Personal Attributes of Legislators and Parliamentary Behavior: An Analysis of Parliamentary Activities among Japanese Legislators

Abstract

This study explores the individual-level activities of legislators in parliament, which have been largely ignored in the literature on parliamentary democracies. Individual legislators are extensively involved in parliamentary activities such as drafting private members' bills and posing questions, even though these activities have only been considered to play marginal roles in parliamentary democracies. Moreover, their engagement varies significantly. By using unique data from Japan, this study demonstrates that the personal attributes of legislators affect their choice of parliamentary activities. Under electoral systems with intra-party competition, legislators use parliamentary activities as an important means to inform their constituents about what they can do for them and how they differ from other legislators. In elections, candidates cultivate personal votes by exploiting the image drawn from their personal attributes and, once elected, they behave in accordance with their attributes in order to maintain their electoral ground. Thus, they devote themselves to different activities in parliament. The data analyzed here support this argument. The results of empirical analyses show that legislators with local-level political experience engage in particularistic pork-barrel activities that will benefit their local interests, while legislators with legal-work experience allocate their time and energy to general policy-making activities that will enhance their public image and visibility as legal experts.

Behavioral Consequences of Open Candidate Recruitment

“…Constituency‐oriented PMBs imply PMBs pertaining to policy areas with the greatest pork potential. Such PMBs are expected to be referred to the committees on Agriculture, Construction, or Commerce (see Grimmer 2013; Ono 2015). In total, kōbo have initiated 16 PMBs in the sample.…”

Gerontocracy in a comparative perspective: Explaining why political leaders are (almost always) older than their constituents

“…In a study on the Vermont state legislature, Fengler (1980) finds that legislators aged 65 or older have higher absenteeism rates and initiate fewer bills. Aging parliamentarians have also been found to be less active in France (Gavoille, 2018), Germany (Bailer & Ohmura, 2018), and Japan (Ono, 2015). In the same spirit, Geys and Mause (2016) find that in the United Kingdom, retiring MPs (i.e., those over 65 who do not intend to run for reelection) are more prone to shirking in the strict sense—that is, substituting leisure for work (see also Willumsen & Goetz, 2017; Lott, 1990, and Clark & Lucas Williams, 2014 on the United States; Bailer & Ohmura, 2018 on Germany).…”

Political Dynasties and Particularistic Campaigns

“… 1. Important background characteristics include, for example, race and gender (Bäck, Debus, and Müller 2014; Wängnerud 2009), religious and educational backgrounds (Barceló, forthcoming; Baumann, Debus, and Müller 2015), lower social class status (Carnes and Lupu 2015), local origin and prior local political experience (Ono 2015; Tavits 2009, 2010) or even smoking status (Burden 2007), and the number of daughters (Washington 2008). …”