574594
research-article2015
APRXXX10.1177/1532673X15574594American Politics ResearchHughes and Carlson
Article
Divided Government and
Delay in the Legislative
Process: Evidence From
Important Bills,
1949-2010
American Politics Research
2015, Vol. 43(5) 771­–792
© The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X15574594
apr.sagepub.com
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
2University
State University, Northridge, CA, USA
of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
Corresponding Author:
Tyler Hughes, California State University, 210 Sierra Hall, 18111 Nordoff Street, Northridge,
CA 91330-8254, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
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 leaders negotiated with the president for months on the issue, and numerous competing 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 inefficiency 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 governing 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 demonstrates that, even if important legislation is ultimately passed, divided government 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 relationship 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
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
773
on the theoretical implications of these studies for our analysis of legislative
delay. This overview of the literature provides valuable context for the second stage of our study, where we develop our measures of legislative delay
and divided government. Finally, using the measures we develop in the second section of the article, we estimate a series of survival models to examine
the relationship between divided government and legislative delay. The
results demonstrate important legislation encounters more delay in a divided
government context than under unified government. The results further indicate divided government interacts with party polarization in a meaningful
way. Specifically, the interaction demonstrates divided government only has
a significant effect on delay at moderate and high levels of partisan polarization—This interaction is masked in analyses using the traditional dichotomous measure of divided government.
These findings have implications for several important issues, including
the legislative agenda and productivity of Congress, the content of legislation, and public trust of government. For example, lengthy consideration of a
particular piece of legislation—as occurred with the Budget Control Act of
2011—can result in that topic monopolizing the legislative agenda, and may
ultimately result in enactment of a smaller proportion of the congressional or
presidential policy agenda over the course of the legislative session. Similarly,
delay in the legislative process may be symptomatic of inter-party or interbranch negotiation over the substance of the bill in question. If this is the
case, then the content of delayed legislation is unlikely to reflect the preferences of any single actor or group in the process—The legislation is the product of compromise. In contrast, the content of legislation that passed with
relative expediency may be likely to adhere closely to the preferences of a
single stakeholder, most likely the president or the majority party in Congress.
Overall, this article illustrates the utility of efforts to further understand institutional and political influences on congressional performance, and highlights how inter-branch conflict affects the policymaking process even when
we look beyond legislative outputs.
Divided Government and Legislative Delay
Analysis of the effects of divided government began in earnest with Mayhew’s
(1991, 2005) seminal work testing the hypothesis that divided government
affected legislative productivity within Congress. Drawing on a data set of
significant legislation passed by each Congress since 1946, Mayhew found no
significant differences in the amount of significant legislation passed in
divided versus unified government contexts. Mayhew’s work sparked a series
of studies on the topic, a number of which reached the same general
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
774
American Politics Research 43(5)
conclusion that divided government had little effect on legislative productivity
(e.g., Fiorina, 1996; C. O. Jones, 1994; Thorson, 1998). However, other studies—critiquing Mayhew’s approach on both conceptual (Binder, 1999, 2003;
Edwards et al., 1997) and methodological (Howell et al., 2000) grounds—
reached starkly different conclusions.
Conceptually, several studies noted Mayhew’s analysis overlooked failed
legislation. These studies argued the best test for the effects of divided government on legislative productivity was not the amount of important legislation passed into law but rather the proportion of the legislative agenda that
was enacted (Binder, 1999, 2003; Edwards et al., 1997). Conceptualized in
this manner, these studies concluded divided government inhibits legislative
productivity (e.g., Binder, 1999, 2003; Edwards et al., 1997). Similar findings emerged from studies using models accounting for a wider range of factors than Mayhew considered, such as party responsiveness and intra-party
conflict (Coleman, 1999), although there is some evidence that controlling
for polarization results in findings that mirror Mayhew’s (D. R. Jones, 2001).1
Methodologically, Mayhew’s study was critiqued for presenting the data as
an aggregated time series, which compressed important variation, and Howell
et al. (2000) demonstrate how the application of appropriate time-series techniques results in the conclusion that divided government has a substantial
negative effect on the enactment of landmark legislation. Considered as a
whole, the preponderance of evidence from previous studies suggests divided
government has at least some negative effect on legislative productivity.
To this point, existing work on divided government focused almost exclusively on its effect on some variant of legislative output, typically the number
of pieces of legislation passed or the proportion of the legislative agenda
enacted. As such, prior work provides little information on how divided government might affect the legislative process. To the extent previous studies
provide any relevant information on this issue, the evidence indicating
divided government inhibits legislative productivity (e.g., Binder, 1999,
2003; Edwards et al., 1997) could reasonably support an expectation that
divided partisan control of our governing institutions also affects the legislative process. However, such a hypothesis has never been the subject of a
direct empirical test. In an effort to better understand the effects of divided
government on the legislative process—and not just outputs—we explore its
relationship with legislative delay.
Although largely overlooked in the literature, legislative delay is an
important phenomenon because it has the potential to produce a variety of
negative consequences for a democratic government. For example, long
delays in the passage of legislation may represent an inefficiency of government. Such delays have the potential to usurp the congressional agenda and
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
775
monopolize the time and energies of lawmakers. These implications are especially important considering the scarcity of time and attention as policymaking resources (B. D. Jones & Baumgartner, 2005) and the limited agenda
space available in legislative institutions, such as Congress (Adler &
Wilkerson, 2012). Delay in the creation of public laws can also affect public
trust of government institutions, as long, drawn-out political battles over
important legislation can cause the public to become jaded with the democratic process, which further complicates matters of efficacy and legitimacy
(Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 1995).
A small body of work has analyzed the effect of divided government on
delay in other political processes, including the confirmation of judges
(Binder & Maltzmann, 2002; Shipan & Shannon, 2003) and executive branch
nominations (Bond, Fleisher, & Krutz, 2009), the budget process (Binder,
2003; Woon & Anderson, 2012), and treaty-making (Krutz & Peake, 2009;
Peake, Krutz, & Hughes, 2012). Although each of these studies analyzes
delay only among a very specific piece of congressional action—each process takes place within a single chamber in Congress—together, they contribute evidence that divided government has implications for the legislative
process, particularly with respect to delay in that process. Indeed, almost
without exception, these studies conclude—relative to unified partisan control—divided government introduces delay into the actions of Congress.
Considered as a whole, previous studies examining the effect of divided government on both legislative productivity and delay in specific legislative processes provide a basis for the expectation of divided government causing
delay in the consideration of important legislation—an aspect of congressional policymaking yet to be explicitly considered. In the following sections,
we describe the approach used to test this expectation empirically.
Measuring Delay in the Legislative Process
The data set underlying our analysis of the relationship between divided government and legislative delay contains information on 2,207 separate pieces
of important legislation considered by Congress between 1949 and 2010—
Importantly, our data contain both bills that were signed into law and bills
that failed to pass. We use the CQ Almanac, which contains an article on
every major piece of legislation lawmakers considered throughout a
Congressional session, as the basis for identifying the pieces legislation
included in our data. More specifically, we draw on the Policy Agenda
Project’s2 (PAP) compilation of all CQ Almanac articles from 1949 and 2010
and then—using the PAP’s measure of article length—identify all bills in the
top 25% of coverage over this time period for inclusion in our data (see Krutz,
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
776
American Politics Research 43(5)
2001 for a similar procedure for identifying important legislation from CQ
Almanac articles). We restrict our sample to bills in the top 25% of coverage
in the CQ Almanac because it is these bills for which the potential consequences of delay—for example, monopolization of Congress’ policy agenda,
effects on public trust and efficacy, and others—are most pronounced. Our
approach to identifying important legislation results in our data containing
observations across the full-time period.
Most policy ideas undergo several iterations prior to reaching a final legislative form—even within a given session of Congress. We account for this
reality in our data by taking advantage of the fact that each article in the CQ
Almanac lists the full slate of bills pertaining to the legislation covered in the
article. The introduction date of the legislation in our data is that of the bill
with the earliest introduction among the slate of related bills listed in the
Almanac. After identifying the 2,207 pieces of important legislation for inclusion in our data and specifying their introduction date, we drew on multiple
sources of information—including the PAP, the Congressional Bills Project,3
the CQ Almanac, and Poole and Rosenthal’s (1997) work—to attach several
characteristics to the legislation in our data. We describe the specific characteristics attached to the bills later in the article.
For the pieces of legislation in our data that became law, we operationalize
the concept of legislative delay by calculating—within a given session of
Congress—the number of days between the date a bill was introduced and the
date the bill was signed into law. For legislation that did not become law, we
measure delay as the number of days between the bill’s introduction and the
final day on the legislative calendar in that congressional session. We
acknowledge many—perhaps most—policy ideas are first introduced several
congresses prior to enactment (or ultimate failure) and our measure of delay
is constrained to a maximum of 2 years. However, we believe this approach
to measuring delay is most appropriate, given the institutional structure of
Congress. Specifically, our approach to measuring delay is consistent with
the institutional rules requiring the work of Congress to begin de novo every
2 years—Policy ideas from previous congresses may be reintroduced in a
new session, but this reintroduction requires a new draft of legislation with a
new bill number.
Table 1 summarizes the legislation in our data by Congressional session and
passage status. Specifically—for both passed and failed legislation—the table
presents the number of bills in our data in each session of Congress, as well as
the median number of days to exit from our data—either final passage or failure induced by the end of the legislative session. The table makes clear our data
contain 1,663 pieces of passed legislation and 544 pieces of failed legislation.4
It is also clear a substantial proportion of the legislation in our data—about
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
777
Hughes and Carlson
Table 1. Summary of Time Passage or Failure for Significant Legislation, by
Congress (1949-2010).
Passed legislation
Failed legislation
38
28
26
36
34
30
68
66
119
92
97
81
100
95
110
73
43
41
33
46
62
60
58
36
43
48
24
20
21
19
16
16
4
2
16
12
10
8
18
22
24
25
43
33
39
35
24
12
16
13
22
27
20
14
17
20
34
7
2
4
1
4
Divided/ Presidential
Number Median time Number
Median
party
unified
of bills
to exit
of bills time to exit government strength
Congress
81st (1949-1950)
82nd (1951-1952)
83rd (1953-1954)
84th (1955-1956)
85th (1957-1958)
86th (1959-1960)
87th (1961-1962)
88th (1963-1964)
89th (1965-1966)
90th (1967-1968)
91st (1969-1970)
92nd (1971-1972)
93rd (1973-1974)
94th (1975-1976)
95th (1977-1978)
96th (1979-1980)
97th (1981-1982)
98th (1983-1984)
99th (1985-1986)
100th (1987-1988)
101st (1989-1990)
102nd (1991-1992)
103rd (1993-1994)
104th (1995-1996)
105th (1997-1998)
106th (1999-2000)
107th (2001-2002)
108th (2003-2004)
109th (2005-2006)
110th (2007-2008)
111th (2009-2010)
130
115
63
66
91
93
99
162
138
150
169
97
133
158
179
198
167
164
241
165
132
124
126
185
136
173
144
155
159
240
141
677
557
544
661
610
652
541
525
562
667
396
468
648
627
614
636
425
529
534
545
540
596
444
575
630
584
525
596
278
655
552
Unified
Unified
Unified
Divided
Divided
Divided
Unified
Unified
Unified
Unified
Divided
Divided
Divided
Divided
Unified
Unified
Divided
Divided
Divided
Divided
Divided
Divided
Unified
Divided
Divided
Divided
Divided
Unified
Unified
Divided
Unified
−4
−10
−10
−15
−17
−65
4
7
8
4
−26
−38
−26
−74
1
−2
−26
−52
−36
−41
−43
−51
−3
−14
−15
−15
−10
−9
−5
−20
−3
41% of observations—are from the 1960s and 1970s. Such a result is consistent
with other efforts to identify important legislation over time. For example,
approximately 32% of Mayhew’s (2005) list of important enactments came
from this time period. The fact that this time period disproportionately contributes to our data is not surprising, as the late 1960s and early 1970s saw Congress
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
778
American Politics Research 43(5)
debating (and passing) a number of large, significant pieces of legislation.
Finally, Table 1 demonstrates considerable heterogeneity in time to enactment
(or failure) across the years our data span. While there are relatively short
median times to enactment in earlier periods of the data, there does not seem to
be a clear pattern throughout the entirety of the data.
Determinants of Delay
As reviewed above, a number of studies focused on how inter-branch conflict—in the form of divided government—affects legislative outputs.
Although these studies reach competing substantive conclusions, each study
measures inter-branch conflict using a simple dichotomous variable indicating divided government. Following this work, we also use a dichotomous
measure of divided government in our analysis. However, we also develop an
additional measure of divided government, one that accounts for not only the
presence of inter-branch conflict but also the magnitude.
To measure the magnitude of the legislative barriers the president’s party
must overcome to pass a piece of legislation through Congress, we subtract
the number of presidential partisans in each chamber from the voting threshold required to pass legislation in that chamber—a simple majority in the
House and the three fifths required for cloture in the Senate.5 The larger of
these differences is the largest barrier to the passage of legislation and represents the strength of the president’s party in a given Congress. This measure
builds on the traditional measure of divided government by not only capturing partisan control but also identifying the magnitude of the largest partisan
hurdle—in either the House or the Senate—the president’s party must overcome to pass legislation. We multiply the measure by negative one to make
the direction of the variable intuitively match its label. Consequently, negative values of our measure indicate substantial legislative barriers for the
president’s party; any value above zero indicates a Congress in which the
president’s party holds both a majority in the House and a supermajority in
the Senate.
Table 1 displays both the traditional measure of divided government as
well as our new measure of presidential party strength over time. Presidential
party strength clearly captures the presence of divided government and allows
for an assessment of the magnitude of this inter-branch conflict. Table 1 also
indicates presidents typically deal with substantial legislative barriers—even
during times of unified government because of the supermajority requirement of the Senate. For example, President Truman enjoyed unified government during the 83rd and 84th Congresses (1951-1954), but the party strength
variable remains well below zero because the Democrats only held a very
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
779
slim majority in the Senate that did not come close to the two thirds required
to invoke cloture at the time. Table 1 also suggests a weak relationship
between median time to enactment and the presidential party strength variable—There is considerable variation across political environments. A similarly weak relationship exists between divided government and time to
enactment. Despite the weak relationship between divided government and
median time to enactment in Table 1, the extant literature on divided government leads to an expectation that legislative delay should decrease as presidential party strength increases. Similarly, the presence of divided government
should increase legislative delay.
Other Variables
In addition to divided government and party strength, there are several additional political and institutional factors that may contribute to legislative
delay; we include these factors as control variables in our analysis. The first
such factor is the level of ideological polarization between the two major parties. Some studies suggest party polarization slows down the legislative process by increasing conflict and decreasing the likelihood of compromise
(Binder, 1999, 2003; Gilmour, 1995). These ideological gaps can also affect
inter-branch conflict indirectly—Larger ideological gaps may make it more
difficult for the two parties to reach a compromise. Using Poole and
Rosenthal’s (1997) common-space DW-NOMINATE scores, which allow for
the comparison of ideologies across chambers (Chiou & Rothenberg, 2007;
Lewis & Poole, 2004), we measure party polarization as the distance between
the median members of each party in Congress.
Some scholars present a more nuanced argument regarding the effects of
polarization on the legislative process. These arguments note polarization is
a necessary condition for conditional party government and thus may serve to
actually overcome legislative conflicts (Aldrich, 1995; Aldrich & Rohde,
2001; Rohde, 1991). This line of thinking holds that polarization induces
individual legislators to follow the party line, which should increase the ability of the majority party to push legislation through Congress. Similarly,
scholars note rank-and-file legislators ceded significant power to party leaders during the contemporary period of a polarized Congress and contend this
increased power—coupled with more homogeneous party caucuses—allowed
majority party leaders to better control floor debate through the use of special
rules and thus achieve their desired legislative outcomes (Lee, 2009; Aldrich
& Rohde, 2001; Theriault, 2008).
Given this information, the effects of party polarization on legislative
delay may be conditional on the partisan make-up of Congress. Under
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
780
American Politics Research 43(5)
periods of unified government and high polarization, the majority party has
extensive control over the congressional agenda and floor activity, so legislation should move through Congress with relative expediency. However, legislation should encounter more delay during times of divided government
and high polarization when either a single party is unable to control the
entirety of the congressional agenda or the president may threaten to veto
legislation pushed through Congress by the opposition party. There is no
expectation about how this relationship plays out at lower levels of polarization when there is a great deal of ideological overlap between the parties. We
include an interaction term between our measure of presidential party strength
and polarization in the analysis to capture the potentially conditional effects
of party polarization.6
Beyond party dynamics, there are a number of potential institutional hurdles to the passage of legislation. For instance, substantial conflict between
the House and Senate may result in a bill passing in one chamber but failing
in the other (Binder, 1999, 2003). To measure the level of conflict between
the two chambers, we use DW-NOMINATE scores as the basis for a variable
measuring the absolute value of the difference between the median legislator
in the House and Senate. The overall health of the budget represents another
possible hurdle to the passage of new policy programs; it is often difficult to
pass legislation that increases spending or decreases revenue in times of high
budget deficits. Consistent with previous research, budgetary health is measured as the size of the federal surplus or deficit as a percentage of federal
outlays—Positive values represent budgetary surpluses and negative values
represent deficits (Binder, 1999; Edwards et al., 1997; Mayhew, 1991, 2005).7
The workload of Congress may also affect legislative productivity. It is possible increased workload in Congress slows down the legislative process, as
a greater number of agenda items require a larger time commitment for the
institution. To capture this potential dynamic, we use the raw number of hearings held in a session of Congress to measure the congressional agenda.8 This
measure of the agenda is not the same as the “systematic agenda” described
by Cobb and Elder (1983), but Baumgartner and Jones (1993, 2009) successfully demonstrated the use of congressional hearings to capture the political
agenda. The final institutional variable included in the model accounts for the
institutional reforms of the mid-1970s, which caused dramatic changes to
lawmaking in Congress with the implementation of multiple referral, committee sunshine laws, and the decentralization of the committee system
(Sinclair, 2011). A dichotomous variable indicating the post-reform
Congress—beginning in 1975—is included to account for these changes.
We also include a number of bill-specific variables in the model. Some
of the important bills in our data were passed as smaller pieces of a larger
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
781
omnibus package. Such packages are indicative of strategies leaders use
when faced with contentious congressional policy making (Krutz, 2001).
Consequently, we include a variable in our analysis indicating whether
the bill was passed as part of an omnibus package.9 We measure delay for
these bills as the amount of time between the introduction of the initial
piece of legislation and passage of the omnibus package, rather than as
the number of days between introduction and passage of the omnibus
legislation.
Salience and the number of legislative actions on a bill also potentially
affect legislative delay. We include a measure of the number of lines dedicated to each bill in the CQ Almanac to account for these dynamics—More
article space is inherently dedicated to bills with multiple legislative actions
and bills garnering more attention from the general public. Finally, we take
into account the policy content of each bill using the 20 major-topic policy
categories detailed in the Policy Agendas Project’s coding scheme. The measure appears in the model as a series of dichotomous variables, with “economic policy” being the excluded category.10
Given the nature of our dependent variable—a variable measuring the
time until a piece of legislation exits the data set—we use a series of Cox
proportional hazards models to test the article’s expectations (BoxSteffensmeier & Jones, 2004).11 In this case, the “survival” of a bill refers to
the length of time between the bill’s introduction and the bill’s subsequent
exit from the data set (when we stop observing the survival-time of an observation). A “failure” in the model refers to the date on which a bill is passed
into a law. Bills not passed into law exit the data set on the final day of the
2-year congressional session in which the bill was introduced—These bills
are “censored.” For this reason, the models assess risk as it relates to a bill
passing into law; positive coefficients represent decreases in delay, and negative coefficients represent increases in delay.12
With the independent variables described in this section, we estimate three
Cox proportional hazards models to examine the relationship between interbranch conflict and legislative delay. The first of these models regresses our
measure of delay on the standard, dichotomous measure of divided government and the set of control variables described above. Our second model is
similar in structure to the first but replaces the standard measure of divided
government with our measure of party strength—The set of control variables
remains identical. The final model contains both our measure of party strength
and an interaction between party strength and party polarization to assess the
conditional nature of the relationship between polarization and legislative
delay. The third model also contains the same set of control variables present
in the first two.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
782
American Politics Research 43(5)
Results
In addition to displaying the expected relationship between legislative delay
and the variables in our model (other than policy topic), Table 2 presents the
results from estimating each of the three Cox proportional hazards models
described above. Results from the first model—containing the standard,
dichotomous measure of divided government—indicate split partisan control
of the presidency and at least one chamber of Congress decreases the hazard
rate of important legislation. Put differently, the results indicate the presence
of divided government slows the legislative process for important
legislation.
As described above, the second model in Table 2 replaces the standard,
dichotomous measure of divided government with our continuous measure of
presidential party strength—The remaining contents of the second model are
identical to those of the first. The results from estimating this model are presented in the third column of Table 2. As expected, the strength of the president’s party in Congress has a statistically significant, positive effect on the
hazard rate of important legislation. As the party strength variable measures
the magnitude of the largest legislative hurdle the president’s party must
overcome to pass legislation, the results clearly demonstrate larger hurdles—
a greater number of legislators of the opposite party—result in significantly
greater levels of delay in the legislative process.
The results for control variables are similar across models, and largely
adhere to expectations. For example, the results indicate chamber distance
has a statistically significant, negative relationship with legislative delay—
Greater ideological distance between the median legislator in each chamber
increases the likelihood a bill encounters delay. Likewise, the results suggest
bills introduced in the post-reform Congress are more likely to encounter
delay than bills introduced prior to 1975. This finding lends further evidence
to the idea of the reforms of the 1970s ushering in a new era of lawmaking in
Congress, one that slowed the process of legislating (Sinclair, 2011).
Budgetary health also has a statistically significant effect in the models, but
not in the expected direction. According to the results, important bills are
more likely to encounter legislative delay in eras of budgetary health, relative
to years with larger budget deficits. Finally, the workload of Congress—measured as the number of annual hearings—does not appear to be related to
delay in the legislative process.
Turning to the bill-specific measures in Table 2, the results indicate bills
included in an omnibus package encounter significantly more delay than
non-omnibus legislation. This finding may seem unintuitive—and it is at
odds with our a priori expectation—but the results are consistent with a
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
783
Hughes and Carlson
Table 2. Cox Proportional Hazards Models Predicting Survival Time of Important
Legislation (1949-2010).
Party control of government
Divided government
Presidential party strength
Presidential party strength/party
polarization interaction
Institutional factors
Party polarization
Chamber distance
Budgetary health
Congressional workload (1,000s)
Post-reform Congress
Bill-specific factors
Omnibus package
Article length (100s)
Civil rights and liberties policy
Health policy
Agricultural policy
Labor policy
Education policy
Environmental policy
Energy policy
Immigration policy
Transportation policy
Crime & family policy
Social welfare policy
Housing and development policy
Domestic commerce policy
Defense policy
Science and technology policy
Trade policy
Foreign affairs policy
Government operations policy
Public lands policy
BIC
AIC
Log-likelihood
N
Expected
relationship
Model 1
−
+
+
−0.183* (0.057)
—
—
—
0.003* (0.001)
—
—
0.021 (0.020)
0.029 (0.033)
−
−
+
−
−
0.0363 (0.561)
−0.832* (0.474)
−0.008* (0.003)
−0.050 (0.075)
−0.370* (0.139)
−0.323 (0.524)
−0.920* (0.474)
−0.010* (0.003)
−0.064 (0.071)
−0.239* (0.130)
−0.620 (0.626)
−1.091* (0.513)
−0.010* (0.003)
−0.073 (0.072)
−0.247* (0.131)
+
−
−
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
−0.553* (0.202)
0.004 (0.003)
−1.107* (0.210)
−0.603* (0.164)
0.026 (0.153)
−0.820* (0.176)
−0.625* (0.173)
−0.895* (0.178)
−0.389* (0.162)
−1.048* (0.371)
−0.202 (0.153)
−0.885* (0.188)
−0.230 (0.174)
−0.311* (0.174)
−0.860* (0.164)
0.377* (0.130)
−0.221 (0.183)
−0.501* (0.195)
0.115 (0.150)
0.066 (0.128)
−0.476* (0.169)
23,356.52
23,202.64
−11,574.32
2,207
−0.577* (0.201)
0.004 (0.003)
−1.112* (0.210)
−0.600* (0.164)
0.216 (0.152)
−0.822* (0.176)
−0.630* (0.178)
−0.900* (0.178)
−0.390* (0.163)
−1.055* (0.371)
−0.200 (1.53)
−0.881* (0.188)
−0.233 (0.174)
−0.311* (0.174)
−0.861* (0.164)
0.382* (0.130)
−0.223 (0.183)
−0.513* (0.195)
0.115 (0.150)
0.062 (0.128)
−0.479* (0.168)
23,361.21
23,207.33
−11,576.66
2,207
−0.598* (0.203)
0.004 (0.003)
−1.114* (0.210)
−0.601* (0.164)
0.024 (0.153)
−0.826* (0.176)
−0.623* (0.178)
−0.898* (0.178)
−0.386* (0.163)
−1.055* (0.372)
−0.197 (0.153)
−0.881* (0.188)
−0.323 (0.174)
−0.307* (0.174)
−0.859* (0.163)
0.385* (0.130)
−0.230 (0.183)
−0.519* (0.195)
0.116 (0.150)
0.066 (0.128)
−0.480* (0.169)
23,368.14
23,208.55
−11,576.28
2,207
Model 2
Model 3
Note. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. BIC = Bayesian information criterion; AIC = Akaike
information criterion.
*p < .05 (one-tailed).
scenario where bills are introduced and sit in committee for a long period of
time before being attached to an omnibus bill in an effort to strategically
move the bill toward passage. As described earlier, we measure delay for bills
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
784
American Politics Research 43(5)
Table 3. Predicted Change in Hazard Rates for Significant Covariates.
Variable
Change in X (from, to)
Divided government
Presidential party strength
Chamber distance
Budgetary health
Post-reform congress
Omnibus package
Percentage change
in hazard rate
(0, 1)
(−74, 8)
(0.002, 0.222)
(−40.15, 15.50)
(0, 1)
(0, 1)
−15.40
11.56
−13.56
−38.77
−31.01
−35.72
Note. Change in hazards rates are calculated over the full range of significant covariates.
Predictions are based on the mean values of other independent variables in the model.
passed as part of an omnibus package as the amount of time between the
introduction of the initial piece of legislation and passage of the omnibus
package, rather than as the number of days between introduction and passage
of the omnibus legislation. At least some bills ultimately included in omnibus
packages languished in committee without advancement through the legislative process. Such bills likely contribute to the negative coefficient estimates
on the omnibus variable in Table 2.
The results in Table 2 also make clear our measure of salience—the number of lines dedicated to a bill in the CQ Almanac—is not significantly related
to legislative delay. Finally, with respect to substantive policy area, the findings suggest bills addressing issues of macroeconomic policy—the excluded
category in the policy issue factor variable—encounter less delay than bills
within nearly every other policy domain. Defense policy is a notable exception to this pattern—Bills in this domain experience even less delay than
macroeconomic legislation.
Table 3 displays the predicted change in the hazard rate across the full
range of the significant covariates in Models 1 and 2.13 According to the predictions, the hazard rate of important legislation considered under periods of
divided government is 15.4% lower than that of important legislation considered under unified government. Similarly, the hazard rate for important legislation increases by 11.6% when moving from the minimum to the maximum
values of the party strength variable. These findings make it clear the substantive impacts of a dichotomous divided government variable and the continuous measure of presidential party strength are very similar. Moreover, the
substantive impact of the ideological distance between the two chambers is
similar to that of the measures capturing inter-branch conflict; the hazard rate
of important legislation decreases by 13.5% across the range of the chamber
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
785
Figure 1. Simulated effects of the interaction between presidential party strength
and party polarization on survival time of important legislation.
distance variable. The variables capturing legislation introduced in the postreform Congress and bills included as part of an omnibus package also have
sizable substantive relationships with legislative delay. The hazard rate of
post-reform important legislation is 31.0% lower than that of pre-reform
important legislation. Similarly, the hazard rate of bills included as part of an
omnibus package is 35.7% lower than non-omnibus legislation.
The final model in Table 2 retains our measure of party strength but also
includes an interaction between the measure of party strength and party
polarization. Although the coefficient on the interaction between these variables is not statistically significant, a simple interpretation of the coefficient
does not tell the whole story—The significance of the marginal effect of party
strength on delay may vary across different values of party polarization
(Brambor et al., 2006). Figure 1 presents the plot of the interaction between
party strength and polarization. Importantly, Figure 1 demonstrates the relationship between party strength and legislative delay is statistically significant across a segment of the full range of party polarization.14 Specifically, at
lower levels of polarization, the relationship between party strength and legislative delay is insignificant. At medium to high level of polarization, however, the relationship between party strength and legislative delay becomes
significant before returning to insignificance at the highest levels of polarization. Even at this point, though, the point estimate is large and positive, but
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
786
American Politics Research 43(5)
the relatively small number of observations at these values result in less precision and correspondingly large confidence intervals. In other words, the
strength of the president’s party in Congress has a statistically significant
relationship with legislative delay when the parties are moderately to highly
polarized, but no discernible relationship exists when levels of party polarization are lower.
It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to completely disentangle the
effects of time and polarization when examining the contemporary Congress.
Party polarization shows a linear increase starting in the mid-1970s (Theriault,
2008). For this reason, the interactive effect in Figure 1 may simply be an
artifact of delay increasing over the same time period.15 The inclusion of the
post-reform Congress variable helps account for this potentially confounding
problem because the reforms took effect at the same time the parties began
moving away from one another. Regardless, the defining characteristic of the
contemporary Congress is partisan polarization, so it may not be possible to
entirely separate time and polarization.
The interactive effect is intuitively appealing because low levels of polarization imply substantial ideological overlap between the parties, making
legislative voting barriers easier to overcome, in theory. However, greater
levels of polarization between the parties create a contentious legislative
environment, which is likely to make compromise far more difficult. This
relationship is relevant to the concept of “conditional party government”
(Aldrich, 1995; Aldrich & Rohde, 2001; Rohde, 1991) wherein party loyalty
votes become far more likely as inter-party differences are increased and
intra-party conflict is decreased. Under such conditions, greater levels of
polarization result in fewer party defections on roll call votes, making it far
more difficult for the president’s party to overcome voting deficits when
attempting to pass legislation. It is important to note we also estimated a
model where we interacted the traditional, dichotomous divided government
variable with polarization, but the interaction was insignificant.16 Taken
together, these findings further suggest the party strength variable adds a
level of nuance overlooked by a dichotomous divided government variable.
Discussion
There is a robust history of studies examining the relationship between
divided government and congressional productivity (Binder, 1999, 2003;
Coleman, 1999; Edwards et al., 1997; C. O. Jones, 1994; Krutz, 2001;
Mayhew, 1991, 2005). Although these studies are inconsistent with respect to
their conclusions about the nature of this relationship, they are fully consistent in their focus on analyzing legislative output. In doing so, these studies
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
787
provide valuable insight into how institutional context shapes the final product of policy making, but they provide less information on how contextual
factors might shape the legislative process more generally—especially issues
of legislative delay. Although delayed legislation may ultimately be passed
into law in some cases, a drawn-out and acrimonious policy debate may provide the ultimate undoing of legislation in other cases. Regardless of whether
important legislation ultimately becomes law, delay in the legislative process
can have very real consequences for democratic governance. Specifically,
delay in the legislative process can constrict the working agenda of Congress,
and such constraints can render the institution unable to address pressing
public problems. Moreover, contentious politics has been shown to draw the
ire of the public, which can undermine the efficacy and legitimacy of
Congress (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 1995). Motivated by these implications,
this article sought to provide evidence on the relationship between divided
government and delay in the legislative process.
In addition to shifting the focus from legislative outputs to legislative processes—specifically legislative delay—we also developed a more refined
measure of divided government in this article. This new measure calculates
the strength of the president’s party in Congress, and although highly correlated with the traditional measure of divided government, this “party strength”
variable represents a valuable innovation measuring both the presence and
magnitude of inter-branch conflict. Together, these advances facilitate a more
comprehensive understanding of the effects of divided government on the
legislative process.
At a basic level, our analysis demonstrates divided government—measured both traditionally as well as by our new measure of party strength—
increases the amount of time important bills are immersed in the legislative
process. However, we take advantage of the nuanced nature of the party
strength variable to further demonstrate an interactive effect of presidential
party strength and partisan polarization on legislative delay. Specifically, we
demonstrate presidential party strength in Congress has no effect on delay at
low levels of party polarization. However, the effect becomes significant as
party polarization reaches moderate levels. In other words, voting deficits for
the president’s party are easier to overcome when the parties are ideologically
similar; the president’s party has greater difficulty reaching compromise with
the opposition as the parties begin to polarize. This interaction between presidential party strength and partisan polarization is just one of a number of
possible insights our more nuanced measure of divided government can
reveal. Our ability to uncover this effect underscores the benefits of using a
measure that captures both the presence and magnitude of inter-branch
conflict.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
788
American Politics Research 43(5)
Considered as a whole, this article adds to our understanding of the effects
of divided government on the legislative process by analyzing how divided
partisan control of government—and the magnitude of that division—affects
the amount of time important legislation is immersed in the legislative process. The insights generated by this analysis are important given their implications for congressional productivity, the efficacy of policymaking
institutions, public trust in government, and others. For example, lengthy
consideration of a particular piece of legislation can result in the issue
monopolizing the legislative agenda, and may ultimately lead to enactment of
a smaller proportion of the congressional or presidential policy agenda over
the course of the legislative session. Future work could examine whether this
theoretical relationship is corroborated empirically. Similarly, delay in the
legislative process may reflect the occurrence of inter-party and/or interbranch negotiation over the substance of the bill in question. In such cases, it
seems likely the content of delayed legislation will not reflect the preferences
of any single actor or group in the process—It typically takes time to develop
a bill deemed acceptable to legislators with a broad range of policy preferences and views. In contrast, the content of legislation passed with relative
expediency seems likely to adhere more closely to the preferences of a single
stakeholder, most likely the president or the majority party in Congress. Of
course, the relationship between legislative delay and alignment of legislative content with the preferences of various actors in the policymaking process is ultimately an empirical question, the investigation of which would
serve as a valuable extension to the results presented in this article.
Finally, future work could usefully build on our investigation of the relationship between party control, polarization, and legislative delay by analyzing whether we observe heterogeneity in this relationship across policy
topics. For example, it seems likely some policy topics are inherently more
conflictual than others, and divided government would result in substantially
more delay for legislation in these areas, relative to bills addressing less conflictual topics. Similarly, it is possible legislation on a particular topic experiences more or less delay depending on partisan control. For example,
legislation on a topic may experience less delay when party in power “owns”
the issue. Empirical investigation of these and other similar issues would
further improve our understanding of the interrelationships between party
control, polarization, and legislative delay.
Acknowledgement
This article would not have been possible without the generous support of the faculty
and staff of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the
University of Oklahoma.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
789
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. Additional evidence indicates divided government does not affect productivity
directly but does affect the presence of party unity votes, which indirectly affects
productivity in Congress (Thorson 1998).
2. The data used here were originally collected by Frank R. Baumgartner and
Bryan D. Jones, with the support of National Science Foundation (NSF) Grants
SBR 9320922 and 0111611, and were distributed through the Department of
Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Neither NSF nor the original
collectors of the data bear any responsibility for the analysis reported here.
3. E. Scott Adler and John Wilkerson, Congressional Bills Project (1949-2010),
NSF 00880066 and 00880061.
4. As a point of comparison, approximately 80% of Mayhew’s (1991, 2005)
updated list of important enactments is covered by the operationalization of
important bills used in this article.
5. The number of votes required for cloture changed from two thirds of the chamber
to three fifths in 1975. The data accurately reflect reforms to the cloture rule. For
an explanation of the 1975 cloture reform, see Kroger (2010).
6. The presidential party strength variable is included in the interaction, rather than
the divided government measure, because an interaction between two continuous-level variables presents a more nuanced explanation of this relationship than
including an interaction between the dichotomous divided/unified government
variable and party polarization.
7. Calculated using data from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/budget.php.
8. As measured by the Policy Agendas Project.
9. Omnibus legislation is identified using data from the Policy Agendas Project.
The coding scheme refers to the final bill that the original policy idea is attached
to. In most cases, this means the introduction of the original bill took place long
before the introduction of the larger omnibus bill, which is different from the
analysis conducted by Krutz (2001). The data set contains 106 bills passed as
part of a larger omnibus package.
10. We specify “Economic Policy” as the excluded category because it is the modal
policy topic in our data. Because a good number of the bills in this category are
appropriations bills, which have historically been considered “must pass” legislation and are subject to special procedural rules, it is reasonable to expect these
bills to experience less delay than bills in other policy areas. That said, we do not
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
790
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
American Politics Research 43(5)
present any formal hypotheses regarding the relationship between policy topic
and legislative delay.
A non-parametric functional form is used because we have no a priori expectations about the distribution of the hazard function.
For ease of interpretation, models displayed in the article use coefficients rather
than hazard rates.
The policy-specific factor variables are excluded to save space. These findings
are available on request.
The insignificance of marginal effects is characterized by the 90% confidence
interval containing zero.
The inclusion of a linear time variable in the models produces nearly identical
results as the party polarization variable. However, it is impossible to include
both variables in the same model due to problems with collinearity.
This model was omitted for considerations of space, but the results are available
on request. A slope–dummy interaction—an interaction between a dichotomous
variable and a continuous variable—does not need to be plotted; such an interaction simply measures the difference between two coefficient slopes.
References
Adler, E. S., & Wilkerson, J. D. (2012). Congress and the politics of problem solving.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Aldrich, J. H. (1995). Why parties? The origin and transformation of party politics in
America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Aldrich, J. H., & Rohde, D. W. (2001). The logic of conditional party government:
Revisiting the electoral connection. In L. Dodd & B. Oppenheimer (Eds.),
Congress reconsidered (7th ed., pp. 269-292). Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (1993). Agendas and instability in American politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (2009). Agendas and instability in American politics (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Binder, S. A. (1999). The dynamics of legislative gridlock, 1947-96. The American
Political Science Review, 93, 519-533.
Binder, S. A. (2003). Stalemate: Causes and consequences of legislative gridlock.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Binder, S. A., & Maltzmann, F. (2002). Senatorial delay in confirming federal judges,
1947-1998. American Journal of Political Science, 46, 190-199.
Bond, J. R., Fleisher, R., & Krutz, G. S. (2009). Malign neglect: Evidence that delay
has become the primary method of defeating presidential appointments. Congress
& the Presidency, 36, 226-243.
Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., & Jones, B. S. (2004). Event history modeling: A guide for
social scientists. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Brambor, T., Clark, W. R., & Golder, M. (2006). Understanding interaction models:
Improving empirical analyses. Political Analysis, 14, 63-82.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Hughes and Carlson
791
Chiou, F.-Y., & Rothenberg, L. S. (2007). Comparing legislators and legislatures: The
dynamics of legislative gridlock reconsidered. Political Analysis, 16, 197-212.
Cobb, R. W., & Elder, C. D. (1983). Participation in American politics: The dynamics
of agenda-building. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Coleman, J. J. (1999). Unified government, divided government, and party responsiveness. The American Political Science Review, 93, 821-835.
Edwards, G. C., Barrett, A., & Peake, J. (1997). The legislative impact of divided
government. American Journal of Political Science, 41, 545-563.
Fiorina, M. P. (1996). Divided government (2nd ed.). Needham, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Gilmour, J. (1995). Strategic disagreement: Stalemate in American politics.
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hibbing, J., & Theiss-Morse, E. (1995). Congress as public enemy: Public attitudes
toward American political institutions. New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Howell, W., Adler, S., Cameron, C., & Riemann, C. (2000). Divided government and
the legislative productivity of Congress, 1945-94. Legislative Studies Quarterly,
25, 285-312.
Jones, B. D., & Baumgartner, F. R. (2005). The politics of attention: How government
prioritizes problems. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Jones, C. O. (1994). The presidency in a separated system. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press.
Jones, D. R. (2001). Party polarization and legislative gridlock. Political Research
Quarterly, 54, 125-141.
Kroger, G. (2010). Filibustering: A political history of obstruction in the house and
senate. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Krutz, G. S. (2001). Hitching a ride: Omnibus legislating in the U.S. Congress.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Krutz, G. S., & Peake, J. S. (2009). Treaty politics and the rise of executive agreements: International commitments in a system of shared powers. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Lee, F. E. (2009). Beyond ideology: Politics, principles, and partisanship in the U.S.
Senate. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Lewis, J. B., & Poole, K. T. (2004). Measuring bias and uncertainty in ideal point
estimates via the parametric bootstrap. Political Analysis, 12, 105-127.
Mayhew, D. R. (1991). Divided we govern: Party control, lawmaking, and investigations, 1946-1990. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Mayhew, D. R. (2005). Divided we govern: Party control, lawmaking, and investigations, 1946-2002 (2nd ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Peake, J. S., Krutz, G. S., & Hughes, T. (2012). President Obama, the senate, and
the polarized politics of treaty making. Social Science Quarterly, 93, 1295-1315.
Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. (1997). Congress: A political-economic history of roll
call voting. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Rohde, D. (1991). Parties and leaders in the post-reform House. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
792
American Politics Research 43(5)
Shipan, C. R., & Shannon, M. L. (2003). Delaying justice(s): A duration analysis
of Supreme Court confirmations. American Journal of Political Science, 47,
654-668.
Sinclair, B. (2011). Unorthodox lawmaking: New legislative processes in the U.S.
Congress. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Theriault, S. M. (2008). Party polarization in Congress. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Thorson, G. R. (1998). Divided government and the Passage of Partisan Legislation,
1947–1990. Political Research Quarterly, 51, 751-764.
Woon, J., & Anderson, S. (2012). Political bargaining and the timing of congressional
appropriations. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 37, 409-436.
Author Biographies
Tyler Hughes is an assistant professor of political science at California State
University, Northridge. His research focuses on policymaking dynamics within both
Congress and policy subsystems.
Deven Carlson is an assistant professor of political science at the University of
Oklahoma. His research analyzes the operations and effects of public policies, as well
as the politics surrounding policy issues.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016