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The Effects of Election Proximity on Participatory Shirking: The Staggered‐Term Chamber as a Laboratory
Author(s) -
Fukumoto Kentaro,
Matsuo Akitaka
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12090
Subject(s) - legislature , balance (ability) , term (time) , natural experiment , citizen journalism , political science , natural (archaeology) , economics , law , psychology , statistics , archaeology , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , history
This study discusses a downside of electoral pressure. As elections approach, legislators reduce their effort in legislative activities, albeit while increasing their efficiency. To show this, we propose a new, natural experimental design exploiting staggered legislative election calendars to identify the effect of approaching elections. Two‐way natural blocking improves the balance of pretreatments and an instrumental variable approach addresses noncompliance by retirees. Our analysis of the Japanese House of Councillors demonstrates that legislators up for election show up in the chamber less often than those not facing election; however, when they do show up and speak, they tend to speak longer.