Responsiveness and Deliberation in Divided Government: Presidential Leadership in Tax Policy Making

Abstract

At the heart of the puzzle of representation is the responsibility to construct policy that both responds to the separatist pull of local constituencies and meets the republican aspiration that government leaders define and promote common interests. The difficulty of balancing responsiveness and deliberation is heightened by divided government, where pursuing a competitive course leads to stalemate, while compromising too readily threatens to undermine party principle. This article argues that politicians have an incentive to accommodate their strategies to divided government, and that this accommodation will take the form of centralizing power in the congressional party leadership, with an increased willingness on the part of the president and the congressional leadership to engage in substantive consultation over the content of the legislative agenda. These accommodations will foster the possibility of meaningful deliberation; whether it will occur on any given issue will depend on the context of information and interpretation. Because most policies are open to multiple interpretations, political leaders have some leeway in framing the issue and thus determining what information and which political resources will shape the strategic context. Beginning with a review of the literature on legislative processes and presidential influence in Congress, and drawing on the formal theory literature on information and uncertainty, I explicate the argument by way of an empirical case study of one of the most historically significant tax policy negotiations in the post-war period.

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

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“…Such moderation is used to decrease political opposition, similar to presidents moderating the content of other policy measures such as legislative agendas (Cohen ). Similarly, scholars argue that policies created under divided government tend to be more moderate and bipartisan, reflecting greater interinstitutional deliberation (Thorson ; Weatherford ). Such policies are, therefore, more resistant to change by future governing coalitions given their wide support at passage (Niskanen ; Ragusa ).…”

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“…There are three primary reasons for this. First, by exacerbating separation of powers and affording each party a policy veto, divided government compels greater policy deliberation (Austen-Smith & Riker, 1987;Heller, 1997;Weatherford, 1993). By increasing the number of experts involved in writing and debating legislation (Krehbiel, 1991), and as a result increasing the range of policy solutions being considered, deliberation may lead to the creation of legislation that more adequately solves social problems and, therefore, needs fewer future alterations.…”

“…Second, legislation that garners enough support to overcome the hurdle created by divided government is more likely to be moderate or bipartisan (Thorson, 1998;Weatherford, 1993). Not only is moderate policy less likely to engender a backlash when governing control changes hands, but bipartisan coalitions (because of their size) will have a longer lasting cadre of supporters able to defend the policies they helped enact.…”

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