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Legislative Time and Agenda Power in the Japanese Diet
Review of Asian and Pacific Studies, July 2000, 20: 65-85
By Mikitaka Masuyama
Abstract
In this study, I try to understand how legislative time affects the way agenda power is exercised in the Japanese Diet. 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. Duration modeling not only captures the life course of individual legislation within the Diet, but also helps conceptualize the broader policymaking process including pre-parliamentary stages. By applying the Cox partial likelihood method for estimating how long it takes for a bill to pass the Diet, I show that the agenda priority given to a bill affects its fate.