Decreasing Electoral Risk and Strategic Retirement to Avoid Losing Election: Survival Analysis of Legislators' (Political) Life at Systematically Dependent Competing Risks.

Legislators exit from the legislature due to death, retirement or electoral defeat. This paper demonstrates what factors affect these risks. I argue that seniority system brings about decreasing electoral risk and professinalization of the legislature results in constant retirement risk. Also, I hypothesize that, when they expect to be defeated at the next election, legislators strategically retire so as to avoid cost of electoral campaign and losing face. In order to test these hypotheses, I propose a systematically dependent competing risks model of survival analysis and also consider non-random censoring and ordered risks structure. Using a Japanese Diet members' dataset from 1947 to 1990, this paper confirms my hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]