Welcome!
My name is Jean-Nicolas (Nick) Bordeleau and I am a Research Fellow at the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies at Flinders University. I completed my PhD in political science at the University of Ottawa (2025) under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Stockemer, the Konrad Adenauer Research Chair in Empirical Democracy Studies.
My research interests fall at the intersection of the fields of political psychology and democracy studies, with particular focus on the role of citizens in democratic (in)stability. This includes understanding why some citizens tolerate undemocratic practices, explaining mass support for democratic backsliding, as well as making sense of political misinformation and false beliefs. Substantively, my objectives are to understand how citizens can be both the bulwark against the erosion of democracy as well as supporters of democratic backsliding, and providing solutions to prevent the latter from taking place.
I seek answers to these puzzles primarily through quantitative research methods, with a focus on experimental approaches, longitudinal data, and comparative analyses.