A Comment on Browne and Patterson’s ‘An Empirical Theory of Rational Nominating Behaviour Applied to Japanese District Elections’

Abstract

In this Note, I comment briefly on Browne and Patterson's interesting article on rational nominating behaviour in Japan. Their empirical results appear sound. Where I differ is mostly in how to interpret them.

Browne and Patterson frame their article as providing ‘a critical empirical test of the proposition that the nominating behaviour of Japanese parties is based on rational calculation’. Presumably Browne and Patterson did not mean to claim that they were testing the rationality assumption, as such a thing would be problematic from the usual Lakatosian view of social science. Instead, what they are really aiming at are previous studies that either directly impugn the ability of Japanese nominators to deduce and implement optimal seat-maximizing solutions to the nomination problems posed by Japan's former electoral system or that report ‘error rates’ that appear to them to call into question whether the nominators' main goal really could have been seat maximization.