The Great Divide
Fiorina, Morris
The Great Divide Divided government doesn ’t have to subtract by Morris Fiorina With the election of George Bush and a Democratic Congress in 1988, the country was assured of at least 10...
...And, replying to anticipated criticism with the same kind of striking example on which critics base their arguments, Mayhew wryly observes that a unified government was responsible for the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, “which, from the standpoint of the world economy, may have been the most unfortunate statute enacted by the U.S...
...Yale University Press, $25...
...The critics,’ arguments are plausible and their examples often striking, but sometimes striking examples do not represent the larger universe of cases...
...The political game is simply more costly and less fun to play...
...Germain Depository Institutions Act, which unleashed savings and loans and certainly contributed to the S&L debacle, as a major piece of legislation...
...the congressional hearings on internal subversion that began in 1948 and extended to 1954 took place mostly under unified control...
...in order to achieve their aims and frustrated members of Congress to leak secrets and conduct destructive investigations in order to achieve theirs, and contributes to the politicization of the courts, the bureaucracy, and the media...
...In light of Mayhew’s findings, one wonders what universe of cases Cutler was examining when he claimed that “almost every important domestic program in this *Divided We Govern...
...country that has been carried through the Congress has been carried through at a time of party government rather than divided government...
...However logical and plausible the arguments against it, divided government just does not seem to be the threat to American democracy that its critics make it out to be...
...Would most Americans today prefer (as do Sundquist and Cutler) that a liberal Democratic Party or conservative Republican Party be able to impose its particular vision on the whole society...
...government during the 20th century...
...For example, Mayhew counts the 1982 St...
...Through exhaustive reviews, Mayhew identifies 267 instances of “significant” legislation-defined as such in newspaper accounts of the time or by later policy studies...
...Some commentators may believe that such eras demand more by way of appropriate government response than unified eras...
...The correlation between unacceptably high deficits and divided government is much too exact to be a coincidence...
...Finally, critics of divided government might charge that even if divided governments accomplish as much as unified ones, it is harder for them to do so...
...Essentially, Mayhew has studied the supply of federal legislation and found that supply is more or less the same during unified and divided periods...
...Because of considerations like those raised here, his study may not convince all the critics of divided government, but at the very least it suggests that their criticisms are much more exaggerated and more problematic than they appear...
...I cannot do justice to Mayhew’s rich discussion here...
...Reformer Lloyd Cutler lays the chronic budgetary crisis directly at the feet of divided government...
...Overall, 15 major investigations took place during the 18 years of unified control, while 14 major investigations took place during the 20 years of divided control, hardly the kind of picture the charges of some commentators would lead us to expect...
...The Economic Recovery Act of 1981 was the result of a bidding war between President Reagan and House Democrats...
...Even under divided conditions, presidents may lead, as did Reagan in 1981...
...The polls say no...
...But to anyone who objects to that judgment, Mayhew responds that they should likewise discount the Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act of 1980, which contributed to the S&L mess by raising the ceiling on thrift interest rates and federal- deposit insurance...
...The passage of the 1986 Tax Reform Act is widely applauded and not well understood, but at least part of the explanation seems to be that neither party wished to bear responsibility for allowing the legislation to fail...
...But there are three arguments that critics of divided government might employ to avoid accepting his conclusion...
...indeed, it may enhance it...
...Similarly, the Clean Air Act of 1970 emerged stronger than anticipated because of the one-upsmanship that went on between Nixon and Senator Edmund Muskie, the responsible committee chair and a Democratic presidential aspirant...
...It is tempting to conclude that when a popular consensus behind public policy exists, divided government will not stand in its way...
...Suffice it to say that the behavior of presidents and congresses is a complicated matter, determined by numerous considerations...
...The Great Divide Divided government doesn ’t have to subtract by Morris Fiorina With the election of George Bush and a Democratic Congress in 1988, the country was assured of at least 10 consecutive years of divided government, an all-time, still-climbing record...
...And is it such a bad thing that presidential appointments get a thorough goingover rather than a rubber stamp...
...Most obviously, Mayhew does not attempt to measure the worth or effectiveness of the legislation...
...If unified and divided government periods are characterized by different levels of demand, then they would need to supply different amounts of legislation in order to be operating equally well...
...There is undoubtedly some truth to this argument, but once again there are counterarguments...
...Public “moods” may demand action...
...Maybe incremental compromises are the best that we can do in some areas...
...Imperfect unions Mayhew’s tabulations and analysis are, quite simply, unimpeachable...
...James Sundquist of the Brookings Institution, for example, sees little but drift and stalemate under divided governments in comparison to periods when energetic presidents and their legislative majorities adopted major policy initiatives...
...Is it such a bad thing that legislation gets negotiated provision by provision rather than quietly gliding through with the endorsement of a congressional committee and its interestgroup constituency...
...But we have no information about the demand for legislation...
...The election results also swelled a trickle of writings about divided government into a goodsized stream, probably because the 1988 outcome indicated that divided government has become a characteristic feature of contemporary American politics and can no longer be viewed as an aberration attributable to contingencies like charismatic Republican presidents (the Eisenhower and Reagan years) and splits in the Democratic Party (the Nixon years...
...The arguments of the critics seem eminently plausible...
...Moreover, Mayhew finds that divided control does not lead to more instances of congressional investigation of the executive branch...
...Not only do the parties and their candidates have a mutual interest in accomplishments for which they can claim credit, but they have a mutual interest in avoiding blame...
...The difference js trivial, and since the eighties were all ‘divided,’ that decade’s shift to the use of omnibus budgetary measures can probably account for it, so to speak, entirely...
...Why should unified or divided control seem to make so little difference...
...In Divided We Govern*, David Mayhew, a Yale political scientist, provides us with a first-rate study of the operation of American government during both unified and divided periods between 1946 and 1990 and finds nothing in the historical record to suggest that periods of divided government are any less productive than periods of unified control...
...A look at that larger universe suggests that the case against divided government is, to say the least, exaggerated...
...Evidently, divided governments have no monopoly on “bad” legislation...
...Mayhew discusses a range of considerations that may lead to comparable or even greater levels of activity under divided conditions than unified conditions...
...While neither party can accomplish everything it wants to in periods of divided government, the struggle for political credit sometimes makes them as likely to compromise on some legislation as to allow the process to stalemate...
...Thus, “good” legislation produced by a unified government is weighed the same as “poor” legislation produced by a divided government, so long as both are judged significant...
...The expansion of Social Security benefits and coverage in the early seventies was stimulated by the competition for credit between President Nixon and the Democratic Congress...
...Mayhew looks at other considerations as well...
...Indeed, some of the most far-reaching and damaging investigations (such as those of Senator Joe McCarthy) took place under unified governments...
...Proceeding systematically, Mayhew defines a major investigation as one revolving around a committee-based charge (or response thereto) of misbehavior by the executive branch that received front-page coverage by The New York Times on at least 20 days...
...Divided government is concentrated during some of the more troubled eras of our political history: 1840-1860, 1874-1 896, 1968-1992...
...if so, supplying only the same amount of response as in unified eras would indicate that government response is unsatisfactory relative to that in unified eras...
...A second line of attack might focus on the implicit baseline of Mayhew’s study-that a divided government that produces as much legislation as a unified government is functioning equally well...
...Thus, there is still some room for argument, but Mayhew has certainly reduced the area in which such arguments can take place...
...How come they don’t hold in practice...
...This is a somewhat abstruse argument, and critics of divided government should probably not take a great deal of comfort in it, for one could also argue the opposite point of view: If divided government reflects deep divisions and a lack of consensus in the society, then perhaps government should supply less rather than more legislation in divided periods than in more consensual unified periods...
...Partisan conflict is greater, more time and other resources are required, and every outcome must be a painfully negotiated compromise...
...Divided control or not, external events such as the launching of Sputnik may require a response...
...Rather, “if all 267 laws are counted equally, the nine ‘unified’ two-year segments average 12.8 acts and the 13 ‘divided’ segments average 11.7...
...Sure, it was lousy public policy, but if it’s action you want, divided government can provide it...
...Many of those who have written about divided government blame it for much of what’s wrong with American politics today...
...it may even facilitate action...
...Professors Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter argue that divided government, in addition to fostering budgetary and foreign policy disputes, encourages frustrated presidents to go outside the law Morris Fiorina is a professor of government at Harvard University...
...Surprisingly, unified governments have been no more likely to produce significant legislation than divided governments...
...David Mayhew...
...Writing in the William and Mary Law Review, he observes that “in modem times high deficits have occurred only with divided government...
...Divided control is one consideration, but apparently it is overcome by others...
...Contemporary commentators regularly cite the Watergate experience while overlooking the post-World War I1 Red Scare...
...Perhaps most importantly, divided control does not do away with the competition for political credit between and among parties and officeholders...
Vol. 23 • December 1991 • No. 12
