Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-2002, Second Edition

this is a book that I intended to read for some time. I maintain a blog about "divided government" and this is one of the cornerstone works of scholarship about that frequent state in the US Government. The book can be a tough slog for a casual reader like myself. Working through the extensive footnotes and supporting material that some would consider dry, maybe even Sahara desert-like, requires some perseverance. But Mayhew has a clean, approachable style, writes with clarity, and if you are a political wonk and/or bring a curiosity of why things really get done (or don't) in Washington - it is a fascinating read. There is a pervasive belief - a nugget of "conventional wisdom" - that if you want to "get things done" in Congress, whether legislation, investigations to clean up governmental abuses, or just promote "change", a single party must control the Presidency and both legislative branches to avoid gridlock. It certainly seems intuitively obvious that the federal government would be more productive if all branches are run by one party. In this book David Mayhew proved the conventional wisdom flat wrong, at least in the modern era. He put the proposition to the test by rigorously quantifying and analyzing all legislation and investigations (the two primary functions of Congress) from 1946-2002. First published in 1991, the book was updated with a second edition in 2005. It is the seminal reference work that debunked the notion that the federal government functions more effectively with unified single party control. But if unified vs. divided government does not correlate to congressional productivity, what are the factors that prompts congress to "get things done"? Mahew analyzes some of the possibilities in the book. Watching the ubiquitous blue "Change" signs waving at the Democratic convention and listening to McCain's born-again "Change" message at the Republican convention, I was reminded of one such Mayhew hypothesis. In his data, he documents periods spanning many years, where Congress becomes very productive in what Mayhew calls a legislative "surge". Having eliminated any consideration that single party government is correlated with these productive congressional eras, he speculates on other factors that might drive these legislative surges. This portion of the book is considerably less rigorous statistically, but it is interesting and potentially directly relevant to what we are seeing in this 2008 election season. Specifically, Mayhew explores the notion that a primary pre-requisite for these periodic legislative "surges" is a pervasive "public mood" demanding "change". He wrote this more than a decade before the Obama candidacy, but his analysis may be the key to unlocking one of the great puzzles of the 2008 election. What does "change" really mean to the public in this context? Mayhew offers examples of documented decade-long legislative surges that were driven by a palpable "public mood favoring change" and suggest crite

Mayhew, as usual, provides a clear analysis together with good writing -- unusual for political science, unfortunately. The basic argument is that divided government is not as bad as we usually assume. Through analyzing the passage of major pieces of legislation over the post-World War II era, Mayhew shows how significant things happen even when Congress and the president belong to different parties (or when Congress is itself divided). Of course, this can't take into account the quality of that legislation or its ideological content. Presumably those are affected by who is in power, where, and when. But to argue that "nothing happens" and that there is "gridlock" during periods of divided government is simply incorrect. A simple example, occuring after the book was written: Clinton and the 1996 Republican Congress. After a bruising fight over the budget and 2 government shutdowns, the Congress passed a flurry of important legislation at the end of the 1996 session -- bills increasing the minimum wage, providing health insurance portability, reforming welfare, and others. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the subject. It should also be made required reading for journalists who still haven't figured this one out.

Mayhew states that the government changes with the waves influenced by the media and public moods, has its ups and downs and may face gridlock for some period of time, but moves towards deliberation. It is not the parties who have control over what happens; rather the people of the United States do. I wholeheartedly agree with his point, even though sometimes it may be just wishful thinking, and people have a negative attitude towards the non-productiveness of government, but the idea stands, and finally it is what politics are all about; large groups of people that share ideas and opinions, and uniting them into a nation. I certainly hope that Mayhew will be proven right over and over again, as the people of the United States could only hope for having more and more power over the government; since this is what the framers envisioned when writing the constitution.

Divided government - when congress is being controlled by a party other than the presidency is - opposed to unified government, has become more and more frequent in the post World War II era. Some politicians, most probably those engaged in one political party's activities, claim that it is counter productive, as a lot of laws are being prohibited to become enacted. David R. Mayhew argues that this claim is, as he says "wrong, or at least mostly or probably wrong". In his book Divided we govern: Party control, Lawmaking, and Investigations he investigates the productivity of the U.S. Congress, in terms of passed laws and investigation, during times of united and divided government between 1946 - 1990. David R. Mayhew is a Sterling Professor of Political Sciences at Yale University and has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. In his award winning book, he thoroughly examines every "important" law and investigation passed in those times, provides the reader with detailed charts and explanations, and explores whether the state of government at that time - unified or divided - made a difference.Mayhew starts with looking at major investigations done by the Congress. He selects those "'exposure probes' of the executive branch that draw considerable publicity". He finds an investigation to have drawn considerable publicity, once the New York Times covered it on twenty, not necessarily consecutive, days as a front-page story. Those thirty-one chosen investigations range from major known events, such as the Watergate break-in and cover-up or McCarthy's probe of the State Department and Army, to less severe events like the Billy Carter probes. All of those investigations gave a president major trouble, but no pattern is to be found whether the government was unified or divided. Mayhew then sets a pattern for analyzing "important" laws passed by congress, consisting of two different sweeps, that cover a lot of the basic legislature, each sweep having its own set of factors. The first sweep, bringing in 211 laws, was determined by looking at the New York Times and the Washington Post's end-of-session wrap-up story. The second sweep, consisting of enactments that had a long-term effect, rather than just a promising effect as they were passed, brings in another 203 laws into the analysis. Some laws fit into both sweeps and some are only applicable to one or neither one of them. All laws fitting in to one of the sweeps is a designated "important" law, which results in 267 laws to be deemed important or significant. After providing detailed charts of every single "important" law passed, which show if they were passed in either a divided or a unified government, again, almost no pattern emerged regarding party control (12.8 acts were passed during unified congressional years, contrasting to 11.7 acts in divided sessions). Some Congresses contributed more and some less enactments, which can mostly be related to the public's moods.