A defining feature of Japanese politics is the combination of clientelism and a centralized financial structure. Where a political system is clientelist and centralized – where local politicians must rely on the financial graces of the central government to do their job – parties that are not strong at the national level will have difficulty winning subnational office, and national ruling parties will hold a near monopoly on local power across most of the country. To investigate the combined impact of clientelism and centralization, this chapter examines different combinations of citizen–politician linkage and financial centralization in a number of countries outside Japan.

The combination of clientelism and local dependence on the center creates very strong incentives for (1) ambitious local politicians – who rely on the image of being able to pull in money and projects from the center – to ally with the party controlling the purse strings at the national level (the ruling party) and (2) voters to cast ballots in local elections for such candidates. Here I am pointing to “ambition” in Schlesinger's (1966) sense of politicians who want a long and productive career in politics. I am not suggesting that politicians who affiliate with non-ruling parties are somehow unambitious, and I am certainly not ignoring the fact that many candidates will choose non-ruling parties for other reasons, such as ideology.