Party theory of parliamentary debate and the endogenous nature of parliamentary institutions: Theoretical implications from Japan’s diet

Abstract

We add new insights to the party theory of parliamentary debate proposed in Proksch and Slapin’s The Politics of Parliamentary Debate by combining a quantitative replication analysis of floor speeches with a qualitative explanation of the endogenous transformation of two institutions mediating elections and parliamentary speech in the Japanese Diet. Although the House of Representatives in Japan used a single non-transferable vote system with particularly strong personal vote-seeking incentives, our analysis based on a new dataset shows that, contrary to the theory’s predictions, the pattern of speech activities among party leaders and backbenchers is close to that of Germany, which has a party-centered proportional representation system. Such seemingly contradictory results, however, can be consistently understood within the scope of the theory if we consider the patterns of endogenous change in the parliamentary system and party organization. These results highlight the potential for further development of the theory.