［特集］ 政権交代期の「選挙区政治」
個人中心の再選戦略とその有効性
―選挙区活動は得票に結び付くのか?―
2011 年 62 巻 2 号 p. 2_70-2_97
詳細
2011 年 62 巻 2 号 p. 2_70-2_97
While politicians still seem to see district activities as an important strategy for mobilizing personal votes, elections in Japan are increasingly marked by party competition. Why do they engage in such a strategy and does it really increase votes? By answering these questions, this paper aims to address how nationalized party competition affects politicians' behavior and how they adjust their different reelection strategies in changing environments. We hypothesize that personal-vote campaigning indeed increases votes and that its impact is larger where the incentives to cultivate personal votes are greater. With an original time-series dataset on the schedules of more than 150 Diet members, we offer the first systematic empirical test and find evidence confirming the hypotheses.
