Political Science Department Guest Speaker Olivier Jacques

The Political Science Department Speaker Series presents a lecture by:

Olivier Jacques, École de santé publique, Université de Montréal

Friday, October 2

12:30 – 2:00 pm

H 1220

Intergenerational Conflicts and the Politics of Health Care

Abstract:  Several studies have been interested in analyzing an intergenerational conflict in policy priorities between younger and older voters, as the later would prefer policies like pensions and health care, to the detriment of education. Yet, the relationship between the supply of policies by political parties and voters age-based demands remains understudied. Are older voters more likely to support parties that make health care more salient in their platform? To answer this question, we establish the causal mechanisms between voters' demands, partisan supply and age-based voting patterns for health-emphasizing parties. On the demand side, we rely on an original survey to show that older voters prioritize health care over several other social policy priorities. To reveal the salience of the issue for older voters, we rely on the British Election Study panel surveys to show that older voters are more likely to punish governments if they perceive a deterioration of their health care system. On the supply side, we use the Comparative Agendas Project to demonstrate that an ageing population correlates with more attention paid to health care by political parties. However, pairing this dataset with national election polls reveals that older individuals are not particularly more likely to vote for parties that are giving more attention to health care. Instead, we find that very strong period effects, as parties are more likely to use health care as a vote-gathering strategy for all age groups since the 1990s. Hence, the interaction between voters’ demands and parties’ policy proposals is not characterized by demographic determinism. 

Olivier Jacques is an assistant professor in the Department of Management, Evaluation and Health Policy at the Université de Montréal. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at McGill University in the fall of 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Queen's University until September 2021. He is interested in the political economy of public policy in Canada and Europe. More specifically, his research focuses on the impact of fiscal austerity on the financing of the state and the healthcare system, as well as the difficulties faced by governments seeking to make long-term investments, particularly in public health. He has also analysed public opinion on tax policy and fiscal federalism, and the relationship between social policy and income inequality.