions that we argue are central to deciphering this apparent puzzle.
Media Appearances:
TV Appearances:
After the Vote, 2015 Canadian election coverage
Radio Appearances:
Segment on women’s representation in House of Commons
“Patrick Brown debacle means candidates will get more intense screening, parties say”
Newspaper Quotes:
“How well are women represented on your local city council?”
"Journalists inherit ‘institutional blindspots’ that cloud coverage of race in politics, says media expert"
"Regional representation – and a lot of men named William. Analysis of Canadian ministers shows how building a cabinet shapes a nation"
"Election saw gender parity and diversity among candidates in Ottawa riding”
“Parties increase efforts to boost diversity, NDP leads the way”
"How Jagmeet Singh became Canada’s spokesperson for race in the 2019 election"
"Diversity of candidates up from 2015 but much more to be done, advocates say”
"Quebec’s religious symbols ban a major issue in federal election campaign"
“The playing field is tilted against Jody Wilson-Raybould"
“Wynne says she isn't sure why Doug Ford has twice commented on her smile”
"Why Canada’s political pipeline leaves little room for anyone but white men"
"As Jagmeet Singh steps forward, is Canada ready for a non-white federal leader?”
"A Sikh becomes leader of Canada’s left-leaning opposition party”
Other:
"Racialized and women politicians still get different news treatment" (op-ed)
"Want more diversity in politics? Start by looking at political parties" (op-ed)
"Racialized women in politics" (interview)