Divided Government and Delay in the Legislative Process

• Author: Deven Carlson,Tyler Hughes
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X15574594
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2015, Vol. 43(5) 771 –792

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X15574594

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Article

Divided Government and

Delay in the Legislative

Process: Evidence From

Important Bills,

1949-2010

Tyler Hughes1 and Deven Carlson2

Abstract

Despite a robust history of studies examining legislative outputs, little is

known about how divided government affects the policymaking process.

This article examines these dynamics by analyzing the relationship between

divided government and delay in the consideration of important legislation.

We also introduce a more nuanced measure of divided government—the

strength of the president’s party in Congress—that measures both the

presence and magnitude of inter-branch conflict. Using a Cox proportional

hazards model to analyze delay of important legislation from 1949 to 2010, the

results indicate both divided government and the strength of the president’s

party in Congress are significantly related to legislative delay. Moreover,

presidential party strength significantly interacts with partisan polarization.

When the parties are moderately or highly polarized, there is a significant

relationship between the strength of the president’s party and legislative

delay; this relationship is insignificant at lower levels of polarization. Taken

together, these findings enhance our understanding of how inter-branch

conflict affects the policymaking process in Congress.

1California State University, Northridge, CA, USA

2University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

Corresponding Author:

Tyler Hughes, California State University, 210 Sierra Hall, 18111 Nordoff Street, Northridge,

CA 91330-8254, USA.

Email: tyler.hughes@ou.edu

574594APRXXX10.1177/1532673X15574594American Politics ResearchHughes and Carlson

research-article2015

772 American Politics Research 43(5)

Keywords

Congress, divided government, delay, polarization, legislative process

Introduction

On August 2, 2011, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of

2011—universally considered an important piece of legislation—into law.

This legislation passed through both a Republican-controlled House of

Representatives and a Democratic-controlled Senate and, on the surface,

could reasonably be viewed as little more than the latest in a long line of

important legislative outputs from a divided government context. Such a

view, however, fails to recognize the considerable acrimony and rancor that

preceded the passage of the Budget Control Act. Indeed, congressional lead-

ers negotiated with the president for months on the issue, and numerous com-

peting bills were introduced, debated, and voted on in the two chambers of

Congress. The political spectacle surrounding the Budget Control Act made

it difficult for legislators to focus on other aspects of the legislative agenda,

and the divisive political environment—coupled with the perceived ineffi-

ciency of the federal government—drove public approval of Congress to a

historic low of 13%, according to Gallup.

A long line of prior studies analyzed the effects of divided government, but

existing work focuses almost exclusively on how partisan control of our gov-

erning institutions affects legislative outputs (e.g., Binder, 1999, 2003;

Coleman, 1999; Edwards, Barrett, & Peake, 1997; C. O. Jones, 1994; Krutz,

2001; Mayhew, 1991, 2005). The case of the Budget Control Act of 2011 dem-

onstrates that, even if important legislation is ultimately passed, divided gov-

ernment also has the potential to affect the legislative process. In light of this

demonstration, this article aims to shift the focus from the effects of divided

government on legislative outputs to its effects on the legislative process.

Drawing on a data set containing the universe of important legislation from

1949 to 2010—defined as bills in the top 25% of coverage in the CQ Almanac—

we analyze the relationship between divided government and legislative delay.

Delay is measured as the number of days from initial introduction of a piece of

legislation to its final passage or to the end of the 2-year congressional session

if the bill does not become a public law. Moreover, we examine this relation-

ship using a new, more nuanced measure of divided government—a continuous

measure of the strength of the president’s party (or lack thereof) in Congress.

Together, these advances provide significant insights into the relationship

between divided government and the legislative process.

This article proceeds in three parts. First, we present a brief overview of

existing studies on the effects of divided government, focusing most heavily