Electoral Systems and Strategies of Candidates

Nagahisa Toshio

doi:10.11228/pcs1981.1996.40

It is often said that the SNTV that Japan applied for Lower House elections strongly induces LDP Legislators to provide porkbarrel legislation for their constituents in order to win. If this is a unique feature of the system, we should see this phenomenon only among the Legislators but not among the LDP Councilors elected through different systems.<BR>This paper clarifies through game theoretic models the relationship between the electoral systems and the strategies that the candidates should take for winning. The models suggest that providing porkbarrel legislation is the strategy best suited to reach optimal equilibrium under the SNTV, while providing more public interest legislation is the winning strategy under the Upper House electoral systems, i. e., the FPTP and the Party List PR.<BR>The data analysis comparing the involvement of the Legislators and Councilors in the PARC as proxies for their strategies indicates that the Legislators and the Councilors under the Party List PR behave as the models predict. However, the latter under the FPTP behaves differently from what the models lead us to predict: Councilors under the FPTP also provide porkbarrel legislation in order to win.<BR>Although this odd result can possibly be explained within the models, there might be a bug in the logic. We need further development of the models and of the data analysis to grasp the relationship between the electoral systems and the strategies of the candidates.

Electoral Systems and Strategies of Candidates

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