Electoral Reform and the Rise of Parliament as a Contentious Arena

• In Event: Legislative Speech

Abstract

Theory: Lijphart (2012) divides different democracies into two types: consensual and majoritarian. In a typical consensual democracy, proportional representation systems produce multi-party systems and coalition governments. The norm inside the parliament tends to be deliberative, with parties engaging in legislative negotiations. In contrast, a typical majoritarian democracy features two major parties competing over clear mandates in single-member district systems. The norm inside the parliament tends to be adversary, with a heated debate taking place between the government and the opposition in the question time. Consequently, a change to a majoritarian democracy should transform a parliament to a contentious arena.

Methods: This paper employs a semi-supervised machine learning approach to measure different emotional traits, such as negativity, incivility, and anger, in MPs' and ministers' speeches inside the parliament. Specifically, it uses GloVe, an unsupervised learning algorithm for obtaining vector representations for words, to quantify the levels of negativity of words and speeches made by MPs. Then it traces how the levels of negativity change over time and how such changes are associated with changing party systems.

Data: This paper uses previously understudied data on MPs' and ministers' speeches in the Japanese parliament, which are recorded in a digital format. Japan is an excellent case study, since the country changed its electoral system in 1993 from a single non-transferable voting system to a mixed-member majoritarian system. Its party system has been changing since the reform from a one-party dominant regime to a two-party system, with electoral competition much more focused on parties' national-in-scope policymaking capacities. Thus it is expected that speeches in the Japanese parliament should be marked more by negativity.

Findings: Preliminary findings are confirmatory with our expectations. The parliament in Japan after 1993 is marked by more negative remarks than in the past.

Author

• Kuniaki Nemoto, Musashi University