Legislative Agenda Power and Administrative Delegation in Japan

Mikitaka Masuyama, Seikei University, Dept. Law

Prepared for delivery at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta Marriott Marquis and Atlanta Hilton and Towers, September 2-5, 1999.

Abstract

In this study, I try to understand how the legislative priorities given to the ministerial proposals are related to the discretionary authority delegated to the ministries to promulgate administrative ordinances. My analysis relies on the statistical technique of duration modeling, which can be used to explore the effects of independent variables on the occurrence and timing of an event of interest. By applying the Cox proportional hazard method to estimating how long it takes for a bill to pass the Diet, I show that the agenda priority given to a bill affects the fate of legislation. The analysis implies that the legislative proposals drafted by the ministry with an increase in the number of ordinances promulgated are more likely to pass the Diet.

Estimates Related to:

Table 1 and Table 2

Table 3

Table 4 and Table 6

Table 5