Electoral Reform and Candidate Selection Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (1960-2000)

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In this paper I examine whether Japan's change in the electoral rules for the House of Representatives led to a change in the LDP's candidate-nomination process. I argue that the reduction of district magnitude to one has shifted power into the hands of the two mainstream factions controlled by the party president and the party secretary general. The factions that control these party positions have gained the upper hand over other factions in allocating party endorsements to non-incumbents. Furthermore, I show that the subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium of the party nomination game is 1) to select non-incumbent candidates of factions outside the mainstream under SNTV; and, by contrast, 2) to select non-incumbent candidates supported by mainstream factions under SMD competition. I deduce a hypothesis and test it using data from Japan's House of Represenatives' elections between 1960 and 2000. I find that non-incumbent LDP candidates supported by mainstream factions are more likely to receive endorsements under SMD electoral rules than under the former SNTV electoral rules.