|
![]() |
Naofumi Fujimura, "The influence of electoral institutions on legislative representation: Evidence from Japan's single non-transferable vote and single memeber district systems" Party Politics, 21 (March 2015), 209-221. [Available at http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue2/]
In representative democracies, legislators play a role in representing constituencies and their interests. What determines how legislators represent their constituencies? Why do legislators favour specific constituencies? In particular, why do some legislators concentrate on targeted constituencies while others advocate general constituencies?
Figure 1: Percentage of votes needed to win a seat by district magnitude Table 1: Policy classification in Japan by 12 areas Table 2: Descriptive statistics for the variables Table 3: Regression analysis of interests represented by legislators Figure 2: Effects of electoral systems on legislators' representation Figure 3: Career path of legislators under the SNTV/MMD and SMD/PR systems This
study has discussed how the types of policies or benefits that
legislators favour differ by electoral systems. The study has
demonstrated that legislators elected in MMD/SNTV were more likely to
represent specific benefits, especially general interests, in targeted
policy areas, while those elected in SMDs were more likely to represent
diverse benefits, especially general interests, in various policy
areas. These results are consistent with the theory proposed by this
study, that electoral systems with higher district magnitude are more
likely to offer electoral incentives for legislators to represent
specific benefits, including particularistic interests in targeted
policy areas, while electoral systems with lower district magnitude are
more likely to provide electoral incentives to represent diverse
benefits, including general interests in various policy areas. |