Parliamentary Activities and Electoral Performance of Opposition Party Members

Abstract

　The purpose of this study is to examine whether the parliamentary activities of Japanese Diet members are positively related to their electoral performance. Previous studies have mainly focused on individual and environmental factors that influence the electoral performance of Japanese Diet members. However, these studies fail to consider the impact of Diet members' parliamentary activities on their electoral performance. In contrast, this study specifically focuses on committee work among parliamentary activities and uses the number of words of committee remarks proposed by Matsumoto & Matsuo (2011) as a measure of a Diet members' committee work, and tests the hypothesis that Diet members who are more active in committee work increase their vote share in the next election. It also tests the hypothesis that this effect is stronger for Diet members who have served fewer terms, as a consequence of the hypothesized theoretical causal mechanism.