Peter John Loewen

University of Toronto

 
 

I am an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto-Mississauga.


My CV is here.


My research occurs in three broad streams. First, I engage in research in understanding how individual differences – which we may understand as dispositional, longstanding, and occasionally fundamental psychological and behavioural differences between people – matter for political behaviour. Of course, I conceive of political behaviour as broadly defined, but in my own case it is mostly confined to questions of political participation, partisanship, social preferences and public opinion. Examples of this are journal articles examining the neural basis of egalitarianism, the heritability of feelings of duty to vote, and the relationship between “social preferences” and voting. This work is culminating in a book project with Ray Duch (Oxford) and Chris Dawes (NYU). This research is funded by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant. Slightly farther afield, I have also conducted behavioural experiments on the relationship between social connections, ethnicity, and the expression of social preferences in villages in rural Malawi. I am presently working Daniel Rubenson on a massive field experiment in Mongolia exploring the relationship between property rights and social preferences.


My second stream of research is interested in understanding the representational behaviour of politicians and political elites. Broadly speaking, this research is interested in the decisions and actions taken by these elites when presented with a representational opportunity or challenge. This research combines natural experiments, field experiments, and, in the future, extensive interviewing and survey experimentation. This work began with a field experiment conducted on Liberal Party elites in 2006. A forthcoming piece in the AJPS uses a presents experimental estimation of the electoral effects of proposing legislation. Other work includes two audit experiments conducted on Canadian Members of Parliament. Going forward, this research will be undertaken in the context of a project with Stefaan Walgrave and three other coinvestigators. With a large amount of funding from the European Research Council, we will interview, survey, and conduct survey experiments with a large number of MPs in Canada, Israel, and Belgium.


My third stream of research involves work on the methods of experimental and survey research. This essentially takes two forms. First, a project on making representational population-level inferences using data from self-selected respondents, principally collected through online tools. Most of this work takes place under the umbrella of a recently-won Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award. Currently, the project is aimed at producing five small papers: one on small area estimation, one on web-based data collection, one on issue voting, one on campaign effects, and a fifth on election forecasting. Much of this is done in concert with the Vote Compass team. Second, various small research projects on experimental execution and estimation. Rubenson and I have several publications and working papers, and are beginning a project on “partner selection bias” in election field experiments.


I received my PhD in June 2008 from the Université de Montréal. I worked under the direction of André Blais and Patrick Fournier. I received my BA in 2002 from Mount Allison University where I worked under the direction of Bill Cross. My CV is here.


For much of 2008 and all of 2009 I was a SSHRC and Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. I worked under the direction of Paul Quirk (UBC) and James Fowler (University of California, San Diego). I was also a proud member of Green College (where I had the good fortune of serving as President of the Dining Society, as a member of the Residents’ Council, and as a member of the Membership Committee).


My Erdos number is 5 (via either Fowler or Blais, through Bernie Grofman; or, via Spirling through Firth).


I keep a blog, A Shrewdness of Apes. In the summer of 2008, Sam Millar and I made the run from Cairo to Cape Town on our motorcycles. Our trip is here and some reports are here. We rode KLR 650s on that trip. I used to ride one of these for long hauls, but now ride one of these. In June and July 2011, I rode from Toronto to Lima in 23 days (with just 16 days on the bike) on one of these. In December, Sam, his brother Nate, and I rode the rest of the way to Tierra del Fuego. I am generally crazy about bikes.

 

About Me

Upcoming Travel, Conferences, and Presentations


April 2013


  1. • Vote Compass, Australia, University of Sydney.


Past Travel, Conferences, and Presentations


February 2013


  1. • Talk at Carleton

  2. • ERC meetings in Jerusalem


January 2013


  1. • Workshop on satisfaction with democracy, London.

  2. • Swedish Parliamentary Library, Stockholm.


November 2012


  1. • EGAP, Stanford.

  2. • Talk at German Marshall Fund, Washington.


September 2012


  1. • EPOP, Oxford.

  2. • Meetings in Antwerp for InfoPol project.


July 2012


  1. • Presentation for Chief Electoral Officers, Halifax, NS.


June 2011


  1. • EPSA, Berlin

  2. • Canadian Political Science Association, Edmonton.


April and May 2012


  1. • Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago


  1. • Behavioural games conference, University of Georgia


  1. • Talks in Copenhagen, Lund and Stockholm


March 2012


  1. • Talk, w Dan Rubenson at ANU, Canberra, Australia.


January 2012


  1. • André Blais Festschrift, Montreal.


December 2011


  1. • Ride from Lima to Ushaia


November 2011


  1. • Talk on election forecasting at Western.

  2. • Talk on politician field experiments, André Blais’ research group Montreal.


October 2011


  1. • Talk for Political Behaviour Group at Western.

  2. •Talk at James Fowler’s Human Nature Group, UCSD.


September 2011


  1. • Talk at Wilfrid Laurier Toronto

  2. • Talk at School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto


August 2011


  1. • Field work in Malawi.


July 2011


  1. • Ride Toronto to Lima, Peru.

  2. • Participedia working meeting in Boston.


June 2011


  1. • EPSA, Dublin

  2. • Oxford.


May 2011


  1. • Judgement and Decision Making conference, Tel Aviv.

  2. • Post election talk, Concordia University.

  3. • CPSA Annual Meeting, Waterloo.


April 2011


  1. • Talk at Texas A&M.

  2. • ECPR Joint Sessions, St. Gallen, Switzerland.


March 2011


  1. • Talk at Green College, UBC.

  2. • Kicking Horse, BC.


February 2011


  1. • Riding Simpson Desert, Australia.


November 2010


  1. • Conference on Vote Over-Reporting, Montreal.


October 2010


  1. • G x E Conference, Stanford.

  2. • Prairies Political Science Association Meetings, Winnipeg (talk).

  3. • Parties and Elections Workshop, Memorial University.


August 2010


  1. • Lake Huron Gold.


July 2010


  1. • Ride Vancouver to Toronto.


June 2010


  1. • CPSA, Montreal.

  2. • Ride Toronto to Vancouver.


April 2010


  1. • MPSA, Chicago.

  2. • Ride North Bay to Vancouver.


March 2010


  1. • ECPR, Muenster, Germany

  2. • Pompei Fabreau, invited talk with Chris Dawes


January 2010


  1. • Jan 8: SPSA, Geneva, Switzerland.


December 2009


  1. • Rights and Democracy, Montreal.


November 2009


  1. • UCSD

  2. • Nov 12-14: Parliament of Canada Conference, University of Toronto.


October 2009


  1. • Mumbai, India


September 2009


  1. • Riding the James Bay Highway.

  2. • APSA, Toronto.


August 2009


  1. • Paddling the Wind River, Yukon.

  2. • Riding from Vancouver to North Bay.


July 2009


  1. • ISPP, Dublin.


May 2009


  1. • CPSA, Ottawa.

  2. • Conference on experimentation, Northwestern University, Chicago (not presenting).


April 2009


  1. • MPSA, Chicago.


March 2009


  1. • UCSD

  2. • Mar 23: Department of Political Science, University of Calgary.

  3. • Mar 19-22. Kicking Horse, BC.


February 2009


  1. • Feb 6-7: NYU/CESS Experimentation Conference, New York (not presenting).

  2. • Feb 26-27: Politics and Genetics Conference, UC Santa Barbara (not presenting).


January 2009


  1. • Jan 17-25: Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. 

  2. • Jan 30: Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University.


December 2008


  1. • Dec 2: Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia.


November 2008


  1. • Nov 14: Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University

  2. • Nov 17: Department of Political Science, University of Toronto


October 2008


  1. • Oct 9: Département de science politique, Université de Montréal.

  2. • Oct 22: Social Statistics Speakers Series, McGill University.


September 2008


  1. • Sept 19: Social Science Seminar, Mount Allison University.

Chile-Argentina border, December 2012, with Sam Millar