Doshisha University Center for the Study of the Creative Economy
Discussion Paper Series No. 2019-01

Is Silence Golden?
Evidence from Re-Election of Japan’s Prefectural Assembly
Members
Akihiko Kawauraa, Yasutomo Kimurab and Yuzu Uchidac
a Faculty of Policy Studies, Doshisha University

b Faculty of Commerce, Otaru University of Commercec Faculty of Engineering, Hokkai-Gakuen University

Discussion Paper Series

Is Silence Golden?
Evidence from Re-Election of Japan’s Prefectural Assembly Members
Akihiko Kawauraa, Yasutomo Kimurab and Yuzu Uchidac
a Faculty of Policy Studies, Doshisha University
b Faculty of Commerce, Otaru University of Commercec Faculty of Engineering, Hokkai-Gakuen University(Abstract)
This paper is an inquiry into the re-election of Japan’s prefectural assembly members
and investigates if their visibility in the plenary session deliberations is a determinantof the outcome of their re-election campaign. This visibility is measured by the volumeof their speech during the immediately preceding term, which is tabulated from thelocal assembly transcripts. The use of the prefectural assembly transcripts is themethodological innovation of this paper, and allows an examination into theimportance of law-makers’ participation in the policy-making. The empirical analysis of
re-election of incumbent legislators suggests that speech volume is a factor
contributing to the electoral success for the assembly members with multiple terms.

Keywords:

local assembly; election; transcript; Japan; prefecture

JEL codes:

D72; D78; H89* This research project was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science [Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research #16H02912 and #17K03785]. There areno conflicts of interest to declare.

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I. Introduction
Public officials in representative democracies typically have a fixed term in
office – usually a certain number of years – to exercise the power given to them by theelectorate. They must run for re-election at the end of the term if they wish to remainin the position. Thus, one of the vital concerns for the elected officials during their termis the prospect of their re-election after the term expires.
This paper is an attempt to investigate the extent to which incumbents canincrease the re-election prospects by their own conduct. The specific action that thisresearch focuses on is their participation in the public policy-making. For legislators
this contribution may take many forms, which include identification of issues facing
the electorate, formulation of policies, and involvement in the legislative session
deliberations.
This paper examines officials’ involvement in the legislative session
deliberations, as this is visible for the voters who would decide if an incumbent
deserves the next term. It is also a variable that can be measured as the volume ofeach member’s speech in legislative colloquies recorded in the transcripts.
Incorporating this variable would allow an empirical study of the relationship between
incumbents’ deliberation participation and result of their re-election efforts. Data for
the inquiry comes from elections for Japan’s prefecture assembly members.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section reviews
literature that has examined the topic of re-election of the public officials. The third
section provides background information of Japan’s prefecture assembly and elections
for their members and describes data to be used for the empirical analysis. The resultsof the quantitative analyses on determinants of election outcome are presented in the
fourth section, which is followed by the concluding remarks.
2. Incumbents and Re-election
There is a large body of literature that has investigated elections and behaviorof public officials. Stratmann (2013) confirms that the extra budget allocation to alegislator’s home constituency leads to a higher vote share on election day. Rivas (2016)
finds that, in a two-period framework, a politician starts his terms in office by taking
2the private decision and defers taking the socially motivated decision for the second
period before he is up for re-election. Peralta and dos Santos (2020, forthcoming)
investigates the incumbent mayors’ decision of whether to seek reelection using a panelof 278 Portuguese municipalities. Drazen and Eslava (2010) constructs a model inwhich incumbents try to influence voters by changing the composition of government
spending, rather than overall spending or revenues. Rational voters may support anincumbent who targets them with spending before the election even though suchspending may be due to opportunistic manipulation. This model is supported by dataon local public finances for all Colombian municipalities.
Incorporating the presence of layers of governments, Granlund (2011)
examines political accountability in the context of the two-tier government countries
and finds that voters have incentives to increase the beneficial public expenditures
they require for reelecting incumbents, since this reduces the resources diverted topolitical rents. Hickey (2015) also examines the role of inter-government transfer invoters’ evaluation of candidates. Without transfers the sole issue at the ballot box is thecompetence of the candidates. With transfers, however, voters not only evaluate
politicians on the basis of their competence, but also on the expected transfer received
when a particular politician is in office.
With a focus on electoral rules, Albanese, Cioffi and Tommasino (2019) findsthat the electoral rule is a determinant of incumbents’ on-the-job behavior with datafrom Italian Senators. Chamon, et al. (2019) uses a discontinuity in Brazilian electoralrules to show that runoff elections are associated with more candidates and sharper
political competition than majoritarian elections. Lim (2013) examines two selection
systems (appointment and election) for state trial court judges of the State of Kansas,
and shows that elected judges have much larger variability in their decisions than do
appointed judges. The appointment system yields homogenous policy outcomes throughselection based on preferences. In contrast, elected judges have diverse preferences andstrong reelection concerns. Noting that there are countries where democratic systems
are fragile, Kammas and Sarantides (2016) observes that incumbent politicians
allocate resources to a broader group of agents as a device for consolidating democratic
regimes under an instable political climate, i.e., when it is not certain that next
elections are held according to the institutional rules, with data from a sample of 65
developed and developing countries.

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This paper is an attempt to contribute to this field of research by providing
greater insights into the relationship between incumbents’ behavior and their reelection. A hypothesis on politicians’ participation in policy deliberations and their reelection is tested with data from elections for Japan’s prefectural assembly members.
The next section describes data used for this study.
3. Elections for Japan’s Prefecture Assembly Members
Japan has 47 prefectures, each of which has its own local assembly with thelegislative power. The assembly members are elected by popular vote for the four-year
term and there is no legally binding term limit. Many prefectures conduct elections in
April. This is because the first elections were held nationwide in April 1947 in order toprepare local assemblies before the Constitution of Japan was enacted in May of thesame year. There is a law that requires that prefectures hold their assembly member
elections on the same day, and 41 prefectures organized the assembly elections to voteon April 12, 2015. 1 This study uses information from this election for the empiricalanalysis.
The number of assembly seats to be decided in that election was 2,284 from
960 constituencies in 41 prefectures. There were 3,272 candidates for these positions,and Table 1 demonstrates their breakdown. More than half (59.9%) are incumbent
legislators who would like to be re-elected, which is followed by newcomers (36.7%) who
try to join the prefecture assembly for the first time. Not all of them received votes on
the election day, however. There were constituencies in which candidates’ number did
not exceed the seat allocation, which led to automatic selection of all the candidates.
This no-vote was observed for 501 seats in 321 constituencies, which correspond to athird of the total electoral districts. The remaining 1,783 seats were contested by 2,771
candidates that include 1,493 incumbents.

The earthquake of 2011 that devastated the north-eastern parts of Japan in March
led to postponement of the year’s local elections in affected regions to May, which
decreased the number of prefectures that vote on the same day in April to 41.

1

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Table 1. Breakdown of 3,272 Candidates for Assembly Seats in 41 Prefectures--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Candidate Category

Vote

No-Vote--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Incumbent Assembly Members

1,960

1,493

467

Newcomers

1,202

1,172

30

110

106

4

3,272

2,771

501

Former Assembly Members
Total---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following analyses will identify if the active participation in the
deliberations of the plenary session helps the incumbent members to secure re-election.
This is particularly important, as plenary sessions are usually open to the public (i.e.,
voters) and visibility on the legislative floor may be translated into positive evaluationof officials in the eye of voters. If voters hold incumbent politicians to account in the
public policy-making, their records in the local assembly could be a determinant ofvoting behavior.
The inquiry is an attempt to investigate the determinants of the outcome ofelections for the 1,493 incumbents. The variable of primary concern represents theircontribution in the policy debate. This is measured as the volume of their speech(character count) in the plenary sessions during the immediately preceding term (April
2011-March 2015), which is tabulated from the local assembly transcripts.2 This use of
the prefectural assembly transcripts is the methodological innovation of the paper. 3 To
The size of speech/remarks/statements is represented by the “character count”. Thisis different from the “word count” in the English text analysis. The Japanese language
writing does not require a space between individual words, which makes the “wordcount” of Japanese transcripts extremely hard to prepare. In addition, the presence of
postpositional particles in the Japanese language renders divisions of transcripts intowords arbitrary.
3 This count data is part of the information created in a project to establish theJapanese political corpus. The corpus is available at [ http://local-politics.jp/ ], which isdesigned to provide various information contained in the prefectural assemblytranscripts and is also equipped with a search function by key words. For example, it
allows an investigation of specific policy issues that are discussed in individual
prefectures to the extent that they are reflected in the assembly deliberations. For
more information, please see Kimura, et al. (2016).
2

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the author’s knowledge, there has been no literature that incorporates this factor in theempirical analysis of election results for incumbent politicians.
The analysis takes the form of logistic regression that explains the dummy
variable (Re-Elect) which takes one for the incumbents who were successful in their reelection efforts and zero otherwise. The principal explanatory variable is incumbents’character count that enters the regression after being normalized relative to theprefecture average count in the sample (Count-Norm). This transformation isnecessary as character counts vary significantly across prefectures. It is also based on
the assumption that voters evaluate incumbents/candidates relative to other legislatorsin the same assembly. It is hypothesized that the character count is a determinant of
the election outcome with positive coefficients.
Other explanatory variables reflect competitiveness of the constituencies (CCI:
Constituency Competitiveness Index) for each candidate and characteristics ofassembly members. The former is obtained by dividing the number of candidates inindividual constituencies by their seat numbers. This variable exceeds one as the
sample incumbents face competitive ballot on the election day. It is expected thatprobability of being re-elected decreases as competition becomes keener forincumbents. To identify possible separate effects in the constituencies that are morecompetitive than average, a dummy enters the analysis as CCI-High.
Assembly member variables include age (Age) and term (Term) of individual
candidates. The effect of age can be discussed in both ways. While being young may
project the image of dynamism and changes, maturity and experience reflected on age
could also appeal to voters. On the other hand, multiple terms should serve as a signalof experience and competence as legislators. Hence a greater value of Term is expected
to lead to higher probability of re-election. A first term dummy (First-Term) is also
prepared to isolate the effect potentially arising from being the junior legislators.
Description and summary statistics of dependent and explanatory variables arepresented in Table 2 and Table 3.

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Table 2. Description of Variables-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Variable Name

Description-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[dependent variable]
Re-Elected

Dummy (=1) for the incumbents who won re-election and zerootherwise[explanatory variable]
Count-Norm

Incumbents’ character count in the plenary sessions during
the immediately preceding term (April 2011-March 2015),
divided by the prefecture average in the sample

Constituency
Competitiveness Index

Obtained by dividing the number of candidates in individual(CCI)

constituencies by their seat numbers

CCI-High

Dummy (=1) for candidates in constituencies with CCI
greater than the average (of 1.550)

Age

Age of the incumbents, derived by [2015-birth year -1].
Note: This derivation does not take birth months of individual members into
account. Hence this variable underrepresents age of members whose birthday
falls before the election day.

Term

Number of terms of incumbent assembly members at thetime of the re-election campaign

First-Term

Dummy (=1) for the incumbents in the first term--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Table 3. Summary Statistics-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mean

S.D.

Min.

Max.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Re-Elected

0.851

0.356

0

1

Count-Norm

1

0.565

0

5.949

CCI

1.550

0.402

1.062

5

CCI-High

0.333

0.471

0

1

Age

56.25010.700

28

84

Term

2.871

1.989

1

12

First-Term

0.319

0.466

0

1

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Summary statistics show that 85.1% of the sample incumbents (1,271
members) succeeded in securing re-election. The minimum value of zero for CountNorm indicates that there are incumbents (34 of them) that did not address theplenary sessions at all during the past four years. There are on the average 1.550
candidates for each assembly seat, and the most competitive constituency has 5
candidates for one position. A third of the sample (497 incumbents) stood for re-election
in constituencies that are more competitive in terms of CCI value exceeding the
average value of 1.550. The average age is 56.25 years within the range of 28 and 84.
The average term is 2.871. Although they are not many, there are members with twodigit terms, i.e., two incumbents seeking the 13th term, five trying to win the 12th
term and six aiming at the 11th. The mean of 0.319 for First-Term indicates that in thesample are 477 first-term incumbents that try to win re-election for the first time.
4. Regression Results and Interpretations
The regression results are shown in Table 4, where estimated coefficients
represent log of the odds ratio. In parentheses below the coefficients are z-statistics,
while marginal effects of respective variables are produced in square brackets. The
specification II enters the interactive term of First-Term and Count-Norm among the
explanatory variables to identify the effects of character count separately for theassembly members in their first term. The specification III examines, by including
CCI-High*Count-Norm, if the character count has different consequences inconstituencies that are more competitive than the average.
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Table 4. Results of Logistic Regressions------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Re-Elected

I

II

III

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Count-Norm

0.250

0.298*

0.384**(1.60)(1.87)(2.14)[0.030][0.036][0.046]First-Term*Count-Norm-0.326*(1.94)[-0.039]

CCI-High*Count-Norm-0.290(1.61)[-0.035]

CCI-1.024***-1.040***-0.809***(6.23)(6.29)(3.86)[-0.123][-0.125][-0.097]-0.026***-0.028***-0.026***(3.07)(3.22)(3.09)[-0.003][-0.003][-0.003]

0.199***

0.149***

0.202***(3.86)(2.63)(3.91)[0.024][0.018][0.024]

Pseudo R2

5.15%

5.44%

5.35%

Chi-Squared

64.61

68.30

67.18

(P-value

0.00

0.00

0.00)

Age

Term

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: z-statistics are in parentheses. ***, ** and * denote statistical significance at the
1, 5 and 10 percent level. In square brackets are marginal effects.

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The estimated coefficients for the character count variable are positive in all
specifications, which indicates that greater speaking volume (hence greater visibility)
in the assembly sessions contributes to greater probability of re-election. While it is notstatistically significant when estimated as the single Count-Norm variable inspecification I, inclusion of interactive terms in specifications II and III turns themsignificant. According to results from Specification II, between first-term and multiterm incumbents, greater character counts would lead to successful re-election outcome
for the latter. It benefits them to participate in the policy deliberations to remain as theassembly members. For example, if a multi-term incumbent with the assembly’s
average character count doubles the speaking volume, the re-election probability
increases by 3.6%. For the first-term members, however, the opposite holds as thevalue of negative coefficient (-0.326) estimated for First-Term*Count-Norm exceeds the
positive coefficient (0.298) for the Count-Norm. For the junior members of theprefecture assemblies, it hurts to join the policy debate on the legislative floor. This
result is somewhat puzzling, since it is their very duty to engage in policy-making. A
possible interpretation is that, as the junior members are vulnerable in their reelection campaign due to the limited support base among local voters, it would be wise
to make efforts in the area of cultivating contact and name recognition among theelectorate. Greater character count for them could reflect inadequate allocation of theirtime and efforts in the grass roots campaign activities.
Specification III estimates suggest an interesting relationship between theeffects of character count and competitiveness in the constituencies. The positive andsignificant coefficient (0.384) for Count-Norm implies that incumbents are more likely
to be re-elected if they participate in the plenary debate. Its impact in competitive
constituencies isolated by the interactive term (CCI-High*Count-Norm) is negative,
although the estimated coefficient is not statistically significant. This is counterintuitive if one expects that, in competitive environments, the past political
performance in terms of participation in legislative activities would become more
important. An explanation could be found in the presence of candidates who try to
become the assembly members for the first time in those electoral districts. For the
1,202 newcomers, the average CCI is 1.789. This is substantially higher than the CCI
average of 1.419 for the 1,960 total incumbent candidates (including those that wereselected without actual voting), as the difference between means is statisticallydifferent at the 1% significance level. Their campaign may be designed to move theattention of voters away from legislative experience in which they cannot challenge
10incumbents, which could be the reason why extra character count does not help incompetitive constituencies.
Other variables have the estimated coefficients with expected signs that are
statistically significant. The negative coefficients of constituency competitivenessconfirm that it is more difficult to win re-election in a crowded field of candidates. It
helps incumbents to be young, as the negative coefficients of the age variable indicate.
Finally, it is also advantageous to have a longer tenure. The local voters appreciate
their political experience. A review of marginal effects of explanatory variables in
specifications II and III reveals two intriguing comparison. First, the impact of one
additional term on re-election probability (1.8-2.4%) is about half the corresponding
effects of the effect of doubling of character count from the prefecture average (of 3.64.6%). Second, an extra term improves probability of re-election even after the negative
effects from an age increase are considered. Suppose that an incumbent was
successfully re-elected after the second term and is now campaigning for the third
term. The re-election probability has increased due to an extra term. Although thisterm effect is partly offset by the negative consequences due to aging during the fouryear tenure, the total fall short of the positive impacts from the added term.
This importance of the legislative expertise reflected in term variable may berelated to findings in Specification II and III, i.e., (i) statistically significant negative
effects of character counts for the first- term legislators and (ii) negative (though nonsignificant) effects in competitive constituencies. If someone aspiring to become an
assembly member should select the constituency to stand as a candidate, challenging
the junior legislators would be more attractive than engaging the experienced veteranmembers. Thus, it is more likely for the first-term incumbents to find themselves
campaigning for their first re-election in competitive environments. To examine thecompetitive environments for the first-term legislators, Table 5 represents a tabulationof the legislators seeking re-election by the number of term (First-Term and MultiTerm) and their constituency competitiveness. The top panel [A] examines thesevariables’ relationship for 1,493 incumbents who received votes on the election day, andshows that the percentage of the first-term incumbents in the competitive districts (i.e.,
CCI above average) is 37.74%, which is higher than the corresponding percentage of
31.20% for the multi-term incumbents. The hypothesis that there is relationshipbetween term and constituency competitiveness is tested with the chi-square test of
independence, and the null hypothesis is rejected at the 5% level with the chi-square11statistic of 6.24. In addition, the bottom panel [B] demonstrates a two-way association
between the number of term and whether voting took place on the election day.
Constituency voters go to the polls only when the number of candidates exceed the seat
allocation of the constituency (Vote). The percentage of the first-term incumbent who
received votes was 79.77%, which is higher than 74.60% for the multi-term legislators.
The chi-square test of independence rejects the null hypothesis that there is no
relationship at the 5% significance level. These results suggest that first-term
assembly members are more likely to face stiff competition in their constituencies.

Table 5. Number of Term and Constituency Competitiveness-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[A] Breakdown of the incumbents who faced voting: 1,493
First-Term

Multi-Term

Incumbents

Incumbents

Total------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CCI below average

297

699

996

(62.26%)(68.80%)(66.71%)

180

317

497

(37.74%)(31.20%)(33.29%)CCI above average------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Total

477

1,016

1,493

Chi-statistic: 6.24
[B] Breakdown of the incumbents seeking re-election: 1,960
First-Term

Multi-Term

Total--------------------------------------------------------------------------------No-Vote

121

346

(20.23%)(25.40%)(23.83%)

477

1,016

1,493

(79.77%)(74.60%)(76.17%)

Vote

467

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Total

598

1,362

1,960

Chi-statistic: 6.12--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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5. Concluding Remarks
This paper has tested the hypothesis that politicians’ participation in thepolicy-making increases their chance of re-election by measuring participation as thevolume of their speech in the policy deliberations. One of the findings is that the
hypothesis holds for multi-term local legislators. Speech is silver for them and theimpact from debate participation is substantial. A caveat in this observation is that, forthe first-term legislators, engagement in policy discussion reduces their re-election
prospects. Silence is golden for junior politicians. This is unfortunate to the extent thatpoliticians’ first duty is to be involved in the public policy-making. Negative
consequences from this legitimate activity could bias junior members’ incentives andprevent them from accumulating policy-making expertise during the early stage of
their political career.
This observation may stem from challenges by those who try to join prefectureassembly for the first time. The possibility of newcomers’ entry into public office is one
important aspect of the democratic system, which separates it from autocracy. Their
presence gives incumbent officials good incentives to serve their local voters well asthat will increase the chance of their re-election. Nonetheless, it is an important
finding that the electoral competition they promote could have consequences on the
behavior of junior politicians that may not directly enhance their public policy
expertise.
Since this inquiry has used data from a single set of local elections in Japan, it
is desirable to conduct similar studies with different sets of election data. Analyses inthe same framework could produce different results, depending on the election rules ofindividual democracies. Hopefully this would contribute to a better understanding of
the democratic process.

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