Although pre-electoral political manipulation of the budget --- the political budget cycle (PBC) --- has been long investigated by scholars, empirical findings are mixed at best. This is partly because of the non-random nature of election timing. There also exist ongoing debates over how the...

Weak electoral registration requirements are commonly thought to encourage electoral participation, but may also promote electoral fraud. For one, candidates and their supporters can more easily mobilize voters outside the district to register and vote for the candidates, even though these...

The existence of dominant parties in democracies is an enduring puzzle, in part because spatial models of voting suggest that an opposition party should be able to challenge the incumbent by proposing more popular policies. We consider the preeminent case of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party...