Representation, Accountability, and Efficiency in Divided Party Control of Government

Abstract

James L. Sundquist (1986, 75) argues that, who believe that a basic weakness of the United States government is the recurrent conflict and deadlock between the executive and legislative branches must turn, at the outset, to the problem of divided Presidents from James Madison to George Bush have complained about conflicts with Congress and the effects of divided party government. President Lincoln complained in jest that, have been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea was just a mile down the road with a Dome on it (Udall 1988, 3). President Lyndon Baines Johnson, known for his success in working with Senators and Representatives as well as his bluntness, said, long time ago I learned that telling a man to go to hell and making him go are two different propositions (Udall 1988, 239). Reformers from Woodrow Wilson to James Sundquist (1986) and Lloyd Cutler (1988, 1989) argue that divided government is the root of inefficiency and deadlock in our democracy and that there is a need for reform. 1 Wilson's complaint is repeated by those who argue in the 1980s and 1990s that divided government led to budget deficits and stalemate (quoted in Pfiffner 1991, 44): have a Government that is not responding to the wishes of the people. You have a Government that is not functioning, a Government whose very energies are stayed and postponed. If you want to release the force of the American People, you have got to get possession of the Senate and the Presidency as well as the House. Michael Mezey (1991, 99-121) argues that our present system of separation of powers and divided party control of government cannot produce informed, coherent, timely, and effective laws. Mezey (1989, 143) claims that, neither the executive nor the Congress is capable of action on its own and each is capable of stopping the other from acting. In the years since Sundquist (1986) first advocated major constitutional reforms, the discussion of divided government has suffered from insufficient attention as to why occurs and with what consequences, the purpose of this PS symposium. The critics of divided government often assert that makes government inefficient and unaccountable, but they do not present comprehensive data analysis to support their case. And few critics comment on the function of representation that divided government provides so well for congressional constituencies. Divided government occurs when one party controls the presidency while one or both houses of Congress are controlled by the opposing party, the standard of post-World War II American politics. From 1946 to 1992, the Truman presidency through the first four years of the Bush presidency, divided party control of the federal government has occurred 67 percent of the time (or 30 out of 45 years).2 From 1897 to 1945, divided government appeared only 12 percent of the time (6 times). While is clear that divided government is an important issue for our time, several competing explanations for the occurrence of divided government are offered in this PS symposium and in a growing literature (Thurber 1991, 1-8) on the topic. These explanations are based upon a variety of factors, as follows: the constitutional structure of government (separation of powers); electoral behavior and the political party system (different constituency bases, ticket splitting, candidate individualism, political recruitment, the power of incumbency, and the weaknesses of American political parties); and public opinion (the preference of American voters to want divided government in principle). A synthesis of these varying explanations is necessary in order to understand the reasons why we have divided government, but we do not know the relative importance of each explanation since the competing theories have not been judged against each other. As basic textbooks on American politics tell us, the constitutional separation of powers structures executive-legislative rivalry into predictable and almost guaranteed conflict. Although never mentioned in the Constitution, the historic competing interests of the two major political parties have exacerbated this conflict between the president and Congress because the opposing interests guarantee that the president and a majority of both houses of Congress will not share the same policy or ideological preferences (Edwards 1989, 96-97). The authors of the Constitution provided for checks and balances among the three organizationally separate branches of government which make our government contentious, complicated, and inefficient, but also representative. Separation of powers and divided government thus frustrate those who would have government pass laws in a more timely manner. However, separation of the powers of Congress and the executive and divided party government both check despotism and allow for the