Divided Government, Strategic Substitution, and Presidential Unilateralism

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

This article explores the political determinants of congressional investigatory activity. Using Mayhew’s list of high-profile probes updated through 2006, we developed five measures of the frequency and intensity of investigative oversight. Contra Mayhew, we found that divided government spurs congressional investigatory activity. A shift from unified to divided government yields a five-fold in...

Parliamentary or Presidential Government?

I compare parliamentary and presidential government in a model with an executive and a decisive parliamentarian, whose ability to submit bills of high quality, or learn their quality, respectively, is private information. After observing the actions of each politician, the voter chooses whether to retain each politician or replace them with a randomly drawn alternative. Under presidential gover...

A Theory of Divided Government

Persistent Unilateralism

Legislative Productivity and Divided Government in the US and France

Comparing rates of legislative productivity in periods of unified and divided control of the executive and legislative branches in the US and France, we show first that the concept of ―divided government‖ is more complicated than scholars have allowed. In the US, truly unified government, where the president enjoys a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, is...