1996年衆議院選挙における候補者の公約と投票行動

抄録

The 1996 general election was the first election after the new electoral system has adapted. When this elecoal system is justified, it is stressed that under the election system, selection would be party and policy centered. The aim of this paper is to answer whether the 1996 general election was party and policy centered or not, through an analysis of candidates' campaign pledge and voting behavior. Concretely, I investigate the cleavage of the parties, how the pledges of candidates are formed and whether or not the pledges affect the voters' behavior.
In the 1996 general election, the policies mentioned by many candidates were administrative reform, promoting welfare, saving protecting agriculture and objection to rising consumer tax and so on. Through factor analysis, the pledges have four dimensions. They can be interpreted as “administrative and fiscal reform”, “distributive policy”, “conservative or reformist” and “post-materialistic policy”. However, I cannot find any large difference in these dimensions among the candidates of different parties. Except the first dimension, these dimensions are not new one and from the first dimension, no cleavage can be found.
The main factor in forming the pledges is which party the candidates belong to. In some policy areas, the regional characteristics or candidates' career are significant. However, the degree of closeness of conpetion has no influence.
Finaly, I found the relation between the campaign pledges of policy package and voting behavior. But compared with oher factors of voting behavior, the pledges' influence is very small. So it is diffecult to say that the 1996 general election was a party and policy centered election.