Revolving Gridlock: Politics
and Policy from Carter to Clinton
Chapter 2- Theoretical
Foundations
Presidential
candidate George Bush was hitting his stride.' The post convention boost in the
polls had subsided and he still had a lead of five to eight points. Picking the
conservative Dan Quayle had ensured support from the right, leaving Bush room
to cater to the political center. With two months to go before the 1988
presidential elections, the Bush‑Quayle team was looking for issues from
which Bush could benefit by taking a stand as a political moderate. Abortion
was out. There was no solid middle ground there. Defense was out. Testing the
waters with an endorsement of "partial deployment" of the "star
wars" Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) system had found too many
conservative sharks. The position was now 'full deployment." Crime was
out. How better to defeat Michael Dukakis than with a tough stand on crime, set
against the Dukakis “policy" of granting furloughs to hardened criminals?
So the Bush‑Quayle
team turned its sights to current legislation before Congress. They found two
bills of potential interest. The first was the family leave bill. It appeared
that legislation to provide unpaid leave from the workplace to family members
with newborns or ailing relatives had the support of majorities in both the
House and the Senate. This issue also raised sympathy among the American
people. The second issue was the minimum wage. The last increase in the
minimum wage had been passed during Carter's first year in office in 1977. Due
to a decade of low to moderate inflation, that wage seemed paltry to laborers
and politicians alike. A wage increase also appealed to middle‑class
voters, whose children often worked minimum wage jobs. As such, there was broad
support in Congress for a minimum wage hike, perhaps even enough support to
override a Reagan or Bush veto.
The campaign
team decided to support the latter legislation and oppose the former. The
family leave bill would hurt small businesses and upset conservatives. Bush
could stop the legislation with a veto if he were elected, enabling him to
wield the power of a veto threat on other issues. The minimum wage legislation,
however, had such wide support that undoubtedly something would be passed in
the next Congress. If Bush opposed it, Democrats in Congress would water down
the bill enough to override a veto, giving the President an early defeat. If he
supported an increase, perhaps he could be involved in determining the size of
the increase. It could turn into a legislative victory and make him look
moderate during the campaign. A winning issue.
This chapter, describing the
theory upon which our book is based, is divided into five sections. First, we
describe how personal preferences and congressional institutions put constraints on policy formation. Second we address
the uncertainty faced by legistlators in making policy choices. Third, we look
at exogenous factors affecting legislator preferences and policy positioning.
Fourth, we take a closer look at the role of the President in the legistlative
process. Finally, we compare the revolving gridlock theory to two others that
have been advanced and widely accepted as explanations of executive-legislative
policy formation.
To help clarify the theory
and put it in the context'of`the_`pjr‑i7o‑&‑w& are
studying, we will use as an example minimum wage policy throughout the 1980s. In 1977, with the Democrats in control of Congress and the presidency,
President Carter called for an increase in the minimum wage and Congress
exceeded his expectations. Congress passed legislation raising the minimum
wage over a four year period from $2.30 an
hour to $3.35 an hour. As the 1980 election neared, President Carter
asked Congress to postpone the January 1980
increase, fearing that it would add to high inflation and unemployment, the
argument is that artificially high wages lead to inflated prices.
Additionally, employers who could not pay the higher wages would cut back on
the number of employees on their payrolls. Despite Carter's request, Congress
did not delay the scheduled wage increase. When Reagan was elected in 1980 along with a more conservative
Congress, the new leaders chose to leave minimum wage policy alone. There were
still enough liberal Senators to filibuster any decrease in the minimum wage,
but definitely too few to override the certain Reagan veto of an additional
increase. Due to inflation, the 1981 minimum
wage of $3.35 commanded less and less
purchasing power as the 1980s progressed.
By the 1988 presidential
campaign, Democrats in Congress were arguing that a minimum wage increase to $4.50 an hour would be necessary to make
up for the lost purchasing power that had accumulated throughout the Reagan
years. Bills that even exceeded this proposed raise were drafted in committees
in both the House and the Senate. But legislators facing uncertain prospects in
the upcoming elections were wary of upsetting either the labor unions or the
combined forces of the national Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation
of Independent Business. As such, neither chamber held a vote to pass the
minimum wage hike. Conservative Senators filibustered action on the Senate
Committee's bill until the Democratic leadership dropped the issue for another
year. The House bill was also tabled. The issue would be faced again early in
the Bush presidency.
This case study raises many interesting questions.
How often are legislative changes made? What determines the legislative outcome
when changes are made? What impact
does unified or divided government have on these outcomes? The answers to these
questions lead to a better understanding of what is known as policy gridlock.
Preferences and Institutions
John Chafee
was being approached from all sides. When the Democratic leadership heard that
George Bush was attempting to neutralize minimum wage as a campaign issue for
1988, they knew what had to be done. Majority Leader Robert Byrd called up
S837, the bill supporting a $1.20 increase in the minimum wage. Byrd and Ted
Kennedy, chief sponsor of the bill, were quite certain the bill would be
filibustered by Republicans or vetoed by Reagan. If the bill made it to the
White House and Bush did not use his influence as Vice President to gain
Reagan's signature, the Democrats could claim that Bush was already breaking
campaign promises. If the bill were filibustered, a weaker case could be made.
As such, the cloture vote to end the conservative filibuster of S837 was a
crucial one. And John Chafee, Republican Senator from Rhode Island, knew it.
Chafee was
also aware that his seat was still considered "vulnerable" in the upcoming
elections. In 1982, he had squeaked out ' a victory with 52 percent of the
vote. This year his challenger in the largely Democratic state had a name that
meant something to Chafee. Licht. In 1968, Frank Licht ousted Chafee from the
governorship. Two decades later, his nephew Richard Licht was looking to do
the same in the United States Senate. Chafee knew that the people of Rhode
Island generally supported the minimum wage increase, which would have
typically made his decision easy. But politics during an election year is
seldom easy.
Republicans
Bob Dole of Kansas and Orrin Hatch of Utah made the case in support of the
filibuster. They were opposed to the minimum wage increase, claiming it was
unnecessary and would hurt the economy. They were opposed to the Democratic
tactic of trying to pass a bill that Reagan would veto and that would never
become law. And they saw a political opportunity of their own. The last twenty‑five
Reagan nominees to lifetime federal judgeships were still awaiting
consideration by the Senate. Perhaps there was room for a political compromise
here. They would not let minimum wage go through to be vetoed until the
judicial appointments had been dealt with. If the Democrats wanted to win a
political point, it would be a costly one. But to pull off the compromise, they needed
support and couldn't afford to lose many like Chafee to the other side.
The pressures
on Chafee from home and from his party were increased by the prospects of
interest group involvement. If he opposed the minimum wage hike, labor groups
might throw more support to Licht. If he favored the increase, however, his support
from Republican business groups might be diminished. Also, considering Licht's
claims that Chafee was only responsive to his constituents during election
years, Chafee couldn't be certain of getting credit for supporting a wage
increase even if he did so.
On September
22, Chafee voted to end the filibuster, against the wishes of his party's
leaders. Fifty‑two Senators voted with him, seven shy of the sixty needed
for cloture. The following day, Chafee felt more confident voting the same way
on a second attempt to end the filibuster. Licht had no new issue to seize.
John Chafee's decisions on this and other issues would lead him to an eight‑point
victory in November.
Legislators have preferences
about policy decisions. These preferences are based on their partisan slant on
the issues, on the degree to which they wish to be representative of their
constituents' desires, on their responsiveness to organized interests, and on
their personal views about politics and good government. On any particular
issue, politicians will take a wide variety of positions, based on preferences
ranging from very liberal to very conservative. Looking at an issue, we often
find the current (status quo) policy somewhere near the middle of these
preferences, not as liberal as many Democrats would like it, and not as
conservative as many Republicans would wish. This much is obvious, and results
largely from legislative compromise.
Much more can be said about
when bills will be passed and what the outcomes will be on a liberal‑conservative
scale. The theory on which this book focuses is introduced and analyzed
formally in Krehbiel's "Institutional and Partisan Sources of Gridlock: A
Theory of Divided and Unified Government" (1996). Krehbiel's Pivotal
Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking (1997) includes a relatively
non-technical overview of the "pivotal politics theory" and subjects
the theory to a wide range of empirical tests on legislative action that
occurred throughout the postwar period. As a general matter, we regard his
studies and ours to be complementary with respect to the tests, analyses, and ‑interpretations.
Throughout this chapter we will note differences between Krehbiel's formal
analysis and our portrayal with regard to uncertainty, exogenous shocks, and
bargaining between the President and Congress over final outcomes
The "revolving gridlock theory" is based
on a one‑dimensional spatial model.4 We claim that, on any particular
issue, legislators can be assigned positions from the most liberal to the most
conservative. As a practical matter, preferences may be revealed through
interest groups' ratings or other measures of legislators' positions on a
variety of issues.5 We explore these practical issues in greater detail in
Chapter 3 with regard to the 1980 electoral
shift, in Chapter 4 and the Appendix
with regard to preferences over time, in Chapter 5 with regard to interest group ratings, and in Chapter 6 with an example of one particular
representative.
In addition to the positions of individual
legislators, the position of the status quo policy on each given issue likewise
can be discerned. Based on the position of that status quo point with respect
to the positions of the members of Congress, we can speculate with some
accuracy where a bill will need to be positioned to pass successfully through
the institutional structure of lawmaking. The Senate filibuster and the
presidential veto provide the institutional constraints on policy‑making
according to the revolving gridlock theory. If a bill is to become law, it must
gain a majority in both houses and must not be killed by a filibuster or a
veto. We argue that these constraints caused by legislators' positions and
supermajority institutions are the reason policy gridlock is prevalent in the
American legislative arena today; and a change in the party of the President is
not sufficient to bring about an end to this gridlock.
The first institutional feature of note is the
filibuster. The Senate has always been known for its slow and deliberate
consideration of issues. In particular, a Senator, once given the floor, can continue
to speak for extended periods of time. When a Senator's right to hold ' the
floor indefinitely is utilized to slow or stop the advancement of a bill, the
action is commonly referred to as a filibuster. The filibuster gained
particular notoriety during the passage of civil rights bills in the 1950s and 1960s. In one instance, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, speaking
out against civil rights legislation, held the floor for twenty‑four
hours and eighteen minutes. Obviously, filibusters could keep the Senate from
acting on important legislation. As a result, the Senate has over time adopted
rules limiting the use of the filibuster. Of great significance is Senate Rule
XXII, allowing for a cloture vote to end debate. To invoke cloture, sixty
Senators must agree that the issue has been sufficiently discussed and that
the Senate should continue on with its business, often leading to a vote on the
bill being filibustered. The cloture rule thus limits the power of any small
group of Senators who wish to talk an issue to death. But it still allows a minority
to have significant power over an issue. If forty‑one Senators wish to
kill a bill through a filibuster, they can do so by voting against cloture.
This institutional feature thus can have a great impact on policy outcomes.6
Figure 2.1 helps illustrate this point. The range
from FL to FR represents the central twenty members of the Senate, with M
being the median member. The forty-one Senators to the left of and including
FL could successfully filibuster a bill. Likewise, FR and the forty Senators to
the right could successfully filibuster. The Senators are placed along this
line based on their positions on the issue at hand. For example, if we are
looking at minimum wage legislation, legislators could be lined up based on
what dollar level they feel is appropriate for a minimum wage.7 If the status
quo (Q) on a particular issue is between FL and F', we argue that no R policy
movement can occur. That is, if the central twenty Senators are arguing that the
minimum wage should be between $4.00 and $5.00, and the current minimum wage is
$4.25, that wage cannot be changed. Looking again at Figure 2. 1, if the majority
to the right of Q attempts to enact legislation moving policy to the right, FL
and the 40 Senators to the left will filibuster to prevent any legislative
movement. This does not mean that the minority on the left can dictate policy,
however. Indeed, if they attempt to move policy any further to the left, FR and
the forty Senators to the right will
filibuster to prevent that movement.
Thus policy Q cannot be changed by the Senate. This analysis holds true for
any status quo policy in the range between FL and FR. Because, in this example,
a majority would like to enact a more conservative policy but no change is
possible, the institutional feature of the filibuster alone is enough to lead
to cries of "gridlock."
This "gridlock region" within which no
policy change can occur is actually even larger than described above. The
reason for this is found in a second institutional feature: the
presidential veto. If the President adopts a conservative position on an issue,
the region of inaction is extended further to the right. The logic here is much
the same as with the filibuster. If the status quo policy is fairly
conservative and Congress acts to make the policy more moderate, the President
can veto that legislation. Instead of needing the forty‑one conservative
Senators required to maintain a filibuster, the President only needs thirty‑four
conservatives to sustain a veto.
|
Gridlock |
Liberal Preferences-------FL—Q—M----FR----------Conservative
Preferences
FIGURE 2.1 Policy
Constraints Caused by Filibusters
Because a cloture vote requires three‑fifths
of the Senate and a veto override requires two‑thirds, the veto provides
a greater constraint on policy action. When the President is conservative and
the Senators are ranked along the main policy dimension, then, this region of
inaction, or gridlock, stretches from the forty‑first Senator to the
sixty‑seventh. With a liberal President holding veto power, this region
stretches more to the left, from the thirty‑fourth Senator to the
sixtieth. If previous policy has positioned the status quo in this region, then
Congress can successfully undertake no further policy action. Movement to the
left or the right will be halted by successful filibusters or vetoes, as
indicated by points FL and V in Figure 2.2.
In these diagrams, we are defining the edge of the
gridlock region nearest the President to be determined by the number of
legislators, based on their preferences, necessary to override a veto. However,
if a President is in a position more centrist than this veto‑pivotal
member (denoted as "Y' in the figure), the constraint will then be the
President and not this member of Congress. As such, compromises will have to
appeal to the President for the sake of avoiding a veto, rather than appealing
to enough members of Congress to override the veto. Thus the gridlock region
could stretch from the filibuster point to the veto point or to the President's
ideal policy point. For extremely centrist Presidents, the veto is of little
concern and the gridlock region is defined only by the filibusters, as in
Figure 2. 1.
After Congress passed the minimum wage increase in 1977, the new wage was securely in the
region between the thirty‑fourth and the sixtieth Senator. A movement to
increase or decrease the wage could be stopped through either a filibuster or a
veto. Indeed, even when President Carter asked his own party to delay the
minimum wage increase, there was not enough support for congressional action.
From 1977 to 1989, policy gridlock reigned on the minimum wage issue. Very liberal
Congressmen again saw the wage slip out of line with their own preferences, and
they noted that they could not change policy. They were frustrated with what
they called partisan gridlock. Very conservative members, on the other hand,
saw the declining value of the minimum wage as more in line with their policy
preferences. They had no reason to complain about policy inaction. Eventually,
however, inflation and other economic conditions caused the purchasing power
of the $3.35 wage to fall so far behind that it again became out of line with
the preferences of the majority of Congress. At that point, gridlock was
brought to an end under a Republican President.
| Gridlock |
Liberal --------------FL----Q--------M--------------V------------------Conservative
FIGURE
2.2 The Full Gridlock Region
The assumption that the extensive use of filibusters
and vetoes is favored by Senators and Presidents is questionable. Is it
actually in the interest of a President or of a group of Senators to repeatedly
veto or filibuster legislation? Would the political costs associated with being
labeled an "obstructionist" not outweigh the policy benefits? George
Bush's repeated vetoes perhaps even helped lead to his electoral defeat in 1992. But his defeat was not the necessary
outcome of his vetoes. With an aggressive campaign, he could have used the
vetoes to argue that he was fighting against the liberals in Congress. Indeed,
this was precisely what he argued at the end of his campaign. As it turned out,
the press had already characterized him as a do‑nothing‑at‑home
President. And, come election time, the public had bought this story.' And as
for the conservatives filibustering early Clinton policies in the Senate, they
typically represented constituents who were pleased to hear that liberal
policies were being defeated. Although conservative Senators may have preferred
legislative action on many issues, stopping action that would have been against
their constituents' interests was considered good work. Nevertheless, it is
important to be aware of how filibusters and vetoes are perceive an whether
this affects how often they are used.9
The gridlock region described above is important
with regard to policy action as well as policy inaction. Figure 2.3 shows the
policy region for the Senate with a conservative President, stretching from the
filibuster point (F) to the veto point (V). The Senator at point F plays a
pivotal role in policy formation. If the status quo policy is to the right,
that Senator joins the forty liberals to the left in filibustering any further
movement to the right. If policy is to the left, then the pivotal Senator
allows a shift to the right just so far as is in that Senator's interest. The
pivotal Senator will join the forty colleagues to the left to filibuster bills
that go too far. We refer to this Senator as the filibuster pivot, as this lawmaker plays a pivotal role in deciding
which bills are satisfactory and which should be filibustered.10 The Senator
at point V holds similar powers concerning policy shifts to the left, and is
referred to as the veto pivot. The
thirty‑three Senators to the right can be joined by the veto pivot to
sustain a presidential veto. Likewise, the sixty-six Senators to the left can
be joined to override a veto. Thus this Senator's position is pivotal in
deciding whether a bill is conservative enough to pass the Senate, even with a
veto threat. We call the region between the filibuster pivot and the veto pivot
the gridlock region. Policies in this
region are maintained, whereas those outside are moved inside.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Q--------F--- Q'---M------------V
FIGURE 2.3 Possible Outcomes
with a Filibuster Threat
Looking again at Figure 2.3, the point Q represents
a status quo that is outside of the gridlock region. The Senate can thus take
successful action in this policy area; but this action is again constrained by
the threat of a filibuster. If the Senate proposes a bill that would shift
policy to the right of Q'I the bill would certainly be
filibustered. The Senator at F and the forty Senators to the left all would be
disadvantaged by a bill to the right of Q because such a bill is further from
their ideal policy than was Q. If a bill is proposed that
would move policy to Q') the Senator at F is
indifferent about whether to let the bill go through or to filibuster to stop
it. Because of the possibility of a filibuster, the only policies that can be
adopted are those in the shaded region between Q
and Q In
actuality~ the predicted outcome is somewhere between F and Q'I 1 All movements from Q toward F are advantageous to
the Senator at F. Only as a proposal becomes more conservative than Senator
F's ideal policy does this Senator consider a filibuster to halt bill movement
toward the right. The policy will end up between F and Q'; the exact position of the bill in this region is subject to agenda
setting and political bargaining." The conservative President and a
majority of Senators prefer the point Q'
' but the
filibustering group, often less impatient than the majority to get something
passed, prefers point F. The minority might filibuster until a compromise is
made, or a few Senators might find their position unpopular back home, causing
the filibuster to break and the majority on the right to benefit.13
A diagram similar to Figure 2.3 can be drawn with
regard to minimum wage legislation in 1989.14 In Figure 2.4, the status quo
policy has minimum wage at $3.35 an hour, as it was when Bush took office. The
veto pivot is positioned at $4.00 an hour.15 The region between $3.35 and $4.65
is shaded, showing policy outcomes that would be advantageous to the legislator
at the veto pivot. As legislation allows the minimum wage to rise toward the
$4.00 mark, the legislator preferring the $4.00 wage will vote for it over the
status quo wage. That legislator would even prefer a wage at $4.50 to one at
$3.35. But when the proposed minimum wage reaches $4.65, the veto pivot
legislator becomes indifferent; a wage that is 65 cents too low (i.e., the
status quo) and one that is 65 cents too high (i.e., the proposed new wage) are
equally unpalatable. If the proposed wage is above $4.65, the legislator at the
veto pivot ($4.00) and those who are more conservative will oppose the change.
The bill will be vetoed by the President and that veto will be sustained.
It should be clear that the outcome of this
legislative process will be a minimum wage set between $4.00 and $4.65. The
vast majority, including the veto pivot, prefer a raise to at least $4.00. And
the veto pivot is indifferent to a choice between the status quo wage and a
$4.65 wage. Liberal and moderate members of Congress would attempt to get as
close to the $4.65 wage as possible, whereas conservatives would try to keep
the wage increase as small as they could. At this point there is a standoff.
Minimum Wage Levels $3.35 $4.00 $4.65
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Q V Q' M F
FIGURE 2.4 Possible Outcomes
on Minimum Wage Policy (1989)
The initial Democratic proposal in 1989 was a
minimum wage of $4.65. Bush needed to establish a counter position. If he
picked a position that increased the wage too much, ‑his position would
be frowned upon by his party and his electoral constituency. If he picked too
low a wage, his coalition on the right could be broken by a compromise
proposal. Some of the legislators he was counting on to sustain a veto could be
won over by the majority with the argument that Bush was appearing too conservative
and too much a proponent of gridlock. Bush knew that some sort of a wage increase would pass. The size of the increase
would depend on the President's position and on the political bargaining game.
In short, the revolving gridlock theory predicts that
status quo policies inside the gridlock region will be maintained, and policies
outside the region will be brought inside, usually through minor policy
adjustments. With very little resulting policy change, even where a majority
approves change, this model starts to explain what is referred to as policy
gridlock. When this gridlock occurs under unified party control of government,
we call it unified gridlock. Unified
gridlock resulted under the 103rd Congress during the first two years of the
Clinton administration.
It should not be assumed that this model rests on
the observance of filibusters and
vetoes. The mere threat of a veto or
a filibuster is often enough to kill a bill or to force it to be altered so as
to override a veto or to gain sufficient votes for cloture. Successful vetoes
and filibusters might actually be quite rare. Because time and effort are
scarce commodities in Congress, it would be easier for the majority and the
leadership to abandon a bill early on than to lose it to a filibuster or veto.
However, in some circumstances politicians may wish to go down swinging.16
Opponents can raise the issue of repeated sustained vetoes, such as those in
the Bush presidency, as an example of the President and his party causing gridlock.
And Democrats could claim that the repeated filibusters by Bob Dole and other
conservatives in the 103rd Congress were "obstructionist. ' Of course, on
the other side of the coin, during the 1994 elections Republicans effectively
claimed that the Democrats were poor at policy making, unable to pass major
legislation even with control of Congress and the presidency.
The above discussion has concentrated mainly on the
Senate. There similarly exists a gridlock region for the House. As filibusters
are not allowed in the House, this region only stretches from the House median
to the House veto pivot. With a conservative President, status quo policies in
this region cannot be shifted to the right because a majority would not vote
for such a shift, and policies cannot be moved to the left because such a shift
would be vetoed and the veto sustained.
105th House
VH MH
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
VS MS
F
105th Senate
FIGURE 2.5 The Gridlock
Region in the Bicameral 105th Congress
Because this region is smaller than in the Senate,
it is often less of a constraint on policy.17
However, the
need for a supermajority to override a veto is a serious constraint in both
the House and the Senate.
Figure 2.5 shows
the bicameral situation as we perceive it today, with a fairly conservative
House and Senate and a Democratic President. Here the gridlock region is
defined by the constraints of the filibuster pivot in the Senate and the veto
pivot in both the House and the Senate. If the House were considered more
conservative than the Senate (as was the case immediately following the 1994 elections), the gridlock region in
the figure would expand out to the further of the veto pivots‑that of the
Senate. Indeed, as we argue in Chapter 6,
the constraints on policy change as outlined by the Contract with America
during the 104th Congress were the
presidential veto and the preferences of the veto pivot members in the Senate.
The gridlock region for our bicameral system is determined on the left by the
greatest restriction between the two houses on movement to the right, and is
determined on the right by the greatest restriction on movement to the left.
This usually means that one of the restrictions is the filibuster in the
Senate, and the other is whichever veto pivot extends the gridlock region
further away from the median.
The position of the President and his veto threat
determines which side of the gridlock region will be stretched out to the veto
pivot. With the election of Bill Clinton, the previous extension of the
gridlock region to the veto pivot on the right was altered such that the
filibuster pivot is now on the right and the veto pivot is on the left.
Policies that were held in place by Bush vetoes were released for action by
Congress. But they were still constrained by the filibuster pivot in the
Senate. Unless President Clinton's proposals were made suitably conservative,
the Senator at the filibuster pivot and colleagues to the right would have
voted to stop the legislation with a filibuster, voting down cloture attempts
until the bill died or a compromise was reached. This was the fate of many
Clinton proposals in 1993, including
the national service legislation and the jobs stimulus package.
Following the 1994
elections, policy proposals reflected the shift in preferences to the
right, advancing more conservative policies. The limitation on these policies
was the threat and use of vetoes by President Clinton. The President's successful
vetoes of Republican budgets and welfare overhauls made Congress adjust their
proposals more to the President's liking. Had Bob Dole been elected in 1996, the constraint on policy change to
the right would have been the less‑restrictive filibuster in the Senate.
Many items in the Contract with America that were watered down to avoid or
override Clinton vetoes could have been enacted in full.
Uncertainty
"It's Friday. Some people are confused," Bob Dole explained. The Friday in question was September 23, 1988, and the Minority Leader had just lost five more Republican votes in his attempt to keep the minimum wage filibuster going. The cloture vote had still failed, as nine Senators had not been present to vote. But Dole was concerned about the apparent weakening of his coalition. This issue was a bit complex, as they were voting on a procedural issue, not on whether to actually pass a higher minimum wage. But wasn't it a straightforward procedural vote? Maybe not.
The actual
impact of an increase in the minimum wage was uncertain. Earlier in the summer,
the San Francisco Federal Reserve reported that a minimum wage increase could
boost inflation by a noticeable amount. Since then, several studies were
released claiming that the proposed minimum wage hike could cause the loss of
up to a million jobs. Such news raised questions among the Senators voting on
that late September day. How soon would these effects on the economy take
place? Would the voting public be able to trace the blame to those who voted
for an increase in the minimum wage? Would these hardships counterbalance the
benefits that constituents would perceive from increased wages for those with
low incomes?
The actions of
interest groups raised more questions in the minds of legislators. Even if no
economic hardships materialized before the elections, would the varied interested
parties influence the elections depending on my vote? If I vote for a wage increase,
will my support for small businesses diminish? If I vote against an increase,
will organized labor raise more support for my opponent? Even Dole was
frustrated with the involvement of some of these interest groups. "How
many Labor Committee bills from organized labor do we need before we go
home?" he asked.
But Dole had
not taken steps to make the issue clearer for his colleagues in the Senate. In
fact, he in muddied the waters further, by tying action on minimum wage to the
approval of Reagan's nominees to federal judgeships. "I am advised by
members on my side to bring this place to a halt until we get some action"
on the judicial appointments, Dole said. This led to even more questions. If a
Senator supported the filibuster, would he then be perceived as being involved
in a type of blackmail to get conservative judgeships?
With the issue
so complicated and the uncertain prospects of elections so close on the
horizon, Dole should not have been surprised to see some flip‑flops in voting. Over the weekend he would make
sure that he would not lose the next cloture vote, leaving the Democratic
leadership with the lose‑lose proposition of either prolonging the
stalemate or dropping the bill. By Monday it was clear that the conservative
filibuster could continue indefinitely, so the Democratic leadership dropped
the bill.
In forming policy, legislators face uncertainty on a
number of levels. Of concern to the theory here are two types of uncertainty:
uncertainty over the actual policy results of passing a bill, and uncertainty
over constituent reactions to voting for or against a bill." Although
members of Congress are forced to live with some level of uncertainty, they
take many steps to minimize that uncertainty.19 They listen carefully to
constituents, paying attention to surveys and polls. They take advice from
experts, whether committee members who have specialized in a policy area or
authorities who give testimony in hearings.20 Still, the remaining uncertainty
leads to mistakes.
First, there is uncertainty over the actual policy
results of passing a bill. In the above section, we assumed that the status quo
policy and the alternative proposed by the bill were known and were easily
placed on a one‑dimensional line. Legislators then simply pick whichever
policy is closer to their preferred outcome. In reality, policyrnaking is an
uncertain activity. Budget estimates made over a five-year period are
undoubtedly going to lose accuracy over time. Members of Congress cannot
accurately predict which interpretations and actions government agencies and
bureaus will take. Policy- makers and policy analysts are unsure of just how
many people will qualify for programs, find loopholes, or be indirectly affected
by a policy change. Legislators try to find out as much as they can about the
policy consequences of various actions, and then they must take a risk and
vote.
The uncertainty of policy outcomes could have a
beneficial or adverse effect on the chances of a bill's passage, depending on
perceptions of the status quo. When the public seems pleased with present
policies, it may be difficult to pass new legislation. Although the proposed
policy could actually improve the status quo, legislators feel no pressure to
take chances. Such was the case with minimum wage legislation in 1988.
Pollsters predicted that incumbents would fare quite well in that year's
elections. The economy was fairly strong, and it appeared that George Bush
would be elected President. Congress felt that tinkering with the minimum wage
while otherwise in such a strong position so dose to the elections raised too
much uncertainty. The San Francisco Federal Reserve reported that a minimum wage
increase could boost inflation by a noticeable amount.21 Analysts released a
variety of studies claiming that a minimum wage hike could cause a loss of up
to a million low‑wage jobs. This potential job loss combined with the
grassroots lobbying campaign by business groups led the House leadership to
avoid votes on the bills proposed out of committee.22 Although Congress did
consider the issue, there was no outrage over legislative inaction, and if
Congress had acted there was a great risk of making economic and political
conditions worse.
In contrast to this case of uncertainty leading to
inaction, at times politicians embrace an uncertain outcome. When the current
policy is considered poor, the public perceives that things cannot get any
worse. This paves the way for a string of new, uncertain policy proposals. Had
economic conditions been different in 1988, perhaps members of Congress would
have supported a minimum wage increase. For example, if there were an outcry
about large numbers of working Americans living below the poverty line,
legislators could address the issue through a minimum wage hike just before the
election. The public would think that Congress was being responsive, and the
inflation and job loss would not be felt before the election. Whereas typically
members of Congress are looking to avoid uncertain options, under these
conditions they may embrace a major change.
Thus uncertainty over policy outcomes can either add
to or relieve policy gridlock. When legislators are uncertain about the
consequences of their actions, they may either take small steps or make no
changes to current policy. But when there is demand for immediate action,
uncertainty could trigger a major policy change that would have been
unacceptable to legislators had they been perfectly aware of the outcome. As
the uncertainties are resolved over time, members of Congress can better judge
what they have done. If the results are found to be in the "gridlock
region,' no further policy changes are made. Such was the case with minimum
wage policy under President Carter. When he realized that the wage increase he
had called for was hurting the economy, Carter asked Congress to delay its
implementation.23 However, so many members of Congress agreed with the wage
increase that it went forward as planned. Even though the policy outcome was
more dramatic than expected, the results were still in the gridlock region. If
the uncertainty is resolved with the discovery that the policy enacted did not
move into the gridlock region at all, or even that it overshot the region,
modifications to the policy will be made. For example, when the 1981 tax cuts in concert with the
economic downturn yielded large budget deficits, President Reagan supported
minor tax increases over the next few years. And when the catastrophic health
care measure passed by the I 001h Congress was found to be catastrophic itself,
it was quickly repealed.
In addition to being uncertain about where the
policy outcome of a bill will lie, members of Congress face a second
uncertainty: how their constituents will react to how they vote. In the above
section, we argued that members of Congress are aligned from liberal to
conservative. Their positions on various issues can be determined by observing
how they vote over time. When they vote, members of Congress seeking reelection
must be aware of how their constituencies view their votes on the issue at
hand. And yet these members are uncertain as to what the reaction will be back
home. Many policy votes will simply be ignored by constituents; others will be
observed but play little or no role in swaying voters; and still others will
become major campaign issues. Furthermore, the uncertain reaction of
constituents is compounded by the uncertain policy outcomes. Even though they
may have the best of intentions, legislators will be blamed for the unforeseen
results of their actions (or inaction).
Because legislators are trying to maintain their
popularity among constituents, they must try to resolve the uncertainties concerning
voters' perceptions of the issues. In particular, members of Congress attempt
to reduce uncertainty by judging the salience of an issue to the public and
the leanings of the public either for or against a bill. Legislators pay
attention to surveys and polls as well as to calls and letters from
constituents. Over time, they settle on a position with which they are
comfortable, whether they derive benefit from their party, from their constituents,
from funding via Political Action Committee (PAC) support, or from a sense of
doing what is right for the American people.14 Throughout 1988 and early 1989, lawmakers
were deciding on their positions regarding minimum wage increases. They were
careful in 1988 not to upset the labor movement on one side of the issue or
business groups on the other. Either side could have helped finance
challengers against incumbents who weren't carefully positioned.
As the legislators themselves are converging on
their final positions on a particular issue, the bill being produced is also
changing. Support for a legislative change in policy early in the formulation
of a bill does not necessarily mean that anything will be done in the end. It
certainly does not mean that the President or the majority party is free to
push through its bill of choice. As uncertainties are resolved about where the
status quo, the various new bills, and the legislators' own positions lie, we
can fairly accurately predict the policy outcome. If the status quo is found to
be in the gridlock region with a large number of legislators on each side of
it, policy change can be stopped through filibusters and vetoes.26 If the
status quo is found to be outside the region, as was shown in Figure 2.3, it
win be brought inside the region, but seldom as far as those promoting change
had wished.
On many issues Congress deals with, most of the
major uncertainty can be resolved before action is taken. In such cases, the
revolving gridlock theory should be expected to hold without exception.
Additionally, we can accurately predict when
uncertainty will play a large role. Uncertainty influences policy when
legislators face two constraints: complexity and time. When dealing with a
multiyear budget and an uncertain constituent reaction, or with bills involving
the one‑seventh of the American economy that is health care today,
legislators can make mistakes. The issues are so complex that all of the
uncertainty cannot be removed. Also, when dealing with the time constraint of
enacting a policy just before elections, uncertainties cannot be removed from
the legislative process because all the variables cannot properly be addressed.
Although members of Congress wish to campaign on the strength of a new program
they have just passed, they do so at the risk of finding that they have made a
mistake when they return to Congress the next year. We claim that the revolving
gridlock theory will hold true generally, even where uncertainty surrounding
legislative decisions makes the process more complex.
Elections and Exogenous
Shocks
"I can't tell you what a very significant departure this is from what we've had over the past eight years." Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy was obviously pleased that minimum wage was again being discussed in March 1989. He had seen the wage shrink in terms of purchasing power for years, and had been a strong supporter of an increase. To raise the minimum wage to $4.60 an hour would only restore the purchasing power it enjoyed in 1981, Kennedy argued. It would not make up for the years of decline that people living on minimum wage had endured.
Now was the
time to do something about the minimum wage. The newly elected President had
issued a campaign promise to raise the minimum wage. And he had not brought in
many conservative members of Congress on his coattails who would oppose a wage
hike. As such, a large majority in both houses of Congress supported an
increase.
Although
President Bush had only supported an increase to $4.25 an hour, Kennedy
believed that a greater increase would have enough support to override a veto.
But would Bush be foolish enough to veto the increase? About 80percent of the
public favored an increase in the minimum wage. If Bush vetoed the bill passed
by Congress, he would lose credit for any increase whatsoever, and would hopefully
lose a veto fight as well. Kennedy therefore wanted to propose an increase that
would restore much of the purchasing power of former wages, and one that would
also be an embarrassment to Bush if he vetoed it. On March 23, the Senate
decided on a wage of $4.55, just three thin dimes more than Bush's proposal.
With the approval of the House, the ball would soon be back in the President's
court.
In previous pages we defined the gridlock region and
argued that policies in that region could not be changed, due to the diverse
preferences of members of Congress and to the institutional structure involving
the use of filibusters and vetoes. Status quo policies outside the gridlock
region are brought just inside it. Because of uncertainty, policies are sometimes
formulated that are outside the gridlock region. We claim that when these
outlying policies are discovered, they are brought back inside the gridlock
region. If all of this is true, it would seem that over time Congress would get
around to dealing with every policy area, bringing each policy outcome into the
gridlock region where it is then held in place. We argue that this would be the
case if there were no shocks to the system. But in the constantly changing
world of politics and policy, a number of exogenous factors impact upon the
theory. The exogenous factors of greatest concern to us are threefold: the
election of new politicians, the changing preferences of constituents, and the
shifting of policy realizations over time.
Because the narrow band that we call the gridlock
region is defined by the preferences of legislators in the House and Senate, a
change in these members or in their preferences could alter the size and
placement of the region. If such a change leads to a state in which some current
policies are no longer within the region, then those policy areas are released
for legislative action. The most straightforward way to change the placement
of the gridlock region is to change the members who define its position. For
example, if the Republicans gain a number of seats in a given election, the
region is likely to shift to the right. This may result in no policy change, if
there were no fairly liberal status quo policies just inside the gridlock
region. Or it could result in across‑the‑board changes, if a large
number of status quo policies are released from the gridlock region.
Thus policy gridlock depends on both the size and
the shifting of the gridlock region.
The size of the region is determined by the difference in preferences between
the pivotal members on both edges of the region. If the preferences of the
forty‑first (filibuster pivot) and sixty‑seventh (veto pivot)
members are quite similar (as with a large number of centrists), little
gridlock will occur. However, if the preferences of these members are quite
different, policy changes over a vast range of policies will be unachievable.
This is perhaps why commentators worry about the "lack of a political
center" in today's Congress. In the Appendix, we show the distribution of
preferences in Congress since 1980. Note
that, given these preferences, the gridlock region has been sizable in recent
years. However, not only the size of the gridlock region but also its movement matters. Even if the gridlock
region had about the same size after the 1980
elections as before, the dramatic shift to the right released a number of
policies that were formerly in the gridlock region and that could now move to
better reflect the preferences of Congress and President Reagan.21
However, most elections do not bring about sweeping
changes. The vast majority of incumbents are reelected.29 Additionally,
changes at the margins often do riot affect the position of the gridlock region
to any great extent. If ten liberal members and ten conservative members all
lose their seats and are replaced by new members on the opposite sides, the
region may not be changed at all. The moderate legislators at the endpoints of
the gridlock region may remain the same, whereas the legislators on the wings
change dramatically. Furthermore, voters may take into account the preferences
of the other members of Congress and of the President in order to strike some
sort of balance or include checks on other politicians. Although we are indeed
interested in the link between policies and elections, our main focus is on
what happens when politicians are already in
the government, emphasizing that it takes major electoral shifts to move
policy left or right.
If the gridlock region does move noticeably in one direction, this is often the result of
the "coattails" effect frequently found in presidential elections. If
the party of the President changes from Democrat to Republican and a number of
conservative Senators and Representatives are brought in with the new President,
liberal status quo policies become vulnerable to change. The President win certainly
wish to enact change in all of those policy areas before the typical loss of
seats during the midterm elections.32 This explains the phenomenon known as the
"honeymoon" in which a new President is able to quickly bring about
policy change on a number of issues.13 (Often within the first few months of a
presidency, most of the policies with low uncertainty are brought back into
the new gridlock region.) Because policy movement is still restricted by the
possibility of a filibuster in the Senate, the President often will not get all
that he wants during his honeymoon. The more extreme a President's position,
the more he will appear to be losing in the compromises he is forced to make.
Because the policy outcomes illustrated by the above figures were not
dependent on how extreme the president's position was, a President often
appears more powerful by asking for what he knows can be passed rather than by
asking for what he wants and then having to abandon the policy or cave in to
the opposition.34
This is an important point in our understanding of
presidential requests. It is possible that President Bush wanted the minimum
wage to stay where it was. But this was an unpopular position in Congress,
where a raise to at least $4.00 was
inevitable. By taking a position supporting a raise to $4.25, Bush appeared to be moderate while also challenging those
who wanted an increase beyond $4.25. Had
he positioned his proposal any lower, he may have appeared too conservative,
risking the breakdown of his coalition. Had he requested a higher wage, Bush
would have been giving away more than he had to, perhaps hurting the economy as
an outcome. Had he ignored the issue entirely and left Congress to pass
increases that he would veto, Bush would eventually have had to give in to a
small increase or risk having his veto overridden and the steam taken out of
his presidency early in his first term. Bush proposal turned a losing issue
into an early victory.
After the honeymoon, the President is left to deal
with those policy areas containing the greatest uncertainty, those policies
that cannot easily be adjusted back into the gridlock region. This is when the
legislative challenge really begins. President Reagan was able to use the
uncertainty surrounding supply‑side economics to his advantage.
President Clinton, on the other hand, lost popularity in his first year by
trying to enact his own ideal policies only to end up giving concessions to
conservative Senators. In 1994, when
facing the uncertainties of health care reform, members of Congress tried to
distance themselves from Clinton's unpopularity.
The gridlock region can be changed not only through
legislator turnover but also through a shift in the preferences of legislators.
As described above, legislators' preferences are complex; they depend on party
strength, on public opinion of their constituencies, on the influence of
interest groups, on the amount of available information, and on the legislators'
own personal preferences independent of outside forces. When any of these
factors shifts dramatically, a legislator's preferences will follow.
If the President is enormously popular and has
agreed to campaign for members of his party who support him, those legislators
are able to vote with the President even if they lose some support from
interest groups or constituents. Any such loss of support can be won back in a
grand fashion if the President campaigns on behalf of the legislator. But a
President without such popularity will see members of his own party distancing
themselves from him. Likewise, if public opinion is shifted through advertising
campaigns, such as the "Harry and Louise" ads against the Clinton
health care plan, legislators may alter their voting preferences in order to
please their constituents. And if interest groups join in on an issue at the
last minute, or provide new information to Congress, a shift in legislator
preferences is again likely.
When these shifts are dramatic, members of Congress
may change their preferences to the extent that policies previously in the
gridlock region are now to the left or right of it. In such cases, Congress
will pass bills to bring policies back in line with the preferences of its
members. Of note here is a beneficial side effect of gridlock. Because of the
lack of policy movement in the gridlock region, members of Congress do not
spend all of their time chasing small shifts in public opinion. If it weren't
for the threat of filibusters and vetoes, legislation could be raised and
passed with the slightest change in legislator preferences. These institutional
constraints sometimes mean that the majority's proposals can be stopped by a
minority, but they also encourage Congress to act only when significant action
is needed.
The first two exogenous shocks to the revolving
gridlock model‑a change of legislators and a change of legislators'
preferences‑affected the positioning of members of Congress, and thus of
the gridlock region. A third exogenous factor involves the position of the
status quo policy relative to the gridlock region. As was discussed above,
there is often uncertainty with regard to the actual outcome of legislation
adopted by Congress. Although some laws have been unchanged on the books for
decades, others are changed all the time. Congress is unable to specify a
budget for more than a year or two into the future. Minimum wage, Medicare, and
Social Security benefits are constantly being adjusted. With an increase in
crime, a crisis overseas, a natural disaster, a dramatic increase in the cost
of health care, a newly discovered disease, an economic recession or
depression, or any of a number of other unforeseen events, new issues
constantly arise for Congress to deal with.
When new issues arise, or old issues take on a new
significance, members of Congress face a high level of uncertainty as to what
should be done. Congress devotes most of its attention to dealing with these
unpredictable issues when they arise, then returning to the normal business of
adjusting policies that have drifted outside of the gridlock region. With the
economic difficulties of the late 1970s and
early 1980s, Congress dealt with the
problem through an attempt at supply side economics. When this reaction led to
growing budget deficits, Congress became seriously restricted in its ability
to initiate new programs and was forced to raise taxes and limit spending just
to avoid a crisis.
When President Bush reacted to lr4s invasion of
Kuwait, Congress had to address the possible use of military force if the
legislative branch wished to maintain a reasonable level of influence in the
foreign policy arena. When hurricanes hit Florida and Hawaii and floodwaters
covered the Midwest, again Congress had to act. Shocks to minimum wage policy
were slower in coming. Inflation during the 1980s
caused wages to lose about one quarter of their purchasing power. When the
minimum wage had thus dropped to levels unacceptable to legislators, they
called for a wage hike. This was not the result of a liberal shift in the
preferences of members of Congress, nor in divided or unified government.
Outside factors had caused the minimum wage to become skewed away from the
preferences of lawmakers, who therefore changed the policy
Most of the significant action taken by Congress has
occurred as a reaction to exogenous shocks to the legislative system. When new
legislators are elected and there is a major shift to the left or right, new
legislative action is likely. When public opinion solidifies behind an issue,
such as during the Great Depression, the world wars, or the space race, the
preferences of legislators are altered enough to bring about significant
change. And when unforeseen policy shocks arise, legislative action is again possible.
Often these shocks occur under extraordinary circumstances. The revolving
gridlock theory is significant in its ability to explain the results of these
occurrences as well as to address the day‑to‑day legislation
passing through Congress. When lawmakers fail to respond to exogenous shocks,
they put their seats at risk. The inability of Republicans to react to the
events of the Great Depression led to enormous Democratic victories. When the
Democrats failed to respond to cries for tax relief throughout the 1970s, Republicans gained control of the Senate and presidency and found
enough support to enact huge tax cuts in 1981.
In the absence of major electoral and policy shocks,
the government falls into periods of legislative gridlock during which either
no policy is passed or only incremental changes around the edges of the
gridlock region are made. It is our contention that the election of Bill
Clinton with only 42 percent of the vote and few coattail victories did not
represent a major shock to the American political system. As such, although the
103rd Congress and the presidency were controlled by the same political party,
the government was in a period of continuous policy gridlock, with abandoned
policy proposals and incremental changes. It was a unified government with
unified gridlock. just as continuous policy inaction during a public outcry for
change can lead to electoral turnover, so too can there be electoral
repercussions from forcing policy action. As will be shown in later chapters, the
party‑based pressure on some conservative Democrats to support Clinton
proposals (including the 1993 budget act) led many members to vote against
their constituents' preferences; this, in turn, led their constituents to vote against them in 1994, bringing about
significant Republican gains.
These few examples of electoral reactions to policy
change (or lack of change) show the dynamic nature of elections and
policymaking. Exogenous shocks to policies or preferences may lead to inaction
or to new policy outcomes. Such legislative action (or inaction) has electoral
implications. And these elections in turn act as even further shocks to the
system. It is a constant struggle for politicians to please the electorate
while attempting to make compromises to break gridlock. We are describing revolving gridlock. Although
legislators' preferences and institutional constraints always lead to a
certain amount of gridlock, politicians and the electorate are always
attempting new and different tactics to bring about what they perceive as good
policy. Politicians are either caught in gridlock or making dramatic
compromises in the attempt to overcome it. The public, when dissatisfied with
congressional and presidential activities, can do little but vote them out of
office.36 Unified government was thus attempted in 1992, and Republican control
of Congress in 1994. And yet, due to the reasons discussed here, this revolving
of politicians did not bring an end to policy gridlock.
The Role of the President
Members of the
Bush White House were pleased with their cleverness. Democratic leaders had
held off sending the minimum wage bill to the White
House. Congress cleared HR2 on May 17, 1989, but the Democrats wanted their new
House leadership in place before engaging in a confrontation with the
President. On June 13, that leadership was in place, George Bush was out west
on a two‑day trip, and the Democrats felt that it was time. They sent the
bill to the White House, and scheduled a press conference for 3 P.m. There, they would make arguments intended to
give the President great discomfort if he actually vetoed the bill, which
raised the minimum wage above his $4.25 target.
But Bush was
ready for them. His staff had made certain that he carried his veto message
with him to Wyoming. At 1:39 P.m. the
President was informed aboard Air Force One that the bill had reached the White
House. He immediately vetoed it, having members of his team in Washington
finish the paperwork to send the bill back to Capitol Hill half an hour before
the Democrats' press conference. "This may be the first faxed veto in
history," White House chief of staff John Sununu joked.
The President
was confident about his veto, knowing that neither the House nor the Senate had
passed the bill by the two‑thirds needed to override it. Additionally, he
had a promise from more than thirty‑four Senators that they would sustain
his veto. Now if only the American people would realize that he was committed
to a wage increase, but not the bloated one that had passed through the
Congress ... By undermining the efforts of the Democratic leadership to get
the first punch in, Bush had taken a large step toward his objectives.
In previous sections we explain how the theory of
revolving gridlock is based on the preferences of members of Congress and on
congressional institutions, without much mention of the role of the President.
Indeed, we feel that the President's role in policy making is less significant
than he is often given credit (or blame) for in the press and in the minds of
the voters. Nevertheless, the President does play an important role in the
legislative process, a role that can be brought to light through the revolving
gridlock theory. He affects lawmaking in at least four areas: influencing the
preferences of legislators, vetoing legislation, compromising with pivotal
legislators, and raising the importance of issues he would like Congress to act
upon.
The President and his party can influence the
preferences of members of Congress. A popular President can help members of his
party through fund‑raisers, media publicity, and campaign activism. In
close votes, the President and party leadership can offer side benefits to
legislators in exchange for their votes, when they are indifferent to the issue
at hand.37 These benefits could come in the form of pork or of campaign
financing and publicity. Additionally, a popular President can provide cover
for members of Congress who are nervous about policy votes. By taking a public
stand, the President provides the opportunity for legislators to say that they
are voting with the President on the issue at hand rather than having to
explain their position in greater detail and thus upsetting a segment of their
constituency.
The most formal involvement of the President in the
legislative process comes through the use of the presidential veto. As
described and illustrated above, the possibility of a veto stretches the
gridlock region in the direction of the President's position. This means that
policies dose to the President's position often cannot be made more moderate
even if a majority in Congress would prefer such a change. Furthermore, with a
change in the party of the President, the direction of the gridlock region's
expansion changes, often releasing policy areas that had been left alone
because of veto threats by a President of the other party. in addressing these
newly released policy areas, the President has a chance to gain popularity and
appear active. When a newly elected President replaces a President of his own
party, the gridlock region does not change (the veto pivot is still on the same
side of the median). As such, not as many policies are found outside the
gridlock region for the new President to act upon. This situation undoubtedly
added to the impression that Bush, who replaced a President of his own party,
was ineffective in the legislative arena.
When the minimum wage was raised in 1977, the constraint on this increase
was the possibility of a filibuster in the Senate. Had a conservative President
been in office, the constraint on policy change would have been the more‑restrictive
veto threat. Had Gerald Ford been reelected in 1976, the minimum wage hike would have been smaller than the $1.05
increase that President Carter secured. Likewise, had Michael Dukakis been
elected in 1988, the ninety‑cent
increase allowed by President Bush would have been surpassed. As the theory
suggests, institutional conditions and the preferences of members of Congress
always constrain the size and substance of a policy change. The greater these
constraints (veto threats rather than filibuster threats), the greater the
cries of gridlock. In minimum wage policy, we may see a difference of a few
dimes in wage increases because of the position of the President. In dealing with
the defense budget and entitlements, the difference may be billions of dollars.
The third role of the President in the revolving
gridlock theory relates to policy compromises made with the pivotal
legislators in the model. Recall from Figure 2.4 that the policy shift from the status quo to a point inside the
gridlock region could result in raising the minimum wage to any amount between $4.00 and $4.65 an hour. In this case, $4.00
was the ideal policy point for the veto pivot and $4.65 was the position that made the veto pivot indifferent to
selecting between the old policy and the new. Depending on the compromise made
with the veto‑sustaining minority, any new minimum wage between $4.00 and $4.65 could be passed. By appearing ready to veto wage increases
beyond his request of $4.25 an hour,
President Bush could pull the outcome closer to $4.00, making a better deal for hiMSelf.38 But if the President had
taken the unpopular position of opposing any increase, he may not have been
able to gain the votes necessary to sustain a veto. Indeed, he may have been
forced to give in to a policy outcome nearer the opposing legislators' position
than his own. This would have led to the appearance of caving in and thus to a
drop in his popularity. Even when a President is able to influence the policy
outcome, however, he seldom gains as extreme an outcome as he might want. Based
on the model, Bush was faced with a policy outcome of between $4.65 and $4.00, whereas his ideal minimum wage was probably less than $4.00 an hour. A President is always
forced to accept policy results within the narrow band of the gridlock region.
By taking a position of $4.25 and
vetoing any increase beyond that point, President Bush won the bargaining game
with the congressional leadership. In the end, the Democratic leadership was
more interested in passing the increase that Bush proposed than in risking a
second loss to the President on another sustained veto.
The final significant role of the President in the
theory of legislative policymaking is in bringing the public's attention to an
issue. Congress often has a number of issues on its plate at the same time.
When a President emphasizes an issue during a campaign, a press conference, or
the State of the Union Address, he is looking to bolster public awareness and
encourage legislative action. Where there is a large degree of uncertainty
surrounding a policy area, Congress may be hesitant to act without a push from
the President. It is possible that the health care debate raised in 1994 would not have occurred without all
of the publicity generated by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Whereas the revolving
gridlock theory argues that legislator preferences and institutions will
affect where policy will end up, the President can help decide which issues
will be addressed. Thus when claims were made that the Whitewater accusations
would affect health care policy, the reality is that, if Whitewater had any
impact, the impact was on whether health care was addressed at all rather than
how liberal or conservative the health care bill was in the end. From this
view, the President becomes more an agenda setter than a force influencing
policy outcomes. This is not to say that once Congress starts dealing with an
issue the President can back off. If he does, the bill could easily die before
it ever reaches the floor. Rather, the President must keep the issue in the
public eye and help to resolve uncertainty about the issue through task forces
and the advice of experts and executive agencies.
Opposing Theories
To further clarify the
theory we are setting forth, we have found it useful to contrast the revolving
gridlock theory with two others that have been circulating in media and
academia in the 1990s. These theories have been used as
assumptions in many works, but have not been fully addressed in any one work.
The first is the "strong party theory," in which the control of
Congress and the presidency by one party is expected to result in policy
outcomes reflecting that party's ideal platform, whereas control of these two
branches of government by opposing parties leads to gridlock. The second is
the "compromise between branches theory," in which the Congress and
the President strike a compromise between their ideal policy outcomes.
According to this theory, a liberal Congress and a conservative President might
agree on moderate policies, whereas a liberal President and a liberal Congress
will certainly come to a (liberal) political compromise.
The assumptions of the
strong party theory underlie many arguments about divided and unified
government. Either explicitly or implicitly, those who write about divided
government believe that control of the executive and legislative branches by
different parties has policy consequenceS.40 Political scientists (Fiorina 1996; Jacobson 1990; Cox and Kernell 1991) have
tended to be explicit on the causes of divided government and to be less
explicit about the consequences. Broadly speaking, however, the consequences
can be sorted into two kinds of claims: (1)
divided government makes an already unwieldy constitutional system of
government unworkable; and (2) divided
government obscures responsibility.
Those who focus on the claim that divided government
makes the system of governance unworkable are essentially arguing that divided
government yields policy gridlock. Sundquist compares divided government
unfavorably with a unified model of government that assumes an active
President supported by cohesive legislative majorities. Essentially, divided
government gives each branch of government incentives to undermine the actions
of the other branch (Sundquist 1988, 629‑630).
Ginsburg and Shefter (1990) make
a similar argument, claiming that in divided government, governing becomes
posturing and decisions satisfy no one. Although scholars who fit into the
gridlock mold tend to be general rather than specific about policy
consequences, some have claimed specific effects. Lloyd Cutler, for example,
claims: "In modern times high deficits have occurred only with divided
government.... The correlation between unacceptably high deficits and divided
government is much too exact to be a coincidence" (Cutler 1989, 391). McCubbins (1991, 83‑111) corroborates this
analysis, arguing that the high deficits between 1981 and 1987 were the result
of party preferences and divided control of government. Alt and Lowrey (1994) look for a connection between
divided government and budget deficits in the states. McKenzie and Thornton (1996, 157) agree with the general
thrust of these arguments, claiming that divided government exacerbates the
problems of dealing with deficits.
Those who claim that divided government diminishes
electoral accountability argue that under divided control citizens cannot tell
who is to blame; thus the meaning of electoral outcomes is rendered confusing
(Fiorina 1996). This line of
reasoning is so enmeshed in the normative argument about responsiveness and
responsibility that sorting it out depends upon one's values. Thus we deal here
only with the gridlock argument.
The major case against those who believe that
divided government has policy consequences is made by David Mayhew in Divided We Govern (1991). In this work
Mayhew argues that there is no relation between divided government and
significant policy results; he further argues that there is no relation between
divided government and congressional investigations of the executive branch.
Mayhew concludes by arguing among other things that divided government does not
mean less coherence in individual laws, and that there is no evidence that
those initially less well off are made worse off by divided government (Mayhew 1991, chap. 7). Mayhew's findings contradict those scholars who assume that,
without a strong President and cohesive congressional majorities, policy gridlock
ensues. Mayhew, however, never describes the underlying model of government
that would allow the passage of significant legislation even under Republican
Presidents and Democratic legislatures.
Looking at the strong party theory in conjunction
with the institutional constraints of the filibuster and veto in the revolving
gridlock model yields a surprising result. Instead of bringing about an end to
gridlock, strong parties actually expand
the region in which gridlock occurs.42 Imagine the Democratic and
Republican Parties deciding what policy outcomes they would like. One would be
rather liberal, the other rather conservative. If the status quo policy falls
somewhere in between, a movement to the right would be halted by a Democratic
filibuster (or a sustained veto from a Democratic President). A movement to
the left would likewise be successfully filibustered by the Republicans. With
each party having more than forty seats in the Senate, the strong party
assumption not only expands the gridlock region, but it also predicts the same region regardless of the party of
the President. The gridlock region for strong parties stretches from one
party's ideal policy point to the other's. Thus if we observe gridlock under
Bush, we should expect the same gridlock under Clinton.
In 1992, the media and the Clinton campaign's
rhetoric led the public to believe that Democratic control of the Congress and
the presidency would end the policy gridlock of twelve years of Republican
rule. There are two main problems with such an argument. The first is that this
strong party model ignores the institutional constraints of the filibuster and
the veto. When these constraints are included, the gridlock region actually
expands out to the party ideal policies (and not just to the ideal policies of
party moderates), leading to the likelihood of even more gridlock than under
the weak party assumption that we have used. (Such an argument led many
Democrats to the further belief that they needed sixty Democrats in the Senate
to overcome Republican filibusters.) But the second problem with this theory is
more dramatic: political parties in the United States are not necessarily
strong. Members often defect from their parties when it is in their interest to
do so. Republican filibusters are broken when the policy under debate is made
conservative enough to make vote switching favorable for the most liberal
Republicans. Indeed, in the minimum wage example, Senator Chafee abandoned the
Republican filibuster attempt in 1988. Presidents are often forced to look for
votes from the other party, as Reagan did with southern, Democrats, as Bush did
with the 1990 budget deal, and as Clinton did with the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA). When the House sustained President Bush’s veto of the
minimum wage increase, the President lost twenty of the most liberal
Republicans, but gained twenty‑eight Democrats, twenty‑five of them
southerners. It is our contention that the appearance of party strength comes
in the alignment of preferences: conservatives are typically Republicans and
liberals are typically Democrats. Only where party interests are in conflict
with personal preferences would we expect to see a break with the party; such
breaks, however, are commonplace. The revolving gridlock theory relies on
personal preferences and constraining institutions to explain policy gridlock
and the positioning of bills that do pass. The strong party theory is much less
explicit about the role of institutions, and has been brought into question by
Mayhew and others.
Having discussed the strong party theory, we turn to
a comparison of the revolving gridlock theory with the compromise between
branches theory. This theory is also implicit in many works, but explicit in
few; it supposes that policymaking power rests with both the President and
Congress. The policy outcome will therefore be somewhere between the ideal
policy of the President and the ideal policy of Congress; where in this region
it will fall depends on the relative strengths of Congress and the President
during the period in which policy is being formulated. If a President is strong
and popular, the theory argues, he can publicize his ideal policy and gain
concessions from Congress. If weak, he will be forced to the sidelines, as
Congress works through the details. This theory of compromise between the
branches of government is applied regardless of the party affiliations of the
President and the majority in Congress, thus differentiating it from the strong
party theory.
The theory's limitations are to be found in the
question of where this presidential power arises in the legislative arena. A
number of claims have been put forth in the literature. Some scholars claim
that presidential power is the power to persuade (Neustadt 1960). According to
this argument, the President can try to lead members of Congress to his point
of view. When legislators are reluctant to come around to his line of thinking,
the President can "go public" on the issue, hoping that constituents
will persuade legislators that it is in their best interest to go along with
the President (Kernell 1993). Other authors argue that presidential power
originates in veto power (Rohde 199 1). In essence, a President can claim that
he will veto any bill that does not meet his requirements, as Clinton did with
universal coverage for health care. But this argument ignores credibility
concerns; if Clinton had received a health care bill covering most Americans,
would he have vetoed it, settling for no bill over a bill that came dose to
what he wanted? Still others synthesize these presidential powers. Jones
(1994) emphasizes a President's strategic position as it relates to public
popularity, electoral mandates, and the lawmaking sequence.
The revolving gridlock theory gives the President
the power to influence legislators' preferences by persuasion or by going
public. It also gives the President the crucial veto power. But it does not
assume that he will act in any way other than in his own interest. When a bill
that has passed through Congress is closer to the President's preference than
the status quo policy, he will generally sign it; when it is further, he will
veto it. The result of the revolving gridlock theory presented in this chapter
is not simply a compromise between Congress and the President, but a
constrained policy within the Congress, with the President doing what he can to
influence policy around the edges. Often, due to institutional constraints, a
policy outcome is more conservative (or more liberal) than both the median
member of Congress and the President would prefer; but it is the best outcome
they can get, so they agree to it.
The revolving gridlock theory is a significant
advancement over these prior theories, explaining executive‑legislative
relations in a system of relatively weak parties in a way that is unique and
compelling. The theory assumes that legislators in the House and Senate will
attempt to move policy toward their preferred outcomes. They are constrained in
doing so by supermajority institutions. Particular members of Congress in key
positions at the edges of the gridlock region enforce these constraints
through support of filibusters and vetoes. Status quo policies in this region
cannot be changed. Actions taken under uncertain conditions as well as
exogenous; shocks to the legislative system can knock policies out of the
gridlock region. Congress will be able to bring these policies back inside the
region only so far as is possible to keep the pivotal members from voting down
cloture or sustaining a veto. Attempts to make more extreme policy shifts will
be killed by filibusters and vetoes. This theory is an improvement on previous
work in the field. It looks at legislators' preferences rather than simply at
their partisan affiliations. It takes into account the constraining
institutions ignored by the strong party theory. And it more clearly defines
the nature of the compromise between members of Congress and the President.
The theory explains minimum wage policy formation
quite capably. Throughout the 1980s, the
minimum wage was losing purchasing power, causing the $3.35 level to fall out of line with the preferences of most
members of Congress. This is an example of an exogenous shock (here, inflation) pushing a status quo policy
outside the gridlock region. When the issue was raised in 1988, it was first used more as a political tool than as a target
for policy change. The Democrats used policy proposals to call Bush's
"bluff " on minimum wage policy, whereas the Republicans used the
issue as an attempt to secure federal judicial positions. No bill was passed
in 1988 because the situation was uncertain so close to the election. When
would the economic downside to a wage hike come into effect? Would interest
groups play a large role in the elections as a result of this issue? Would one
side or the other be in a better position in the next session due to the
election results? Congress abandoned the issue. In 1989 the federal government addressed the minimum wage once again,
this time with less uncertainty. Bush proposed a wage of $4.25 an hour, and the Democratic leadership countered with $4.55. Either wage level was preferred
by the vast majority to the current $3.35
wage. But the President was able to use the veto and his influence to win a
victory for his minimum wage plan. As such, he appeared strong in his veto
power and secured nearly the lowest wage politically possible. The revolving
gridlock theory is clear as to why this policy outcome occurred. The constraint
was the veto pivot to which Bush appealed with his veto of the higher wage. By
issuing an alternative policy favorable to the veto‑sustaining minority,
the President was able to win his showdown with the Congress, securing the $4.25 wage in late 1989. In 1996, President
Clinton took his opportunity to raise the minimum wage further. The constraint
on his wage hike was the filibuster in the Senate instead of the more
constraining veto pivot of conservative Presidents.
Journalists and academics have recently taken
greater notice of the policy implications of the supermajority institutions of
the filibuster and the veto. For example, in the conclusion of a recent
article about partisanship in Congress, Cooper and Young (1997, 269) note:
In the House a veto requires not merely 218 votes to
overcome (if all members vote) but 29 1, and in the Senate 67 votes are
required (if all members vote) not merely 5 1. These are very difficult levels
to obtain in partisan Congresses unless majority margins are extremely high.
Moreover, in the Senate, practice with respect to the filibuster has changed
so that the 60 votes required in impose cloture are also required to win any
major policy battle. As a result, the passage of major legislation still requires
forms of behavior and negotiation that are coalitional, but in a context in
which the character of party divisions provides poor incentives for such
behavior. The public's disgust with paralysis may spur action when elections
approach, but such a response is only the flip side of the political maneuvering
to gain electoral advantage that dominates policymaking and usually stymies
action.
The revolving gridlock
theory expands upon and clarifies this argument, noting specifics of how these
supermajority institutions, along with elections, budget constraints, and
members' policy preferences, lead to specific policy outcomes or gridlock in
the last two decades.
In the next chapters we will take a broader policy
view, attempting to explain many of the
legislative outcomes of the periods of divided and unified government from
Reagan's first term through the 1994 capture of Congress by the Republicans, using the
revolving gridlock theory. In Chapter 3, we will take an extensive look at the budget process and how budget
policies have changed since
1980. The conservative members of Congress who came in with Reagan in 1981
acted as an exogenous shock, allowing previously entrenched policies to be
changed. Even still, the policies enacted were determined by those near the middle of the political spectrum. As such, Reagan needed to gain the
support of conservative Democrats. He used this support to enact a huge tax
break and to peg tax rates to inflation. Budgetary policy since 1981 has been
limited to small changes, as no new coalitions had been formed by electoral
shifts until the 1994 election. The specter of deficits as far as the eye could
see left politicians no room to maneuver to break the gridlock that ensued.
As we will highlight
in the next chapter, the dramatic budget deficits of the 1980s have combined
with supermajoritarian institutions to further policy gridlock in four ways.
First, as mentioned above, pivotal members of Congress must vote with the
majority to secure policy change. These votes are typically gained, either
through adjusting the policy at hand toward these legislators' preferred
outcomes or by guaranteeing support for these members on other bills, typically
by providing them with pork in budget bills. With the budget wells running dry
with the significant deficits of recent years, however, those seeking policy
change found the latter option for
gaining the pivotal members' support to be no longer available. As such,
compromises that could be forged only through budgetary concessions now fell
apart. Second, deficits led Congress to link together most budgetary decisions.
Increases in one program area would need to be offset by decreases elsewhere
or by increases in taxes. As can be imagined, this had a further impact in
terms of policy gridlock. Once a supermajority coalition was established in
support of a legislative proposal with budgetary implications, bill proponents
had to convince coalition members to support tax increases or program cuts
elsewhere. This was a significant enough constraint to lead to inaction on issues
in which a majority or supermajority agreed that change was necessary. Third,
the increasing difficulty and importance of budgetary decisions gave members
of Congress even less time to deal with non-budgetary issues. Without the
necessary time to secure supermajorities or to resolve uncertainties, other
issues fell into gridlock as well. Finally, the complexity of budget
legislation in an era of omnibus budget bills and huge reconciliation packages
led to further confusion, frustration, and gridlock.
Clearly the budget constraints on Congress combined
with electoral and institutional constraints to bring about further policy
gridlock. It is to these budgetary issues that we turn next.
NOTES
1. The comments, quotations,
and details presented in the italicized sections throughout this chapter are
drawn from various public sources.
2. While our work emphasizes
the preferences of members of Congress and the President, it does not emphasize
the intensity of these preferences. This is largely due to our
focus on voting institutions within Congress that give everyone equal say.
However, as Hall (1996) points out, members of Congress feel more strongly
about some issues than others, leading them to different degrees of
participation in committees, subcommittees, and in the brokering of deals over
final legislative decisions. As we note below, the intensity of a legislator's
preferences may play a role in whether others may try to influence that
legislator's vote, as well as in what final bargain may be reached among the
House, Senate, and the President within the limited range of possible outcomes.
3. In this work we use the
term "revolving gridlock theory," but we also find Krehbiel's tag,
"pivotal politics theory," accurate and appropriate.
4. Political scientists have
used spatial models widely since Anthony Downs's An Economic
Theory of Democracy (1957) and Duncan Black's The Theory of Committees and
Elections (1958).
Single‑dimensional voting with a majority rule was found to lead to
median voter outcomes. However, without such a limitation to a single
dimension, even imposing a particular voting rule often led to indeterminate
outcomes (see Arrow 195 1; Black and Newing 195 1; Plott 1967). The chaos
result formalized by McKelvey (1976) indicated that in all but a few special
cases a series of proposals could be developed to lead from any given policy
status quo to any other policy in the choice space. This result troubled
formal theorists more than it troubled most political scientists who, without
empirical support for this "policy cycling" result, discounted the
value of such spatial models. The response to this "anything can
happen" view was the reassurance that there are political structures in
place that keep such ludicrous results from happening. Kenneth Shepsle's
"Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting
Models" (1979) led to an argument about which structures or institutions
are relevant in leading to various outcomes. In particular, do legislative
committees with their proposal powers lead to agendas that provide them with
beneficial outcomes? This article set off a debate on the power of committees,
as well as on which institutions lead to the so‑called "structure‑induced
equilibria." Major groundwork for further study of politics through
spatial models was made by Romer and Rosenthal (1978) with regard to the
control of legislative agendas, by Baron and Ferejohn (1989) with regard to the
sequencing of proposals leading to political bargains, and by Gilligan and
Krehbiel (1987, 199o) with regard to the role of information in legislative
decisions. For an excellent review of these advancements through the 1980s, see
Krehbiel (1988). Our view is that in the modification of spatial models in
political science over the past few decades, some simple advancements and
applications have been overlooked. In particular, even restricting the model to
a single dimension, much can be gained by looking at the institutional
structures that require supermajorities to pass legislation. See Krehbiel
(1997, chaps. 7, 8) for an excellent analysis of how the single‑dimensional
pivotal politics theory works in the face of empirical findings regarding
agenda setting, partisanship, uncertainty, and presidential influence.
5. Poole and Rosenthal (1991a,
1997) provide an excellent compilation of voting in Congress and thus
legislator preferences.
6. Binder and Smith (1996)
provide the most comprehensive analysis of filibusters to date. For a further
summary of the use of filibusters throughout the history of the Senate, see the
1987 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 2115‑2120. For more
information on the rise of the filibuster and other changes leading to a more
individualistic and competitive Senate, see Davidson 1985 and Sinclair 1989.
7. Krehbiel and Rivers (1988)
use such an alignment in their analysis of committee positions and proposals
with regard to minimum wage.
8. For a similar argument of
how the press portrayed the economy in 1992 and how it led to BusEs defeat, see
Hetherington 1996.
9. Some theories would
suggest that members of both houses err on the side of willingness to use
blocking tactics in order to avoid blame, on the assumption that avoiding blame
is more important than taking credit. See, for example, Weaver 1986 and Arnold
1990. We raise some of these concerns below in our discussion of uncertainty.
10. What is important to us
here is the near indifference of this pivotal legislator to the proposed policy
change. This indifference may make this pivotal individual the target of
persuasion to either cement the deal or sabotage it. Although we do not explore
the matter of legislator preference intensity here, in a similar fashion,
legislators who have a low intensity of preferences (for whom the issue at hand
is not very salient) might also be easilY Persuaded to vote for or against the
legislation. For more on legislator preference intensity and the resultant
participation decisions, see Hall (1996).
11. Note that policies in the
region between Q and F are outside the gridlock region, and thus will not be
adopted by the Senate.
12. This result is different
from that derived by Krehbiel (1996). Krehbiel limits the interaction to a
single veto and override attempt. In actuality, legislation that is vetoed may
be attempted again in a revised form. We do not derive results from a formal
game of this riature here, but simply note that the ensuing action is a form of
bargaining in which the resultant outcome is in the range between the main
actors' ideal points and is dependent on their bargaining strengths.
Additionally, if the President or congressional committee makes a proposal in
this range under a closed rule, it will be accepted by the pivotal members who
prefer the proposal to the status quo; while under an open rule, the median
member and concurring majority will push policy toward the median (although the
policy is still constrained by Q'). As such, our finding is not inconsistent
with the seminal agenda‑setting work of Romer and Rosenthal (1978).
13. The intensity of preferences may play a role in influencing the patience of the
actors who participate in the bargaining (Hall 1996) and what final outcome is
reached.
14. The minimum wage
increases ftorn left to right on the diagram. Therefore the figure does not
fit the traditional left‑to‑right spectrum, in which conservatives
are positioned on the right and liberals on the left. Here, the position of
Bush and the conservatives is on the left, favoring a lower minimum wage. We
hope that this arrangement is less confusing than the inverse, with dollar
amounts decreasing from left to right.
15. This assumption is
justifiable in hindsight, based on voting behavior, but may have been a bit
trickier to judge at the time. Nevertheless, Democratic leaders had proposed a
$4.65 minimum wage, claiming that they could collect enough votes to override a
veto. This would be the case with a veto pivot at $4.00, where that legislator
would be indifferent to whether the minimum wage were 65 cents higher or 65
cents lower. Volden (1997) explores the positions of legislators (and the
possibility of their voting strategically) with regard to the 1989 minimum wage
vote, corroborating the values set forth in this chapter as quite accurate in
representing legislator preferences.
16. Gilmour (1995) notes
conditions under which Congress might provoke vetoes or otherwise promote
stalemate through strategic actions.
17. On legislation that
cannot be filibustered in the Senate, the gridlock region in the Senate becomes
like that in the House, stretching from the median to the veto pivot. Such
legislation includes budget reconciliation as well as trade bills set on the
"fast track." This smaller gridlock region acts as less of a
constraint to policy change, thus allowing for more policy action and limiting
the power o a minority to stop egis action. While the lack of a filibuster
threat on such legislation affects the size and shape of the gridlock region,
it does not affect the overall theory with regard to this region. Status quo
policies in the gridlock, region cannot be changed. Those outside of the region
will be brought in, with limitations similar to those seen in Figure 2.3. The
theory surrounding this smaller gridlock region will be clarified further in
the next chapter, which attempts to explain the major budget' changes that have
passed Congress since 1980.
18. Note that Krehbiel's work
(1996) does not contain uncertainty. Nor do we introduce," uncertainty in
a formal modeling sense here. Our point is that uncertainty and the complexity
of forming legislation may lead to further policy gridlock under certain
conditions. This thesis is explored in greater detail in later chapters.
19. Where this uncertainty
cannot be suitably resolved, legislators might try blame_~' avoidance tactics.
See Weaver 1986 and 1988, and Arnold 1990.
20. For an analysis of the
information provided by committees and the surrounding incentives to gaining
expertise, see Krehbiel 1991.
2 1. Reported in the New York Times,
July 6,
1988.
22. For more on the pressures
surrounding this decision, see the 1988 Congressional
Quarterly Almanac, 255.
23. Reported in the New York Times,
December 8,
1978.
24. These decisions are part
of the strategic choice process followed by politicians with regard to
elections. See Jacobson and Kernell 1982; Jacobson 1983 and 1989; and,
Rosenstone and Hansen 1993.
25. As reported
in the New York Times, September 19, 1988, members
of Congress were being very careful about their positions on minimum wage.
26. Stopping
policy change does not necessarily mean that no bill will be passed. For
political reasons, legislators could pass a "hollow" bill, one that
does not change policy to any great degree.
27. Thus, in
focusing only on expansions and contractions in the gridlock region, Krehbiel
(1997) is missing part of the story, that of electoral shifts.
28. See Brady 1988.
29. See Erikson
1976; Fiorina 1991b; Jacobson 1991; Ansolabehere, Brady, and Fiorina 1992; and
Alford and Brady 1993.
30. Our view, is not
inconsistent with that held by Alesina and Rosenthal (1989, 1995) who argue
that voters at the margins will choose liberal Democrats to counter conservative
Republicans. Fiorina (1991a, 1996) presents the case that voters may want to
elect politicians who will provide a "check" on other politicians. As
a baseline against which voters might decide to temper policy outcomes, voters
often perceive particular politicians as espousing particular issues or
viewpoints. Jacobson (1990) and Petrocik (1991) present a form of "issue
ownership" argument. Jacobson argues for the public perception that
Democrats might better address local problems and Republicans national issues
(although with Clinton as President, the opposite might now hold true).
Petrocik argues that each of the parties owns a set of issues, with Republicans
seen as preserving low taxes and pursuing prosperity and Democrats seen as
espousing kindness through social spending.
31. The "coattails"
effect refers to the election of other members of the President's party to
their respective offices due to a surge of presidential supporters going to the
polls. See Ferejohn and Calvert 1984.
32. See Erikson 1988.
33. See Brody 1991 for views on the role of the
"honeymoon" in assessing a President.
34. Rivers and Rose (1985)
discuss how the size of a President's program affects its likelihood of
success.
35. Weaver (1,988) attempts
to explain conditions under which Congress indexes programs to inflation,
leading to "automatic government" without the need to continually
deal with the exogenous shocks of inflation.
36. Hibbing and Theiss‑Morse
(1995) explore this public dissatisfaction with Congress, finding that the
actions and activities of politicians disgust the public equally regardless of
the political party. Politicians of both parties are seen as being identical in
the types of actions they take, regardless of the distinctions they attempt to
make on particular policy issues. This is consistent with our belief that
politicians act on their own preferences, using the institutions of government
to their best advantage. Often this is to the best advantage of their
constituents as well, and, when this is perceived by the public, the
politicians are reelected.
37. The effectiveness of
using presidential popularity to aid members of Congress is brought into
question by Collier and Sullivan (1995).
38. Volden (1997) argues that
this bargaining process is complex, often leading to members of Congress
voting against their immediate preferences in what is referred to as a "sophisticated
vote, '
39., Important theoretical
and empirical work on this issue has been advanced by Samuel Kernell (1993).
40. See Fiorina 1996 for an
excellent summary of the literature pertaining to divided government.
4 1. James
Pfiffher (in Thurber 199 1) argues that unified governance
with strong parties is necessary for directional coherence of legislation.
42. For further details and a
formal proof of this finding, see Krehbiel 1996.
43. Some
views of the strong party assumption consider only a strong Democratic party.
This would still lead to an expansion of the gridlock region when compared to
our weak party assumption of individual preferences mattering more than the
party preferences, but the expansion would be only to the left.
44. It
is not our intention here to become enmeshed in the debate about how strong or
weak political parties are. It is clear to us that, as Cox and McCubbins (1993) suggest,
parties can use various powers, acting as "legislative cartels," to
gain mutually beneficial compromises. We also recognize, as Krehbiel (1993) does,
that parties are limited in their abilities and that a strict test of party
strength is a difficult endeavor. Our view of political parties in the United
States today is that party leaders and the President can influence the preferences
of members of Congress, but cannot dictate how they will vote. Party members
also have other interests, mainly reelection. We believe that parties are
weaker than they once were (for a view on parties at a time when they were
stronger, see Brady and Epstein 1997). We also see a strong link
between preferences and party~ with conservatives tending to be Republicans and
liberals tending to be Democrats. (In Krehbiel's view this is exactly what
parties are‑aggregated preferences.) In some ways our view is not unlike
that found in the political science literature of the 1960s and
1970s. Following E. E. Schattschneider's responsible party
thesis (1942, APSA 1950), David Truman's work (1959) reversed
the strong party notion by focusing on congressional parties as blocs of voters
with party leaders near the party's center. We speak of preferences where
Truman, as well as Burns (1963), focused on blocs or wings,
but their view of parties as aggregates of different views is not unlike our
own.
45. In this way, our work complements that of John
Gilmour (1995), who argues that the need to satisfy
constituents (preferences) often leads to pursuit and avoidance of ideas and
proposals, with politicians provoking vetoes (supermajority institutions) and
taking positions that cause greater difficulty in the negotiations necessary to
reach compromise (gridlock).