Doshisha University Center for the Study of the Creative Economy
Discussion Paper Series No. 2022-01

Legislative Participation and Re-Election of Otaru City Assembly Members

Akihiko Kawaura* and Yasutomo Kimura***Faculty of Policy Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, 602-8580 Japan**Faculty of Commerce, Otaru University of Commerce, Otaru, 047-8501 Japan

Discussion Paper Series

Legislative Participation and Re-Election of Otaru City Assembly Members

Akihiko Kawaura* and Yasutomo Kimura***Faculty of Policy Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, 602-8580 Japan**Faculty of Commerce, Otaru University of Commerce, Otaru, 047-8501 Japan

Abstract
This study investigates the effects of legislators' policy-making participation on theirre-election prospects. Legislative participation is measured by statements on the floor,
the records of which are available in assembly session transcripts. Data from fiveassembly elections in a Japanese municipality are analyzed as a panel. The results
indicate making statements in assembly sessions helps incumbents earn more votes in
the next election.

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1. Introduction
This study is an attempt to investigate whether legislators' participation inassembly deliberations would enhance their re-election prospect. In representative
democracies members of a legislative body have the duty to formulate public policy toimprove people's life. The electoral process offers voters an opportunity to express
which candidate is best qualified to serve them. When incumbent politicians seek reelection, voters would need measures to evaluate if their representatives are making
conscious efforts to engage in policy-making on their behalf.
Legislators' efforts take several forms. Some of them, such as backroom
dealing among legislative colleagues, are difficult to observe for voters. On the other
hand, some are relatively easy to follow, which include participation in assembly
debate. While legislative participation itself comprises a variety of activities,
legislators' address at the podium on the assembly floor is quantifiable from thelegislature transcript text.
The deliberation transcripts contain valuable information about individual
representatives' involvement in decision-making, and its use represents part of an
expanding effort to utilize text information as data in the economic empirical research.
Gentzkow et al. (2019) is a survey of the growing empirical literature that uses text
data and summarizes analytical methods that deal with text data's multi-dimensional
nature. This research focuses on the amount of legislators' speech as a proxy of theirpolicy-making participation.
This paper contributes to the literature of political economy of democracy byinvestigating behavior of elected officials and outcome of their re-election campaign.
Examples of studies that examined incumbents' behavior include: Raveh and Tsur(2020), Schettini and Terra (2020), Vukovic (2020) Gonschorek et al. (2018), Conconi etal. (2017), and Drazen and Eslava (2010) for members of the executive branch.
Klingensmith (2019), Hogan (2008), and Milligan and Rekkas (2008) examined thesame issue for legislative officials.
The empirical analysis in this inquiry will test if legislators' address on theassembly floor has positive effects in their re-election bid. The data come from theassembly of the city of Otaru, Hokkaido, as it is a representative of Japanese2municipalities. We collect panel data for sets of legislators who were elected andcampaigned for re-election in the period of 1999-2019. Hypotheses on legislative
participation and electoral performance are tested with these data.
2. Otaru and its Assembly
Otaru is a port city adjacent to the city of Sapporo, which is the capital city of
Hokkaido Prefecture. When Japan transformed itself from the feudal system to themodern nation in the second half of the 19th century, Hokkaido served as the frontier
for economic development as it was scarcely inhabited at that time. The Meiji
government promoted settlement to the island to make it the source of food supplies.
Otaru played a major role in this phase, serving as the island's commercial andfinancial hub with a port and a branch of country's central bank, Bank of Japan. Afterthe end of World War II, Sapporo emerged as the economic center of Hokkaido, andOtaru's population peaked at 207,095 in 1964.
This research selects Otaru as the case study because it is a representative ofJapanese municipalities on the size dimension. As Japan recently experiences
population decline, Otaru has also seen its resident's number dwindle. As Table 1
shows, its population stays around the average of municipalities in the "city" and"Tokyo ward" categories. 1 The average city/ward population has been relatively stable
as the central government promoted municipality consolidation. While creation of new
cities through amalgamation of towns/villages increased their numbers, merger ofcities expanded their size.
Municipality consolidation requires that local assemblies be also combined,
which complicates analysis of election outcome. Otaru is desirable as a case study inthis sense, as it has not engaged in merger with other municipalities and offers stableelectoral environments for the analysis.

Japan has four municipality categories: city, Tokyo ward, town and village. According
to the census of 2020, 91.8 percent of its population live in cities and 23 Tokyo wards.

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Table 1. Population of Otaru and City/Tokyo Ward Category Municipalities------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Year

Otaru

City and Tokyo Ward Average------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2000

150,687

144,413 (693)2005

143,900

140,419 (755)2010

131,928

143,357 (813)2015

121,924

142,624 (815)2020

111,299

142,034 (815)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: In parentheses are the number of "city" and "Tokyo ward" municipalities. The
number of "Tokyo ward" is 23 throughout the period.

The assembly of Otaru meets four times a year, February-March, June-July,
September and December, for its plenary sessions, each of which usually lasts for two
weeks. The assembly began to publish its official transcripts of plenary sessions in
2000, which allows inquiry into legislative participation of individual assembly
member, beginning with those who won the 1999 election until the ones who ran in themost recent election of 2019. This research uses character count data tabulated fromthese transcripts as a proxy for their participation.
Members of the assembly of Otaru are elected from a single city-wide
constituency and serves a four-year term. 2 Elections take place in April every four
years. During the period of this inquiry, six elections were held as shown in Table 2.
The table also demonstrates that, following the decline of the number of city residents,
the assembly has downsized itself. In 20 years since 1999, the assembly experienced a
reduction of 11 seats.

This city-wide single constituency facilitates investigation of election results, as
environment differences need not be addressed in the analysis.

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4Table 2. The Number of Otaru City Assembly Seats and Candidates at Elections------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Election Year

Assembly Seats(A)

Candidates(B)(A)/(B)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1999

36

40

0.900

2003

32

37

0.865

2007

28

39

0.718

2011

28

32

0.875

2015

25

28

0.893

2019

25

29

0.862

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There have been different degrees of competition in assembly member
elections as illustrated in Table 2. In the 1999 election, for example, there were only
four losers among 40 candidates, while 11 candidates (out of 39) did not win a seat in2007. Once elected, assembly members are allowed to serve multiple terms, as there isno term-limit law for elected officials in Japan. Among those who won assembly seatsin 1999-2015 elections, a majority tried to continue to serve and ran in the following
elections as shown in Table 3. Out of 25 legislators who were voted to be assembly
members in the 2015 election, for example, 20 chose to seek re-election.
A comparison of Table 2 and 3 suggests that it is advantageous to campaign as
an incumbent. The ratio (A)/(B) in Table 2 is the share of successful candidates, and theratio (D)/(C) represents the corresponding share for incumbent candidates. In every
election, the latter is higher than the former. The 2011 election is particularly
remarkable, as all of 19 incumbents running for re-election managed to remain in theirposition.

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Table 3. Re-Election by Incumbent Assembly Members------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Election

Incumbents seeking

Re-Elected

Year

Re-Election (C)(D)(D)/(C)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2003

22 [36]

20

0.909

2007

23 [32]

19

0.826

2011

19 [28]

19

1.000

2015

20 [28]

18

0.900

2019

20 [25]

19

0.950

Total

104

95

0.913

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: In square brackets are the number of assembly members from the last election.

The total number of incumbent candidates in five elections for 2003-2019 is104, as shown in Table 3. As some legislators succeeded in attaining a long tenure andrepeated running in consecutive elections, these 104 observations count them morethan once. Tabulation of individual members according to the number of times they ran
in the sample elections produces Table 4. In total, 53 individuals are in the dataset.
Out of 53 members, for example, two of them campaigned in all five elections asincumbents and succeeded in serving after the 2019 election.
As individual members differ with respect to the number of times they appear
as candidates in the sample period, we have an unbalanced panel dataset whose timeseries dimension is five elections with four-year interval. This panel data will be usedin the analysis that examines the link between legislators' speech on the assembly floor
and their election performance.

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Table 4. Incumbents by the Number of their Re-Election Bids: 2003-2019------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Number of Re-Election Bids (A)Number of Incumbents (B)(A) x (B)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5

2

10

4

4

16

3

8

24

2

15

30

1

24

24

Total

53

104

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Legislative Participation and Election Results
This section will test the hypothesis that assembly members with morelegislative participation would perform better at the polls. The empirical analysis will
examine data from Otaru assembly members to determine if their legislative
participation improves their chance of electoral success. In the panel regression
analysis, the dependent variable is the vote share received by the candidates. As thisstudy attempts to capture the effect of incumbents' legislative participation on their reelection campaign, we focus on the change in the vote share from the last election, in
which they won the assembly seat. The variable to represent this change would be thedifference of the vote share.
This variable construction, however, needs an adjustment in view of thevariance in the number of candidates in our sample's elections shown in Table 2. If anelection had a crowded field of candidates, the expected vote share for each contenderwould be smaller. This is because votes cast would be spread among many candidates.
Incumbents running for re-election against more candidates than in the previous
election are expected to receive a smaller share of votes, independent of their own
efforts during the term. The reverse holds when re-election is sought in a contest withfewer candidates. In a sample with multiple elections, it is necessary to normalize thevote share of each candidate across elections.

7In order to incorporate this factor into the electoral performance measure, wefirst derive the "excess vote share", which is the actual vote percentage received inexcess of the arithmetic average vote share, which is 100% divided by the candidate
number. This inquiry uses the change in the "excess vote share" from the last election
as the gauge of results of incumbents' re-election effort. We denote this variable as
Dif_ExcessVote.
In the regression analysis to investigate the determinants of Dif_ExcessVote,the explanatory variable of primary interest is the character count (Character) during
the last term for incumbents seeking re-election, which serves as the proxy forlegislative participation. The amount of speech would be measured by "word count" if
the medium of communication was English. For the Japanese writing, however, theword count is extremely difficult to prepare. The Japanese text does not require a space
between individual words. In addition, the presence of postpositional particles in theJapanese language renders divisions of transcripts into word-units arbitrary.
As the beginning of assembly member's term, April, coincides with the start ofJapan's fiscal year (April to March), we use fiscal years to tally their amount of speechby year. The members' total character counts for each fiscal year (and legislators' fouryear term) are listed in Table 5. They do not include utterance attributed to mayors
and bureaucrats, as this study focuses on legislators. The statement by the assembly
chairperson is also excluded in legislators' character counts when the speech is madefor the purpose of session management. Examples consists of such activities as
declaration of session opening, reading of the session agenda and explanation of
documents and related materials distributed among participants. This omission isnecessary as chairperson's session participation is of a different nature and measuring
it on the same basis with regular legislators may bias the analysis. Instead, the impactof the chairperson's position on election results is identified with a separate dummy.
Table 5 also indicates that the speech amount for the assembly members is notnecessarily constant on an annual basis. Hence, we will use individual members' countdata in the analysis first, which will then be supplemented by the variable normalized
to isolate the changes in the total speech amount. It is denoted as Norm_Character andobtained by dividing individual members' character count data by the total charactercounts recorded by all assembly members.

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Table 5. Character Counts recorded by Assembly Members-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fiscal Year

Character Counts-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[with 36 members from 1999 Election] 1,649,521
1999

Transcript Not Available

2000

589,7622001

603,852

2002

455,907[with 32 members from 2003 Election] 1,914,255
2003

360,3372004

386,912

2005

582,7572006

584,249[with 28 members from 2007 Election] 2,298,800
2007

561,013

2008

595,990

2009

584,5022010

557,295[with 28 members from 2011 Election] 2,436,352
2011

637,376

2012

568,3692013

601,634

2014

628,973[with 25 members from 2015 Election] 2,553,164
2015

716,226

2016

577,674

2017

699,7722018

559,492[with 25 members from 2019 Election]
2019492,7482020

364,856-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: Data for 2020 fiscal year do not include the last session in FY2020, which washeld in February-March in 2021.

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Control variables in the regression are: the number of cumulative term (Term),
the age (Age), whether the incumbent belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP),
and whether the incumbent served as chairperson in the immediately preceding term
(Chair).
Multiple terms, reflected on Term, should serve as a sign of experience andcompetence as legislators. If local voters judge that an incumbent deserves anotherterm due to its seniority among assembly members, this variable could contribute topositive changes of the "excess vote share". The impact of the Age variable on
Dif_ExcessVote depends on the voter perception of incumbent's effectiveness asassembly members at the age four years older than at the last election. The extra four
years may convince voters that a young politician has matured as a dynamic decisionmaker. On the other hand, the aging may also send the message regarding the senior
members that they have peaked their usefulness.
The LDP dummy depicts potential benefits of belonging to the Liberal
Democratic Party. As the dominant party at the national politics, its influence extends
to the local level. 3 For LDP members in the Otaru assembly, gaining seniority in theinfluential policy group may lead to wider support from local voters. Finally, the Chair
dummy isolates the impact of being a chair. If the chairperson's position carries
prestige and impresses voters, it may be linked to electoral success. Summary statisticsof these dependent and explanatory variables are shown in Table 6.
The mean value for Dif_ExcessVote suggests that incumbents are evenly
distributed between those who gained and lost in their excess vote share in comparison
to their previous elections. The Character variable is defined for the full-term, thesecond half of the term, and the term's final year. This is to examine the possibility
that voters would place greater value for legislators' participation toward the end of theterm (i.e., close to the election). A glance at summary statistics of Full_Term and2nd_Half Character variables implies that many assembly members record morecharacter counts during the second half of the term in relation to the term's first twoyear.

Krauss and Pekkanen (2011) illustrates the party's central position in Japan's
politics.

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Table 6. Descriptive Statistics------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mean

St.Dev.

Min.

Max.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dif_ExcessVote (%)

0.005

0.585

-1.8771.675

78.07557.8540

261.05

2nd_Half (3rd/4th Year) 42.495

32.3810

141.15

Final_Year

20.271

16.3430

71.20

Full_Term (4 Years)

3.593

2.663

0

12.1782nd_Half (3rd/4th Year)

3.626

2.774

0

12.095

Final_Year

3.651

2.965

0

15.616

Term

2.558

1.606

1

7

Age

58.327

9.711

30

82

LDP

0.385

0.489

0

1

Chair

0.019

0.138

0

1

Character (in thousands)
Full_Term (4 Years)

Norm_Character (%)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The panel regression results are in Table 7. Coefficients are estimated withrandom effects specification in view of the unbalanced nature of the panel. Standard
errors are clustered by individual assembly member. The character count variable has
a positive coefficient that is statistically significant at the 5 percent level for every
period. It helps incumbent assembly members to speak in the plenary sessions for the
purpose of electorally performing better than the last election. An interestingobservation is that the coefficient size is greater for the 2nd half and the final (4th)year during the term than for the total four years. This means that, assuming that thecost of speaking at the podium (including that for preparation) does not differ across apoint in a term, it is more rewarding to schedule it in the second half of the term forincumbents seeking re-election. It could be the reason for the greater total charactercounts during the second half than the first.

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Table 7. Results of Panel Regression: Random Effects------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Period for Speech(I) Full Term

(II) 2nd Half

(III) Final Year

(4 Years)(3rd/4th Year)(4th Year)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Character

0.002 **

0.004 **

0.007 **

(0.001)(0.002)(0.003)

0.020

0.027

0.027

(0.030)(0.031)(0.030)-0.014 **-0.015 **-0.016 **(0.007)(0.007)(0.007)

0.135

0.143

0.123

(0.111)(0.109)(0.102)

0.949 **

1.020 **

0.999 **

(0.389)(0.435)(0.444)

0.568

0.569

0.643

(0.399)(0.405)(0.399)Adj. R-Squared

0.126

0.135

0.125

Wald chi2

18.65

16.47

13.89

(P-value

0.002

0.006

0.016)

Term

Age

LDP

Chair

Constant------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: In parentheses are robust standard errors clustered by individual assembly
member. ** and * denote statistical significance at the 5 and 10 percent levels.

The Age variable has negative coefficients significant at the 5 percent level.
The advantage from additional maturity and experience conceived by the voters would
diminish as candidates grow old. Finally, the duty of chairperson has positive returns,
as it improves the excess vote share by about one percentage point above the lastelection.
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Table 8. Results of Panel Regression with Normalized Character: Random Effects------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Period for Speech(I) Full Term

(II) 2nd Half

(III) Final Year

(4 Years)(3rd/4th Year)(4th Year)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Norm_Character

0.038 *

0.043 *

0.036 *

(0.021)(0.023)(0.019)

0.022

0.027

0.027

(0.031)(0.031)(0.031)-0.015 **-0.015 **-0.016 **(0.007)(0.007)(0.007)

0.123

0.136

0.119

(0.110)(0.108)(0.101)

0.954 **

1.012 **

0.996 **

(0.399)(0.436)(0.444)

0.628

0.601

0.654

(0.402)(0.406)(0.375)

Adj. R-Squared

0.120

0.129

0.123

Wald chi2

16.94

15.72

13.53

(P-value

0.005

0.008

0.019)

Term

Age

LDP

Chair

Constant------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: In parentheses are robust standard errors clustered by individual assembly
member. ** and * denote statistical significance at the 5 and 10 percent levels.

Table 8 represents panel regression results when the Character variable isnormalized to remove the effects of changes in total character counts across years. The
amount of speech remains statistically significant with positive coefficients after being
normalized. Its impact is greater for the 2nd half of the term than for the 4 years as awhole.
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4. Conclusions
This paper has investigated the relationship between legislative participationand subsequent electoral performance for the Otaru City Assembly members using
election data for the 2003-2019 period. The main findings are that making statementsin the assembly sessions helps incumbents to earn more votes in the next election, andthat this effect is relatively greater when the speech takes place during the second halfof the term.
This observation is relevant for the wider inquiry into the behavior ofpolitician, as re-election is an important motive shared by many elected officials.
Examination of involvement in decision-making is a field that has not previously been
explored. As preparation of text data from session transcripts has become more readily
available by the development of algorism technology, it is worth to expand the coverageof this research into more local assemblies in Japan and other democracies in theworld.

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