Richard Nadeau

Who they are

According to the profile at the Canadian Social Democracy and Citizenship research centre, Nadeau is a professor of political science at the Université de Montréal. He holds an M.A. in Economics (1981) and a Ph.D. in Political Science (1988), both from that university, and is an associate researcher at CEVIPOF. His research areas are voting behaviour, public opinion, economic voting and political parties, including their issues, images and behaviour.

Key papers

Nadeau, R., Cloutier, E., & Guay, J.-H. (1993), New Evidence About the Existence of a Bandwagon Effect in the Opinion Formation Process, International Political Science Review, 14(2), 203-213, doi:10.1177/019251219301400204. The study tests the bandwagon effect outside electoral contexts, on abortion and the constitutional future of Quebec, using a panel design and an experiment in which respondents were told the state and direction of public opinion. It applies three methodological criteria for a valid test, including allowance for underdogging and for opinion shifts caused by factors outside the experiment, and reports a bandwagon effect of roughly 5 to 7 per cent on both issues. The authors say the reasons for it remain unclear.

Cloutier, E., Nadeau, R., & Guay, J. (1989), Bandwagoning and Underdogging on North-American Free Trade: A Quasi-Experimental Panel Study of Opinion Movement, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 1(3), 206-220, doi:10.1093/ijpor/1.3.206. A quasi-experimental panel design tracking student groups' opinions on free trade. Exposure to majority opinion trends produced both bandwagon and underdog effects, which the authors attribute partly to the stimuli and partly to people's efforts to keep their opinions consistent.

Key ideas

The contribution this site draws on is a method as much as a result. The 1993 study treats a bandwagon claim as testable only if the design allows for movement away from the leader and for opinion change that has nothing to do with the stimulus. A design that records only movement toward the leader can overstate the effect.

The 1989 paper is the earlier statement of the same point. It reports both movements in a single panel and discusses methods for measuring opinion movement.

The reported figure of roughly 5 to 7 per cent comes from one study of two issues.

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