Abstract
This paper advances an institutional hypothesis of voter behavior which postulates that the electoral system influences parties' strategies with respect to determining their issue positions and placing relative weights on issues and traits. And, in turn, their strategies influence the relative importance of issues and traits in voting and the empirical utility of a theoretical model of voter behavior. In a weak system such as proportional representation, parties, regardless of whether they are vote-maximizing or policy-seeking, may be motivated to take distinct issue positions. By contrast, in a strong system such as plurality rule, office-seeking candidates may take centrist, homogeneous issue positions and highlight traits in their electoral campaigns. Such electoral strategies may in turn affect voters' evaluation functions. In my empirical analysis, I use an integrative model based on nested logit in order to examine the effects of issues and traits on voter behavior in the plurality and the proportional representation component of the 1996 general election for the Japanese House of Representatives.
