How do legislators acquire policy expertise in legislatures without a well-established seniority rule for committee assignments? This research project investigates the acquisition of policy expertise by individual legislators and its relation with the achievement of legislator goals such as reelection, career advancement, and influencing public policy. In the US Congress, policy expertise has been acquired through consecutive assignments to the same committee. Since a strong seniority rule has been in force, committee assignments are generally automatically renewed, and thus, the process of acquiring policy expertise and its relationship with electoral incentives has not been adequately considered. Strong seniority systems similar to that found in the US Congress are not universal in the world, and legislators' motivation for developing policy expertise varies across countries. Different political institutions influence legislators' motivations to be an expert in a policy area(s). Through the study of legislatures in two democratic countries (Japan and Taiwan), this research develops a model of policy expertise acquisition for legislators operating in an institutional context different from that found in the United States. The Japanese Diet and Taiwanese Legislative Yuan are ideal objects of study because they provide a great deal of institutional variation. First, intra and inter country electoral system variance in these countries allows us to assess policy expertise acquisition within different electoral contexts. In regard to the Japanese Diet, the employment a single-nontransferable-vote (SNTV) electoral system until 1995 and a mixed member electoral system since 1995 allows for the examination of the differential impact on policy expertise acquisition of the electoral incentives provided by these two distinct systems. In addition, the Legislative Yuan, where most members were until 2008 largely selected using SNTV, allows for the investigation of legislative behavior under SNTV in a presidential democracy (in contrast to Japan's parliamentary democracy). The Legislative Yuan also provides variation in party control of committee assignments. In most democracies, committee post allocations are under the control of parties, and the literature provides little guidance on what happens when parties have no such control. The Legislative Yuan before 2002 provides the rare chance to examine committee careers within a context of no party control over committee assignments. This project's principal argument is legislators acquire policy expertise to achieve several goals, such as reelection, advancing their political career, and influencing policy. The different institutional contexts described above in turn affect the connection between these goals and the acquisition of policy expertise. To test the empirical implications of our general theoretical model, we examine legislators' policy activities, their relation to the policy needs of their respective districts, and the legislators' career trajectory. The dataset assembled for this project consists of data on: legislator policy expertise, policy needs of an electoral district, and the electoral performance of incumbent candidates. Legislators' policy activities include committee assignments, debate in committee and on the floor, voting record, and bill introduction. The project's intellectual merit is based on its provision of a deeper understanding of the process of policy expertise acquisition. The extant research on legislator policy expertise has been limited primarily to the US Congress, and the process of evolving policy expertise is understudied. The strong right of US incumbents to retain their committee membership prevents serious consideration of the process of policy expertise evolution. This project addresses these and other issues via the study of two Asian democracies. This research project has the following broader impact. First and foremost, it provides knowledge about when and under what institutional conditions the quality of public policy is improved though the acquisition of policy expertise by legislators. Second, it supplies vital information on the understudied Legislative Yuan. Third, the large dataset created for this project will represent an invaluable resource for future scholars interested in a variety of aspects of legislative behavior in Japan and Taiwan.
