Does voter turnout affect policy outcomes? This long-standing question has been re-visited recently with close empirical scrutiny. These studies, however, commonly suffer from a problem of omitting variables correlated with both causal and outcome variables: specifically, immeasurable political...

This paper analyses distributive policy-making in Japan using a natural experimental situation from August 1993 to March 1995. During this period, the partisan makeup of the ruling coalition in the Lower House dramatically changed without dissolution of the House. By comparing FY1994 and FY1995...