Kentaro Fukumoto

Legislative scholars have debated what factors (e.g. divided government) account for the number of important laws a legislative body passes per year. This paper presents a monopoly model for explaining legislative production. It assumes that a legislature adjusts its law production so as to maximize its utility. The model predicts that socioeconomic and political changes increase the marginal benefit of law production, whereas low negotiation costs and ample legislative resources decrease the marginal cost of law production. The model is tested in two ways. The first approach compares the legislatures of 42 developed and developing countries. The second analyzes Japanese lawmaking from 1949 to 1990, using an appropriate method for event count time series data. Both empirical investigations support the model's predictions for legislative production.

This paper probes the characteristics of Diet members from 1947 to 1990. What were their previous occupations and personal attributes? When and why did they leave the Diet? In answering these questions, the author takes into consideration the politicians' wider work history beyond just the single career included in other reports. The findings are that (1) the legislators in the Clean Government Party (CGP) and the Japan Communist Party (JCP) retire at a younger age than the mean for their colleagues in other parties, (2) the CGP is more likely to recruit local -level and younger politicians, (3) the Japan Socialist Party's (JSP) seats are increasingly occupied by former trade union officials, (4) the JCP and the Democratic Socialist Party are less likely to draw on public service labor unions for their statesmen than is the JSP, and (5) among local political positions, prefecture assemblymen become more likely to be promoted to the Diet year by year.