Negative campaigning in no-cabinet alternation systems : ideological closeness and blames of corruption in Italy and Japan using party manifesto data

Within a one-dimensional spatial framework,we deduce that parties’ incentives ‘to
go negative’, by blaming alleged insufficiencies of the rival concerning commonly shared
values, increase with their ideological proximity.We test our hypothesis by considering
the long period of no-cabinet alternation that characterized both Italy and Japan. In
particular, we focus on the (spatial) incentives of the Italian Communist Party and
of the Japanese Socialist Party to emphasize on a particular topic related to negative
campaigning, i.e. political corruption issues. The status of the perennial opposition
held by both parties, together with the existence of several political corruption scandals
during the period considered, makes the Italian and the Japanese political systems
particularly apt to test our hypothesis. The results, based on data derived from electoral
programs, support our theoretical insights.