A Tournament Theory of Pork Barrel Politics: The Case of Japan
| Author | Alastair Smith,Amy Catalinac,Bruce Bueno de Mesquita |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414019897677 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2020
Article
Comparative Political Studies
2020, Vol. 53(10-11) 1619 –1655
A Tournament Theory
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The Case of Japan
Amy Catalinac1 ,
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita1,
and Alastair Smith1
Abstract
How do politicians motivate voters to turn out and support them? We posit
that incumbents construct tournaments between groups and distribute
rewards to groups based on the levels of electoral support provided. We
test our propositions in Japan, where incumbents can discern relative levels
of support provided by municipalities in their districts and influence spending
in ways that reward certain municipalities over others. Using new data on
approximately 3,300+ Japanese municipalities in 1980 to 2000, we show
that when municipalities are ranked according to their levels of support
for Liberal Democratic Party winners in their district, those at higher ranks
get larger rewards, the difference in size of the reward increases at higher
ranks, and those in districts where municipalities vary more in size also
receive larger rewards. Our findings support the theory and help explain
other features of Japanese politics, including why pork tends to flow to
relatively unsupportive districts.
Keywords
distributive politics, pork-barrel politics, fiscal transfers, representation and
electoral systems, Japan
1New York University, New York City, NY, USA
Corresponding Author:
Amy Catalinac, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA.
Email: amy.catalinac@nyu.edu
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Comparative Political Studies 53(10-11)
Introduction
How can incumbents motivate voters to turn out and support them when the
likelihood of any voter influencing an election’s outcome is virtually nil?
Literature in political economy, comparative politics, and American politics
offers one answer to this question: with “pork,” where pork is typically
defined as club goods that benefit everyone in a particular, identifiable set of
voters (e.g., Cox & McCubbins, 1986; Dahlberg & Johansson, 2002; Diaz-
Cayeros et al., 2016; Ferejohn, 1974; Golden & Picci, 2008; Harris & Posner,
2018; Huber & Ting, 2013; Nichter, 2008; Ramseyer & Rosenbluth, 1993;
Stein & Bickers, 1994; Stokes, 2005; Tavitz, 2009; Weingast, 2014). Because
incumbents usually have access to money with which to build new schools or
hospitals, fix roads, extend train lines, or provide other geographically
focused projects, this work holds that they are likely to employ that access to
enhance their chances of staying in office. Despite a plethora of studies, how-
ever, there exists little consensus on questions such as to whom pork is deliv-
ered (core supporters, on-the-fencers, or opposition-inclined voters) and
when it is delivered (before elections as an inducement or after elections as a
reward). We introduce and test a new theory, formalized in Smith and Bueno
de Mesquita (2012) and Smith et al. (2017), for how savvy incumbents allo-
cate pork to win elections. The theory not only settles disagreement over
these two questions but also sheds light on puzzling features of our test case,
the politics of Japan in the period 1980–2000.
The theory, whose tenets we sketch out in more detail in the next section,
posits that whenever incumbents can discern the relative levels of electoral
support provided by groups in their districts and influence resource allocations
in ways that disproportionately benefit certain groups over others, they will
have incentives to pit those groups against each other in a tournament over
which is most supportive. In this tournament, prizes are awarded to groups in
accordance with their position in a ranking constructed on the basis of elec-
toral support. The prizes, moreover, are calibrated so that the difference in size
of the prize received by the first- and second-place getter is larger than the
difference in size of the prize received by the second- and third-place getter,
and so on. This strategy, inspired by work in economics on how employers can
motivate their employees by proposing a contest for a prize for the most pro-
ductive worker (Lazear & Rosen, 1981), works by increasing the amount of
influence each voter has over the size of their group’s prize. The possibility
that one’s vote could make a difference between winning a larger prize or hav-
ing to settle for a smaller one has the effect of motivating voters in all groups
to turn out and support the incumbent even when voting is costly and voters
know their vote will almost certainly not influence the outcome.
Catalinac et al.
1621
The theory holds that under this tournament, pork will be delivered to
groups (not individuals), after elections (not before), and toward the more
electorally supportive groups within a district. Its predictions about alloca-
tions across districts, however, highlight a variable that has not, at least to our
knowledge, been recognized in previous work: the relative sizes of the groups
from which electoral support is discernible. Just as employers find it difficult
to pit employees working different jobs against each other in a tournament
over who is most productive, incumbents in districts comprised of groups of
asymmetric sizes find it difficult to pit those groups against each other in a
tournament over which is most supportive. As vote-buying is illegal, incum-
bents in a democracy cannot make their use of a tournament explicit; so vot-
ers will wonder: Will the “most supportive group” be defined as the one
supplying the most votes to the incumbent or the largest vote share? For
reasons we explain in more detail below, in districts comprised of asymmetri-
cally sized groups, uncertainty over which metric incumbents will use to rank
the groups translates into diminished incentives to turn out and support the
incumbent. Incumbents in those districts, then, have incentives to offset these
diminished incentives with larger prizes. This means that in a tournament,
larger prizes go to the more supportive groups within a district, but across
districts, they go to the least supportive districts. This is because those dis-
tricts are comprised of asymmetrically sized groups.
To test the theory, we turn to the case of Japan, 1980–2000. Our incum-
bents are Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Members of Japan’s House of
Representatives (HOR), our groups are municipalities, and our prizes are dis-
cretionary transfers for projects in the municipality, which we call “pork.” We
selected the Japanese case because it satisfies the three conditions for a tour-
nament (groups are identifiable, levels of electoral support are discernible,
and groups can be rewarded), uncertainty over who would win any one of the
seven HOR elections held during this time was relatively low, the secondary
literature provides evidence consistent with a tournament, districts varied in
the number and relative sizes of the municipalities comprising them, and
Japan’s 1994 electoral reform redrew district boundaries, enabling us to
observe the same municipality in different districts (facing different “com-
petitors”) before and after 1994. We conclude our study in 2000 because
mergers mean that many municipalities after 2000 do not correspond to those
before 2000 (e.g., Horiuchi et al., 2015).
Besides supplying characteristics that enable rigorous tests of the theory’s
predictions, the theory can explain features of Japanese politics that have
befuddled scholars. One is why, given that there is “a solid consensus among
students of Japanese politics about the centrality of pork barrel politics in
both parliamentary (Diet) and local elections in Japan” (Fukui & Fukai, 1996,
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Comparative Political Studies 53(10-11)
p. 268), there is little evidence that places delivering more electoral support
for the LDP receive more pork. In fact, studies typically demonstrate a nega-
tive correlation between pork and levels of electoral support for the LDP,
whether across districts or prefectures, measured in vote or seat shares (e.g.,
Hirano, 2011; Horiuchi & Saito, 2003; McMichael, 2018; Meyer & Naka,
1998, 1999; Saito, 2010). The tournament offers an explanation for this: It
expects that LDP incumbents receive their highest levels of electoral support
in districts comprised of relatively evenly sized municipalities. Because
uncertainty over how municipalities will be compared with each other has
fewer consequences in those districts, incumbents can offer less (in terms of
pork) and get more (in terms of support). In districts comprised of asymmetri-
cally sized municipalities, in contrast, uncertainty over metric means that
incumbents must offer more but will still get less. Hence, pork tends to flow
to the least electorally supportive districts.
A second question is why LDP incumbents continue to deliver pork after
Japan’s 1994 electoral reform. The reform, which replaced multi-member
districts (MMDs) with a combination of single-member districts (SMDs) and
proportional representation (PR), eliminated the need for majority-seeking
parties to run more than one candidate in each district. Some studies hold that
this freed LDP politicians from having to generate personal sources of appeal,
of which pork is one, and pushed them to adopt a more efficient...
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