EAPSI: Voter Response to Party Switching in a Consolidated Democracy

Bredell Garrett B, San Diego CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines voters' evaluations of legislators who change party affiliations between elections in democratic systems. Party switching is important because it weakens accountability between voters and their political representatives in otherwise strong democratic institutions. Voters may support a legislator and their party during an election, but the legislator may "jump ship" after winning the election to another party, attenuating the linkages between voters and their representatives. This project will examine how voters react to party switching and whether they punish or reward legislators who change their party affiliations. There is to date no research that explores whether voters reward or punish party switching, and under what institutional and political conditions these effects may change. Japan is an excellent location and case for this study, where party switching has previously resulted in shifts in governing coalitions and majority party status. This project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kuniaki Nemoto of Musashi University, Tokyo. Located in Tokyo, Musashi University provides ease of access to political resources including the National Diet and the National Diet Library. Additionally, Dr. Nemoto is a well-respected scholar of parliamentary politics in Japan, and is a very apposite partner for this project and topic. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates a survey experiment and interviews with voters and candidate support groups, this research agenda aims to identify how and under what conditions Japanese voters positively or negatively evaluate party switching legislators. Not only does it test whether voters positively or negatively reaction to party switching, but the project aims to test whether these reactions change depending upon several variables. First, the survey will determine whether voters reaction to switching changes on the seat type ? specifically, whether the party switcher is occupying a Single Member District (SMD) seat or a Proportional Representation (PR) seat. Second, it will test whether the category of party switching changes the voter reaction, including whether the party switcher is moving to an incumbent or governing party, and whether the party switcher is moving as a result of expulsion, party dissolution or party formation. This research advances our understanding of voter behavior in democratic systems, and studies an important but neglected aspect of Japanese legislative politics. This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.