Note 1. Gridlock
Separation of Powers, Bicameralism, Partisan Polarization, Small Majorities, and Divided Party Control
If we were to write down an equation for intense partisanship and gridlock in American national government, it might look like this:
gridlock = separation of powers + bicameralism + small congressional majorities + divided party control + polarized parties
The Constitution gives us separation of powers and a bicameral Congress, but elections and other forces in American politics generate polarized parties, small majorities in the House and Senate, and divided party control of the policy-making institutions. We have had all of these with great frequency in recent decades. Here’s the evidence.
Today’s congressional parties are polarized. Members of the two parties are taking opposing positions on roll-call votes in recent Congresses more than they did a half-century ago. Most political scientists point to trends in “ideology scores,” which are based on a scaling of legislators on all roll-call votes cast in a Congress.[1] In Figure 1-1, I provide detail on the most commonly used ideological scaling measure based on roll-call voting (DW-NOMINATE). The measure arrays the medians for each congressional party from the most liberal (a negative score) to the most conservative (a positive score).
The obvious feature of Figure 1-1 is that Republicans in both houses became more conservative while Democrats became only slightly more liberal.
Partisan polarization often is treated as ideological polarization—a deepening divide in the policies advocated by the two parties. It is, but it also is important to keep in mind that the scores reported in Figure 1-1 are likely to be rooted in several electoral, policy, and legislative motivations. The political activists, organized interests, campaign donors, voters, and others who help elect legislators continue to put pressure on them once in office. The intense competition between the parties for majority control of the House and Senate creates strong incentives for fellow partisans to behave as teammates in designing legislative strategies. And congressional parties, subject to these electoral pressures, use the legislative process in a way that scores points for themselves and against the opposition with the electorate. That includes bringing bills and amendments to the floor for votes to put everyone on the record for and against proposals that are important to key constituencies. Thus, increasing partisan polarization in floor voting may reflect several processes:
· a change in the ideological composition of who gets elected to Congress under the label of the two parties,
· a change in the mix of issues that come to a vote,
· intensifying electoral pressures on the two parties, or
· increasing influence of partisan forces from outside of Congress on legislators when they cast votes.
These processes feed on each other, generate more partisan behavior in Congress, and breed resentments across the party divide. Fewer conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are now elected to Congress since 1960s, the parties have more aggressively pursued legislative agendas and sought recorded votes that would advantage themselves and hurt the opposition, and strengthening partisan forces inside and outside of Congress have objected to bipartisan compromise and demanded loyalty to the party.
The deepening partisan polarization was accompanied by small majority parties (Figure 1-2), with important effects. Between 1955 and 1980, the Democrats, always in the majority, averaged 59.4 seats in the Senate and 262.5 (60.3 percent) in the House. Since 1980, the average Senate majority has been 53.8 and the average House majority has been 242 (55.6 percent). Since 1995, the average House majority has been 233.9 members (53.8 percent). Polarized, small parties made future majority control more uncertain, increased the importance of every race, and encouraged more political maneuvering in Congress.
After a quarter century—1955-1980—of Democratic control of both houses, majority control of the House and Senate changed hands frequently in more recent decades. Since 1980, the majority control changed five times in the Senate, if we include the technical majority for the Democrats in 2021 after they gained a 50-50 tie and the vice presidency, and four times in the House. As a result, most of today’s legislators experienced both majority and minority status and are able to attest to the importance of controlling the agenda and being backed by larger staffs when in the majority.
Added to widening partisan polarization and alternating party control of Congress is divided party control of the House, Senate, and presidency (Table 1-1). Divided party control of the presidency and at least one house of Congress is far more common than unified party control of all three institutions. Divided party control is troublesome for a president whose party controls neither or only one house of Congress and then by a narrow margin.
Here is the important point, elaborated in other essays: In a system of separation of powers and bicameralism, the combination of polarized parties, small majorities, and divided party control increased the importance of partisan considerations in congressional policy making and the everyday activity of legislators. It is hard to imagine that these developments did not have profound effects on the policy-making process within Congress, as is explored in other essays.
These developments, of course, are not the whole story of the influences on congressional policy making. Polarized parties, small majorities, and divided party control are the product of a variety forces outside of Congress. Among those forces are changes in the electorate, in the nature of activists and political financiers, and information technology and the media. In Note 3, I provide a framework for thinking about how these developments relate to partisan polarization in Congress.
[1] https://voteview.com/parties/alldeology scores [accessed May 15, 2021].