Gridlock in the Government of the United States: Influence of Divided Government and Veto Players

Saeki, Manabu

doi:10.1017/s0007123408000550

Cited by 20 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Cox and McCubbins (2005) also examine the direction of policy movement in the U.S. House of Representatives, finding a pattern consistent with the party cartel model. Saeki (2009) finds evidence that the policy preferences of veto players (but not their partisan identities) influence the prevalence of gridlock. Their results favor a majority party agenda-setting model.…”

Section: Parties Pivots and Policy: The Status Quo Testmentioning

confidence: 98%

Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test

Richman

2011

Am Polit Sci Rev

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I dentifying policy status quo locations is a precondition for testing key predictions of many spatial models of legislative politics, but such measures have proved to be extremely difficult to construct. This study applies a novel technique that measures policy locations in relation to legislators' preferences. The resulting status quo estimates allow for a direct test of the policy consequences predicted by pivotal politics and party cartel theories of legislative politics. The empirical tests indicate that parties interact with pivotal politics to contribute to policy gridlock and shape policy change. By bringing pressure to bear on pivotal politics "pivots" and by blocking policy changes that would "roll" the party, parties increase the range of policies subject to gridlock in the American political system.

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Section: Parties Pivots and Policy: The Status Quo Testmentioning

confidence: 98%

Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test

Richman

2011

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…19 Dehousse, Deloche-Gaudez, and Jacquot (2009) find no evidence, while Crombez and Hix (2014) report an effect. 20 Bra¨uninger and Ko¨nig 1999;Chiou and Rothenberg 2008;Mayhew 2005;Saeki 2009. 21 Black and Newing 1951;Hammond and Miller 1987;Shepsle and Weingast 1984.…”

Section: Two Implications Of the Risk Of Gridlockmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legislative Gridlock and Bureaucratic Politics in the European Union

Junge¹,

König²,

Luig³

2014

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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How does the risk of gridlock affect the type of legislative output? Do bureaucratic agents expand their activities when they can expect that the principals are unable to overrule them? This article introduces a novel approach for calculating the risk of gridlock in bicameral legislatures in order to estimate its impact on bureaucratic activities, combining data on all secondary and tertiary acts of the European Union (EU) from 1983 to 2009. The findings reveal that bureaucratic activities expand when the risk of gridlock increases and an overruling of tertiary acts becomes less likely. This may sustain the EU's overall decision-making productivity, but its bureaucratic nature may raise further questions about democratic legitimacy and principal-agent problems in the representation of interests.Legislative scholars have intensely studied the power distribution within legislatures and the factors that promote gridlock. 1 Some scholars have argued that gridlock can improve the quality of legislative output, 2 but a common view in legislative research is that gridlock reduces the likelihood of policy change. 3 Drawing on theories of veto players, 4 party cartels, 5 presidential approval, 6 coalition governments, 7 unified or divided government, 8 and ideological conflict in parliaments, 9 the empirical research mainly supports the effect of this risk on the scale and scope of adopted legislative acts. 10 But how does the risk of gridlock affect the power of the bureaucracy and the type of legislative output? We argue that the risk of gridlock may also change the distribution of

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“…Fifth, in our basic model a gridlock occurs when the legislature and the executive have different preferences regarding reform. This is reminiscent of the conventional wisdom that asserts that divided government—the control of the executive and the legislature by different parties—leads to gridlock, a hypothesis that has been challenged in some studies of American politics (see, among many others, Alesina and Rosenthal ; Bernecker ; Fiorina ; Frymer ; Kelly ; Krause ; Krutz and Peake ; Mayhew ; Saeki ). Furthermore, as we discuss in the Online Appendix (Section ), the model can be easily adapted to consider the scenario in which the key agency controlling the executive is the judiciary rather than the legislature.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

When do Voters Weaken Checks and Balances to Facilitate Economic Reform?

Forteza

Pereyra

2018

Economica

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Strong checks and balances aimed at protecting citizens from government abuse of power are key features of well-performing democracies. Nevertheless, some presidents have enjoyed strong and often explicit popular support when they undermined these controls. We present a formal model of the trade-off between control on the executive and delegation to analyse voters' decisions on the strength of checks and balances. We argue that voters may support their loosening, even when this allows rent extraction, if they are convinced that checks on the executive are blocking necessary reforms. We discuss several cases of strong presidents in Latin America who, alleging that radical reforms were necessary, obtained popular support that allowed them to loosen checks on the executive. Some of these presidents had a pro-market and some an anti-market reform agenda so, as our model suggests, voters' willingness to remove checks and balances can emerge under both right-and left-wing executives.

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Gridlock in the Government of the United States: Influence of Divided Government and Veto Players

Cited by 20 publications

References 5 publications

Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test

Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test

Legislative Gridlock and Bureaucratic Politics in the European Union

When do Voters Weaken Checks and Balances to Facilitate Economic Reform?

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