6 - How Politicians Tie Money to Electoral Support

Summary

Chapters 6–8 use a comprehensive new dataset on the universe of Japanese municipalities in existence between 1980 and 2014 to examine whether tournaments are being conducted within tournament-possible electoral districts. Using regression specifications designed to minimize the influence of confounders, weigh up evidence for rival theories, and take advantage of distinctive features of the two electoral systems Japan has used, I test two hypotheses. First, I show that LDP politicians make the amounts of money municipalities in their electoral districts receive after Lower House elections conditional on where each municipality places in a rank order of municipalities. Second, I show that the difference in amounts received by municipalities at different ranks is larger at higher ranks, which is also evidence of a tournament. In addition to regression analyses, I consider two of the theory’s microfoundations which are that LDP politicians are capable of lobbying bureaucrats and voters are aware money is tied to support, respectively. Case studies, anecdotes, interviews, election manifestos, and voter surveys offer evidence for these microfoundations. Finally, I use the logic of a tournament to explain why prior studies of the relationship between votes and money in Japan reached strikingly different conclusions.