1	Political Parties in Divided Government A recurring and important theme of commentators on the American political system is that the separation of powers between the president and Congress produces a deadlock of democracy. Critics of divided government have proposed more disciplined political parties to unify the president and Congress, thereby helping to overcome the effects of the separation of powers.
2	Divided Government and the Party Model of Government The Party Model of Government requires unified party control of the executive and the legislature. David Mayhew presents the provocative and important thesis that the divided government, which the separation of powers produces, works as well as the unified government that party discipline would create.
3	David R. Mayhew Divided We Govern Background: dSince World War II, divided party control of the American national government has come to seem normal. Between the 1946 and 1990 elections, one of the two parties held the presidency, the Senate, and the House simultaneously for eighteen of those years. But control was divided for twenty-six years
4	Divided Government Occurs Frequently Of course, divided control is not a new phenomenon. During a twenty-two-year stretch between 1874 and 1896, to take the extreme case, the two parties shared control of the government for sixteen years. But after that, the country settled into a half-century habit of unified control broken only by two-year transitions from one party's monopoly to the other's that closed out the Taft, Wilson, and Hoover administrations. [Unified party control characterized the administration of FDR from 1933-1945.]
5	Does It Make a Difference? Should we care whether party control is unified or divided? That depends on whether having one state of affairs rather than the other makes any important difference. Does it? Much received thinking says yes. The political party, according to one of political science's best-known axioms about the American system, is "the indispensable instrument that [brings] cohesion and unity, and hence effectiveness, to the government as a whole by linking the executive and legislative branches in a bond of common interest." In the words of Woodrow Wilson, "You cannot compound a successful government out of antagonisms."
6	Energetic Government Randall B. Ripley argued in a 1969 study, for example: "To have a productive majority in the American system of government the President and a majority of both houses must be from the same party. Such a condition does not guarantee legislative success but is necessary for it." V. O. Key, Jr., wrote: "Common partisan control of executive and legislature does not assure energetic government, but division of party control precludes it."
7	Congressional Oversight Another familiar claim has to do with congressional oversight. It is that Congress acting as an investigative body will give more trouble to the executive branch when a president of the opposite party holds power. That propensity can be viewed as bad or good. Woodrow Wilson might say that accelerated probing of the executive provides just another kind of unfortunate "antagonism." From another perspective, it can be expected to keep presidents and bureaucrats in line better.
8	Divided v Unified Government No evidence that unified government is better government Unified government does not produce better domestic public policy Unified government does not affect foreign policy
9	Party Government Is UnAmerican But short of jettisoning the separation-of-powers core of the Constitution--an unlikely event--it would probably be a mistake to channel such concern into "party government" schemes. This work has tried to show that, surprisingly, it does not seem to make all that much difference whether party control of the American government happens to be unified or divided. One reason we assume it does is that "party government" plays a role in political science somewhere between a Platonic form and a grail
10	Party Model Flawed in American Context When we reach for [party government] as a standard, we draw on abstract models, presumed European practice, and well-airbrushed American experience, but we seldom take a cold look at real American experience. We forget about Franklin Roosevelt's troubles with HUAC and the Rules Committee, Truman's and Kennedy's domestic policy defeats, McCarthy's square-off against Eisenhower, Johnson versus Fulbright on Vietnam, and Carter's energy program and "malaise."
11	American Parties as Policy Factions Political parties can be powerful instruments, but in the United States they seem to play more of a role as "policy factions" than as, in the British case, governing instruments. To demand more of American parties-to ask that they become governing instruments-is to run them up against components of the American regime as fundamental as the party system itself.
12	Political Process Anti-Party There is a strong pluralist component, for example, as evidenced in the way politicians respond to cross-cutting issue cleavages. There is a public-opinion component that political science’s modern technologies do not seem to reach very well. The government floats in public opinion; it goes up and down on great long waves of it that often have little to do with parties. There is the obvious structural component in the separation of power that brings on deadlock and chronic conflict, but also nudges officials toward deliberation, compromise, and super-majority outcomes.
13	Political Culture Anti-Party And there is a component of deep-seated individualism among American politicians, who build and tend their own electoral bases and maintain their own relations of responsibility with electorates. This seems to be a matter of political culture, perhaps a survival of republicanism, that goes way back. Unlike most politicians elsewhere, American ones at both legislative and executive levels have managed to navigate the last two centuries of history without becoming minions of party leaders. In this complicated, multi-component setting, British-style governing by party majorities does not have much of a chance.