Plurality electoral systems with multi-member districts and single nontransferable votes (SNTV) allow parties to win multiple seats in district elections by nominating multiple candidates, but they also penalize a party's seat share if the number of candidates offered is 'too many' or 'too few'. Given an institutional incentive to nominate the 'correct' number of candidates, we seek to establish empirically that the nominating behaviour of parties in such systems results from a rational calculus of strategic choice. So we develop and test an empirical theory of rational nominating behaviour applied to Japanese district elections before the 1994 electoral reform. We establish, for all possible nominating strategies, the conditions on voting outcomes required for actors to maximize benefits in the context. The efficiency of actual strategy choices for maximizing benefits is found by comparing an observed outcome from voting (the distributed benefit) with the benefit that would be expected had the party chosen its 'best' alternative nominating strategy instead. Empirical testing indicates that Japanese parties discriminated between available nominating strategies and made choices that maximized benefits in the context, evidence that the nominating behaviour of parties in this test environment was based on rational calculation.The issue of whether the nominating behaviour of Japanese political elites may be considered rationality-based is informed in the literature by two methodological approaches that derive conclusions from the empirical detection of party nominating errors. The first of these, exemplified by the work of Cox and his collaborators, 4 seeks to establish a 'maximally demanding' analytic benchmark of error-free nominating behaviour against which actual Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) nominations are evaluated. 5 To determine whether an error has been committed, Cox and Niou 6 develop a calculation procedure that requires parties to nominate only the number of candidates that can win seats, conditional upon some empirically determined magnitude of votes cast for opposing candidates and an efficient ('equalized') split of the party vote among its own candidates. From these conditions, three types of nomination error are derived: 'overnomination', where more candidates than can win a seat are nominated, 'undernomination', where fewer candidates than could win seats are nominated, and a 'non-optimal vote split', where the behaviour of party voters prevents the victory of some party candidate(s) that otherwise would have won a seat. Empirical testing based on these criteria indicates that about one-third of the LDP's nominating decisions were made in error.While Cox and his collaborators make no explicit claim regarding rationality, their theoretical assumption that the nominating and voting behaviour of actors will be 'efficient' in maximizing the party share of parliamentary seats is, in fact, what is commonly considered an expectation of rational behaviour. Their observation of substantial LDP nominating ...
We develop and test a theory, based on the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem, of the effectiveness of sanctions. We treat sanctions as exogenously imposed changes in a country's exposure to international markets. In a country with an opentrade regime, owners and intensive users of the abundant factor of production hold economic and political power. In a country closed to trade, however, economic and political power rests with owners and intensive users of scarce factors. Thus, if real rates of return to the abundant factor decline during sanctions against a trade-open country, or real rates of return to the scarce factor decline during sanctions against a trade-closed country, we expect these economically and politically powerful segments of the targeted country to push hard for policy changes that would bring about an end to sanctions. Statistical analysis of sanctions episodes initiated between
This article explores the impact of prime ministerial popularity on the changing electoral fortunes of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). We show that the popularity of the Japanese prime minister exerted a modest but definite impact on aggregate vote shares captured by the LDP throughout the postwar period.
In a post-September 11 world, no religious group in the United States has become more important yet remains more misunderstood than Muslim-Americans. This is particularly true with respect to the manner in which religious and political attitudes influence Muslim-Americans’ political behavior. This article addresses this issue by using data gathered from surveys taken in 70 mosques throughout the United States. With these data, this article maps the political and religious attitudes and behavior of mosque-attending Muslim-Americans and then analyzes the voting behavior of these respondents in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. It will show that the cultural and religious traditions of Islam have resulted in most mosque-attending Muslim-Americans being social conservatives and, as a result, report having voted for Bush in 2000. It will also show that increasingly negative perceptions of the manner in which the United States war in Iraq has affected Muslims living American led many to switch loyalties and cast their ballots for Kerry in 2004.
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