Japan's Distributive Politics after the Electoral Reform: Differentiation of Voters under the Mixed-Member Electoral System.

Does how people behave affect how much they can get from the government? If it does, what political factors matter? This paper tries to answer the questions with evidence from Japanese politics after the electoral reform. The new mixed-member electoral system produced strategic voting. That is, some voters cast ballots to two different parties at the same election in order to maximize their utility. It enables a politician to count the number of voters who really support his party and that of those who vote for him merely by strategic calculation. This situation gives us an opportunity to examine the long-lasting debate in the literature of distributive politics: the core versus swing debate. Does either type of voters get more than the other? If it does, which type does Japanese government favor? I analyze four general elections of the Lower House held under the new system and show that there exists the difference of fiscal allocations across these two type. Unlike most studies of Japanese electoral politics, I use a local municipality as the unit of analysis, because it is the unit to which the budgets are allocated. This study would reveal how political institutions affect the distribution of governmental expenditure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]