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Divided Government (divided + government)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	63%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	27%

Selected Abstracts

POLITICAL AND JUDICIAL CHECKS ON CORRUPTION: EVIDENCE FROM AMERICAN STATE GOVERNMENTS

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2008
JAMES E. ALT
This paper investigates the effects of checks and balances on corruption. Within a presidential system, effective separation of powers is achieved under a divided government, with the executive and legislative branches being controlled by different political parties. When government is unified, no effective separation exists even within a presidential system, but, we argue, can be partially restored by having an accountable judiciary. Our empirical findings show that a divided government and elected, rather than appointed, state supreme court judges are associated with lower corruption and, furthermore, that the effect of an accountable judiciary is stronger under a unified government, where the government cannot control itself. [source]

STOP US BEFORE WE SPEND AGAIN: INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS ON GOVERNMENT SPENDING

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 3 2006
DAVID M. PRIMO
A distributive politics model establishes that the presence of exogenously enforceable spending limits reduces spending and that the effect of executive veto authority is contingent on whether spending is capped and whether the chief executive is a liberal or conservative. Surprisingly, when spending limits are in place, governments with conservative executives spend more than those with more liberal chief executives. Limits are welfare improving, as is the executive veto when it leads to the building of override coalitions. Using 32 years of US state budget data, this paper also establishes empirically that strict balanced budget rules constrain spending and also lead to less pronounced short-term responses to fluctuations in a state's economy. Party variables like divided government and party control of state legislatures tend to have little or no direct effect, with political institutions and economic indicators explaining much of the variation in state spending. [source]

Self-Restraint in Search of Legitimacy: The Reform of the Argentine Supreme Court

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2009
Alba M. Ruibal
ABSTRACT In 2003, the Argentine executive promoted a process of Supreme Court reform that entailed limiting presidential attributions in the selection of justices. Then the renewed court implemented changes to its internal procedures that increased its own accountability mechanisms. The literature on the politics of institutional judicial independence in Latin America has developed two explanatory models: one presents reforms as an insurance policy, the other as a consequence of divided government. Both perspectives conceive of reforms as a result of political competition and as a way to limit other actors, the future government in the first case, the party in power in the second. This study, by contrast, explains the Argentine reforms as movements of strategic self-restriction, designed to build legitimacy and credibility, for the government and the court, respectively, in a context of social and institutional crisis and pressure from civil society. [source]

Presidents, Political Regimes, and Contentious Supreme Court Nominations: A Historical Institutional Model

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 4 2007
Kevin J. McMahon
Before the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, scholars consistently pointed to the presence of divided government as an underlying reason for conflict in the confirmation process for U.S. Supreme Court nominees. However, the importance of party unity and coalition-building appointments,each of which highlights the role of the president in the process,should not be underestimated in these confirmation battles. Moreover, an examination of the sixty twentieth-century nominations reveals that a presidency-focused political regimes model provides significant explanatory force for understanding when and what types of nominees are likely to face the most resistance in the Senate. It does so by incorporating Stephen Skowronek's analytical framework for understanding presidential authority to explain how and why different periods of political time affect presidential attempts to shape the U.S. Supreme Court through appointments. In turn, the model places recent conflict in the confirmation process in historical context. [source]

Experimenting With the Balancing Hypothesis

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2004
John G. Geer
The reasons why divided government is on the rise in the United States remain unclear. Of the explanations offered, Fiorina's (1992) balancing hypothesis,the idea that voters intentionally cast their ballots in a way that would increase the prospects of split party control,has drawn the most attention. This study gathered empirical evidence to test the hypothesis; its focus was not on whether citizens want divided government, but rather on whether they collectively act in a way consistent with balancing. In September 1900, during the national election campaign, a sample of undergraduates responded to one of five versions of a newspaper article (similar to actual articles about the campaign) that varied with respect to reported polling data on the competitiveness of the congressional and presidential races. The results cast doubt on the merits of the balancing hypothesis. [source]

"Divided Government" in State Executive Branches

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 2 2003
Fred Monardi
The study of "divided government" has focused on the split partisan control of executive and legislative branches. The concept of divided government can also be applied to the study of state executive branches. There is no plausible reason for state electorates to prefer one party for governor and the opposing party for other state executive branch officials, yet many states have a governor of one party, while several of the state executive branch officers are of the opposing party. This study examines the extent of divided executive branches in state politics. Incumbency, state partisanship, and the changing nature of Southern politics affect levels of divisiveness in state executive branches. Electoral features do not affect levels of divisiveness. The data comprises states that have separately elected state executive officers between the years 1968 and 1993. [source]

The Last Word: Presidential Power and the Role of Signing Statements

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2008
CHRISTOPHER S. KELLEY
Signing statements have become an important device that both protects and enhances presidential power by signaling how legislation is to be implemented, offering a mechanism of electoral reward, and protecting presidential prerogatives. We offer a first cut at explaining signing statements by applying William Howell's theory of unilateral action. The evidence shows that presidents use signing statements under conditions of gridlock, such as divided government, which erode their influence in Congress. The findings also suggest a strategic element to signing statement behavior. Presidents issue significantly more signing statements on major legislation when the policy and political stakes are greatest. The results provide insight into the theory of unilateral action and demonstrate how signing statements complement rather than contradict the Richard Neustadt view of power. [source]

Divided Government and Democratic Presidents: Truman and Clinton Compared

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2000
RICHARD S. CONLEY
This article compares the experiences of President Truman in the 80th Congress and President Clinton in the 104th Congress. The impact of divided government is measured by examining presidential involvement on significant legislation in the two periods, presidential floor success rates, and congressional support for the president on domestic policy and veto override attempts. The article concludes that innovative legislation in both periods was largely congressionally driven, while voting alignments in Congress ultimately affected each president's ability to control policy outcomes through the use of the veto. Regional fragmentation in the Democratic Party and Republican unity combined to undercut Truman's ability to marshal strong support on his legislative stands or on veto override attempts, contributing to a series of successful anti,New Deal measures. Democratic Party cohesion in the 104th Congress allowed Clinton to ward off veto override attempts and stifle much of the Republican agenda outlined in the Contract with America. [source]

Determinants of Pay-as-You-Go Financing of Capital Projects: Evidence from the States

PUBLIC BUDGETING AND FINANCE, Issue 4 2007
WEN WANG
Although states have long practiced pay-as-you-go in financing their capital projects as a supplement to debt, academia has paid scarce attention to pay-go financing. This study fills in the niche by providing empirical evidence on what determines the use of pay-go in financing capital projects. It develops a model that considers the preferences of both voters and politicians when they make capital financing decisions in a given institutional setting. The empirical results suggest that the use of pay-go is affected by a state's income level, its economic conditions, the presence of a divided government, as well as its budgetary institutions. [source]

Divided government and US federal rulemaking

REGULATION & GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2009
Jason Webb Yackee
Abstract Despite paying a great deal of attention to the effects of divided government on legislative outputs, scholars of American politics have surprisingly ignored the potential impact of divided government on bureaucratic regulatory outputs. In this article we argue that divided government should reduce the volume of federal agency rulemaking. We test this hypothesis against a data set covering 21,000 rules from 1983 to 2005. Our study is one of the first to analyze the determinants of federal bureaucratic rulemaking activity across such a long period of time. Our results demonstrate that during periods of divided government, agencies issue fewer rules and fewer substantively significant rules than they do during periods of unified government. These findings suggest that divided government impedes agency rulemaking. [source]

Change, Continuity, and the Evolution of the Law

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2008
Forrest Maltzman
Congress regularly passes significant laws. Some of these laws continue in their initial form, with the original bargain struck by the enacting coalition untouched by any future laws; others are changed,strengthened or weakened,soon after passage. What accounts for this variation in the stability of laws, in the longevity of the original legislative agreement? We contend that political conditions at the time of enactment,in particular, the existence of divided government and the level of ideological disagreement between the House and Senate,influence the likelihood that a law will be amended. We demonstrate that laws originally crafted by diverse political coalitions are less durable than those crafted by strong, unified coalitions, which are in a position to entrench their preferred policies and protect them from future change. Furthermore, we show that the probability of a law being amended is affected by future political conditions, the actions of the judiciary, and factors specific to the law. [source]