The book adopts a two-pronged empirical strategy to test the theory. First, a deep dive into a country’s political institutions is required, to ascertain whether electoral districts meeting the conditions for group-based clientelism exist. Second, after these electoral districts have been identified, the researcher must gather data on voting behavior, resource allocations, and other confounding variables at the level of the administrative entity within (tournament-possible) electoral districts and devise stringent empirical tests capable of pitting the theory’s expectations against those of rival theories. This chapter implements the first prong of this empirical strategy, using information about Japan. It presents a detailed overview of how electoral district boundaries are drawn, how votes are counted, what the relevant lower-tier entities are (in Japan’s case, they are municipalities) and how these entities are funded. It explains that Japanese municipalities depend for large shares of their revenue on national treasury disbursements (NTD), which are allocated by bureaucrats but vulnerable to influence by politicians. It classifies the universe of electoral districts that have been used in Japan’s Lower House elections, 1980–2014, as tournament-possible (or not), and it presents evidence that election outcomes are qualitatively different across both sets of districts, in the direction expected by the theory.

This chapter provides a short summary of the book’s contributions to comparative politics, political economy, and Japanese politics. Then, it sketches out a range of questions pertaining to different genres of research in political science, which future scholarship should address.

Chapter 8 looks for evidence of tournaments in the decisions of voters in Japan to turn out and vote in Lower House elections, 1980–2014. Under a tournament, decisions to vote are expected to hinge on where in the ranking a given municipality is expected to end up. All else equal, it expects that voters will be systematically more likely to go to the polls when they live in municipalities that are projected to place highly. Moreover, among municipalities projected to place highly, projections of further increases in rank are expected to bring about an even larger impact on turnout. The chapter presents three sets of empirical tests of these two hypotheses. The first two look within electoral districts and examine how turnout varies as a function of where municipalities are expected to place in the ranking. The third set of tests leverage variation in competitiveness across electoral districts, which we know impacts turnout, and variation in competitiveness and ruralness, which we know impacts turnout in Japan. The tests reveal support for both hypotheses and shed new light on determinants of political participation across time and space.

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.

This chapter analyzes the regional and sectoral differences in how cities and municipalities engage in climate change networks. Over the past 20 years, an increasing number of cities, regions, companies, investors, and other non-state and subnational actors have voluntarily committed to reducing their GHG emissions. Such actions could help reduce the implementation gap. Along with the increase in commitments and the growing number of venues through which non-state actors can cooperate in order to govern climate change, it is necessary to track and evaluate such efforts. This chapter assesses the voluntary commitments made by Swedish municipalities, regions and multistakeholder partnerships to decarbonize by reducing GHG emissions. It finds large differences in which cities and municipalities that engage in networks. Large and urban municipalities in the south and along the eastern coast are well represented, whereas more rural municipalities along the Norwegian border are less represented in the data. The findings are discussed in terms of climate justice, highlighting the importance of having everyone onboard to create acceptance and reduce inequality in the transformation toward decarbonization.

This chapter explores net-zero emission targets in Swedish municipalities. Based on a detailed examination of over 300 local climate and environment plans, the chapter both maps and evaluates the quantity and quality of net-zero emissions targets in Swedish municipalities, as well as how they relate to the national climate mitigation goals. It identifies 39 municipalities with net-zero emission targets. The targets range from highly specific with intermediary goals and plans for how to deal with residual emissions, to lofty, one-sentence visions without any further specifications. The findings are subsequently discussed whether aspirational goals – such as net-zero emission targets – could have an impact on the climate policy of a municipality or whether more specific goals are more effective. The chapter concludes that net-zero emission targets are still in their infancy in Swedish municipalities with large heterogeneity and gaps in how the goals are defined, what they include in terms of GHGs and sectors, and whether they also include measures for dealing with residual emissions.

This chapter examines Tunisia’s decentralization process from the start of the constitutional drafting process in 2011 to adoption of the Local Authorities Code in 2018. Tunisia’s decentralization process reveals the existence of historical territorial cleavages that are often obscured by the usual ideological cleavages highlighted in the literature, particularly the secularist–Islamist binary. The chapter begins with a brief historical overview of regional inequalities, which played a prominent role in the 2011 uprising and led to the adoption of decentralization in the new Constitution. The chapter analyzes how two key factors – institutional venue and party system coherence – shape the incentives and capacities of political and bureaucratic officials to shape decentralization. It draws on the literature on decentralization in other transitioning and developing countries and analyzes the role of political parties in a post-authoritarian transitional context, the balance of power between political and administrative actors, and how choices regarding process design and institutional venue at the outset of decentralization reforms shape subsequent outcomes. The chapter sheds light on how actors’ strategies are shaped by not only their own interests and ideas, but by the wider institutional arrangements that shape the incentives and capacities of individual and collective actors.