Abstract
This study provides an explanation for the conservative swing among Japanese legislators after the 1990s. I focus on effects of the electoral competition under the current electoral and party systems. In recent general elections, left-wing parties fielded many candidates who could hardly win and the New Komeito supported Liberal Democrats. A simple game-theoretic model predicts that these two factors give candidates of major parties an incentive to shift their policy positions toward more conservative ones. I show some empirical evidence that this did happen in the 2003 election analyzing an elite survey.
