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Divided Government and Dysfunctional Politics

The problem of divided government (like the problem of divided Political Science) is at first glance an institutional problem consisting of a lack of effective cooperation between different branches. Yet this institutional conflict has become prominent as a result of a recent propensity on the part of voters to return executives from one party and legislative majorities from another. On this level, the problem of divided government is a problem of party politics. There is also a third level of divided government, the division of voters from those they elect, as manifested by ever-increasing abstentionism and, lately, efforts to limit legislative terms and staffs. Seen from this perspective, the problem of divided government is a crisis of popular government. A threefold crisis based on institutional, sociological, and historical factors has crippled party politics. The dysfunction of party politics explains the phenomena of divided government and of voter dissatisfaction with politics on the state and national level.* As Schattschneider (1942) noted, the American two-party system dominates electoral politics because an electoral system based on singlemember districts and plurality voting heavily disadvantages third parties. Plurality voting, eliminating the need for run-offs when no candidate gains a majority of votes, combines with single-member districts to make votes for third-party candidates wasteful in most circumstances. This disadvantage applies to national as well as local elections, since national officials are elected locally. The anachronism of electing the President by electoral votes that go to the winner of a plurality in a given state means that he is elected via 50 simultaneously conducted races in single-member districts with plurality voting, and not by a plurality of the nation; we have no national electoral district. The supposed benefit of the twoparty system is that by means of its simplification of political choice it provides a measure of coherence to national and state politics. But this coherence is specious when state parties represent no more than congeries of local interests, and national parties congeries of local and state interests. To weld disparate interests into an effective vehicle of political articulation requires one or more of the following elements: decisive differences between parties, charismatic leadership, or a strong and disciplined party structure. Under normal bi-polar conditions all these elements may be lacking. Ironically, the absence of these elements also adds to the difficulties of third party and alternative political movements, since the coherence of such movements depends on a differentiated political landscape. In the past major political realignments have taken place only when the existing political system broke down. Prior to the Civil War the Republican Party came to power because of an unprecedented alignment of the North and the West against the South over the issue of slavery's expansion. Yet the Republican Party did not set out to be a reform party; it had reform thrust upon it, much as did the Democratic Party in 1932. In both cases the parties found themselves to be the possessers, and somewhat reluctant servants, of new majorities that signalled a political realignment. Normally the two-party system prevents the emergence of new majorities, as it did in the case of Populism, a movement that represented a potentially dominant realignment of the West and the South against the North. Unfortunately for American politics, the potential of the two-party system to stifle potential majorities may arise more from their weakness as electoral vehicles than from their strength in this regard. This would be particularly unfortunate now, because while major parties in America have always been decentral. ized, they have never been as disaggregated as they are today. At the same time the number of voters identifying themselves as independents is increasing, particularly among highly educated and upwardly mobile young adults, the major parties are losing control over the officeholders elected under their banner and are less appealing to their traditional constituencies. Since World War II changes in electoral and financing laws have made it more difficult for the major parties to control their nominating processes and the financing of their candidates. Without such control, strong party leadership can only be maintained by means of a charisma that cannot be routinized or by the routine exacerbation of partisan differences with the opposition. The former is rare, and the latter can only function in an environment like the House of Representatives, where partisanship is an institutional device and men such as Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich can advance themselves by staking out aggressive partisan stands. However, these stands often reflect constituency preference to a greater degree than party platform because the running of campaigns has become disaggregated. The drive-shafts of the political turbines the major parties could be are simply not working. In consequence, the major parties are not, and, as was suggested over twenty years ago (Burnham 1970) may never again be (in their present form, at least) instruments of collective social action. In this circumstance we can expect a form of weak majority rule to predominate, and weak majority rule is a recipe for divided government.