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AbstractIn this article, I offer a theory of lawmaking in multiparty presidential systems with different legislative institutions. I present a model that combines Krehbiel's pivotal politics theory with Tsebelis's veto players theory. This model simplifies various institutional veto players into the de facto veto players. I analyze the model to explain how the government type (unified versus divided governments), the legislative rules (majoritarian versus supermajoritarian rules), and the party system (two-party versus multiparty systems) affect legislative productivity. I apply the theoretical results obtained to solve the puzzle about the nondifferential legislative performance between unified and divided governments in the National Assembly. I test a hypothesis stating that the distance between the ideological positions of the agenda-setter and the de facto veto players has a negative effect on the proportion of controversial bills enacted between the 16th and the early 21st National Assemblies.

This paper analyzes the causal mechanism for the effect of citizens' partisan attachments on candidate position-taking by offering a spatial model that treats the partisan attachments as voter-specific valence. An analysis of the model reveals that it is rational for candidates enjoying partisan favors to deviate from their partisans toward the center of their constituencies. The model also shows that the candidates with partisan favors could have a centrifugal incentive if the partisan favors translate into political activism. Empirical tests in the context of the U.S. House of Representatives elections in 2006 support the expectation that candidates with larger partisan bases are ideologically closer to their district preferences. The tests also show that partisans' ideological campaign contribution has a centrifugal force; however, it is not strong enough to offset the centripetal force of partisan attachments. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

The objective of this article is to present a theory that analyzes the effects of legislative institutions and party discipline on policy stability. In this paper, I generalize Krehbiel's (1998) U.S. lawmaking model by reformulating it within the veto player framework. A major finding of this article is that legislative institutions have differential effects on policy stability depending on party discipline, and that party discipline also has differential effects depending on legislative institutions. This article also yields two important results that do not support the conventional wisdom that divided government works better with party indiscipline and unified government does better with party discipline. First, the cause of non-differential lawmaking across government types in the U.S. Congress is not party indiscipline but legislative institutions that provide both of the governing and opposition parties with symmetric veto powers. Second, gridlock not only occurs but also increases under unified government with a disciplined majority under the U.S. legislative rules.

In this paper,I argue that the essential features of political competition are collective decision making and forced consumption of political products that incur conformity costs. A concern about conformity costs motivates citizens to influence policymaking by offering electoral resources. I elaborate this idea into a single spatial model in which citizens are specified not only as voters (consumers) but also as political activists (investors). I find that position taking by a candidate with a valence advantage depends on the types of electoral resources the candidate uses to advertise his valence. If the advantaged candidate depends on exogenous (endogenous) resources, the candidate adopts a more moderate (extreme) policy than the other candidate. This paper also finds a result that has normative implications on theories of representation:the general public is more represented if citizens act as consumers whereas a majority is more represented if citizens act as investors.

In this article, the reason why incumbent spending is less effective than challenger spending is explained. The argument is that incumbent spending efficiency depends on the marginality of seats: safe incumbent spending is less effective than marginal incumbent spending, since safe incumbents have to buy fewer extreme voters, whereas marginal incumbents can easily buy a larger number of swing voters. The analysis of the US Senate elections between 1974 and 2000 shows that safe incumbent spending is less effective than challenger spending, but marginal incumbent spending is not. The analysis also shows that the previous finding of less effective incumbent spending is largely due to the fact that the data for marginal and safe incumbents have been aggregated.

In this article, I offer a theoretical model specifying the electoral mechanism in South Korea. In the model, political parties offer regional benefits to sway the ideological voting decisions of voters. Regional benefits are an effective way of winning regional votes as the parties' ideological positions become less distinguishable. Analysis of the model shows that political parties receive stronger regional support (1) as the ideological positions of voters and their regional party become more congruent and (2) when voters have a powerful regional leader. I test these predictions using two statistical models - one based on survey data the other on aggregate election outcome data. The results indicate that previous interpretations of regional voting in terms of either ideological conflicts or regional nepotism overestimate the effects of these factors.

Electoral competition is here specified as revolving around both candidate policy positions and non-policy issues.Two candidates spend their resources on non-policy issues to sway citizens' ideological voting decisions but they are constrained by their party activists who provide them with electoral resources. In this setting, a candidate with a resource advantage converges more towards the centre, but a candidate with a resource disadvantage diverges more from the centre. This asymmetry in two candidates' incentives to converge generates the result that the two candidates do not converge towards each other. To test these theoretical results, two-stage estimation is used in this article to solve the reciprocal relationship between policy moderation and campaign resources. This analysis produces strong empirical support for the model in the context of US Senate elections between 1974 and 2000.