Electoral Institutions, Hometowns, and Favored Minorities: Evidence from Japanese Electoral Reforms

Abstract

This article presents evidence that electoral institutions affect the geographic distribution of both candidate electoral support and government resources. The author exploits two electoral reforms in Japan to identify the effect of institutional incentives: (1) the 1994 electoral reform from a multimember single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system to a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a single-member district (SMD) component and a proportional representation component; and (2) the 1925 electoral reform from a predominantly SMD system to a multimember SNTV system. Using several new data sets, the two main findings of this article are that (1) Japanese representatives competing in multimember SNTV districts had more geographically concentrated electoral support than those competing in SMDs and that (2) intergovernmental transfers appear to be more concentrated around Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) incumbents' home offices under the multimember SNTV system than under the MMM system. The findings in this article highlight the connection between institutions and geographic patterns of representation.

Do Individual Representatives Influence Government Transfers? Evidence from Japan

“…This finding that marginal representatives direct transfers to their electoral base is consistent with theoretical predictions (Cox and McCubbins, 1986;Myerson, 1993) as well as previous empirical findings (Hirano, 2005).…”

“…16 Hirano (2005) provides some empirical evidence that the geographic concentration of Japanese incumbents' electoral support and resource allocation is closely tied to electoral institutions. and within their districts.…”

Choosing the Form of Government: Theory and Evidence from Brazil

“…(3) 18 The geographic concentration of votes for legislators is a well-documented phenomenon in many countries that adopt multi-member district systems, e.g. Brazil (Fleischer, 1976;Ames, 1995Ames, , 2001, Colombia (Crisp and Ingall, 2002;Crisp and Desposato, 2004) and Japan (Hirano, 2006). Formally, Myerson (1993) shows that such systems encourage candidates to cater to narrow sub-constituencies (favoured minorities).…”

Who Lobbies Whom? Special Interest Politics under Alternative Electoral Systems

“…The SNTV system encourages individual legislators to cultivate "personal votes" rather than to collectively pursue a coherent party label (Cox and Thies 1998;Ramseyer and Rosenbluth 1994, and many others). Moreover, since votes that individual legislators win in a district are not transferable to other same-party candidates, individual legislators have incentives to specialize either geographically (Hirano 2006) or sectorally (McCubbins and Rosenbluth 1995) to differentiate themselves from other same-party candidates (Tatebayashi 2004). Thus, under an SNTV system, legislators' incentives were to target narrow constituents ("specialization") as opposed to building a majoritarian coalition with broader and more diverse constituents.…”