Michael Campbell is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Carleton University, with a bachelor’s degree in History and a master’s degree in Public Policy and Public Administration from Concordia University, Montreal. He excels in both quantitative and qualitative social research methods, bringing a rigorous and multifaceted approach to his investigations.
Michael’s research is driven by a passion for understanding democratic quality, electoral integrity, political competition, and the impact of corruption on these critical areas. As a research assistant on an inter-university SSHRC-funded project, he is currently examining the relationship between citizen satisfaction in public institutions and political corruption in Canada and Switzerland. He has played a key role in developing two ad-hoc sample surveys that are being launched internationally, and he has presented preliminary results for this research at multiple international conferences.
Most notably, under the supervision of Dr. Scott Edward Bennett, Michael’s doctoral dissertation is a statistical investigation into the impact of political finance regulations across 174 countries. It aims to identify the most effective political finance policies and how their success is influenced by enforcement levels. His preliminary research for this dissertation has been presented at multiple academic conferences and won the 2019 Pollara Statistical Confidence Award for best quantitative analysis paper at an advanced level.
Given the rarity of systematic analyses related to political finance, Michael’s dissertation will significantly contribute to the literature by providing one of the few robust quantitative analyses in this field. His work offers empirical evidence on the effectiveness of different political finance regulations, filling a critical gap in existing research which often lacks rigorous, data-driven evaluations of these policies. Additionally, by elucidating the role of enforcement, his dissertation will provide a comprehensive understanding of what makes these regulations effective in practice.