Mykola Luchak

Yuriy Fed'kovych Chernivtsi National University

Theoretical and Historical Context: Possibility of Strong Party Government in the U.S.A.

American political analysts divide discussion of party into the party organization, the party in the electorate, and the party in government. The basis for that division is the classic notion that partisans, once elected to office, should be able to implement the programs on which they ran. This normative "responsible party" idea is an old and revered one in the study of the American polity. In fact, as far back as 1885, Woodrow Wilson lamented what he viewed as "committee government" − strong committees, weak parties, and no effective party leaders in Congress. Impressed by the strength of parties in the electorate at the time, Wilson wished for the same in Congress. He admitted that the great need was, not to get rid of parties, but to find and use some expedient by which they could be managed and made amenable from day to day to public opinion. In his view, strong parties were the best mechanism through which a democracy could convert public opinion into policy alternatives. Congressional parties must be strong to govern.

Sixty-five years after Wilson's Congressional Government, the Committee on Political Parties of the American Political Science Association prescribed stronger parties in its influential report "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System" (1950), a report frequently referred to as the "Schattschneider report" (after the committee's chair). American parties were too weak to form a link between the electorate and the elected. Parties did not stand firmly on issues; candidates did not feel bound to implement party programs once in office. Essentially the norm espoused in the report was a parliamentary system, that is, a government specifically structured to enact the majority party's agenda. In the parliamentary model, implicit in responsible party arguments, the individual who leads a party in the election (e.g., the British prime minister) is the same person who leads that party in government. Programmatic parties stand for opposing policies, enabling voters to cast ballots for or against a distinct party platform. In the legislature, party leaders are strong; party members are loyal; and party unity is high. Certainly, there was little evidence of responsible congressional parties by this definition at the time of the Schattschneider report.

Party leaders exert control over the legislative process in the American system under the following circumstances: Speakers of the House have led disciplined, hierarchical, strong party organizations, much like those in parliamentary systems. We can point to the turn of the century, not long after Wilson wrote Congressional Government, when the two major parties stood for opposing policies and represented distinct electoral bases. During this period of relative homogeneity within each congressional party, Speakers ruled − in particular, two powerful Republican Speakers, Thomas Brackett Reed (1889-1890; 1895-1899) and Joseph G. Cannon (1903-1911). The tenures of "Boss" Reed and "Czar" Cannon marked the transformation from the committee government of Wilson's observations to the party government characterized by centralized leadership, hierarchal party organization, and strict party-line voting.

Parties and party leadership are strong (and active) in America only when their members' policy preferences are relatively homogeneous − for example, the Republicans at the turn of the century. Rising heterogeneity in the party in the electorate (such as the impact of the Progressive Movement) is reflected in rising heterogenity in the party in government (such as the election of Progressive Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives).

The rise of heterogeneity within the congressional parties and the resulting institutional reforms that decentralized power in the House both contributed to the long-term decline in party voting after 1910. Committee chairs rivaled party leadership in power, rendering the Speaker's job one of coalition building from policy to policy, to get legislation passed.

By the 1960s, these party chairs were predominantly Southern Democrats, many of whom were members of the Conservative Coalition, a dominant force of Democrats and Republicans who voted together, forming a conservative majority from 1938 to 1965. With the elections of 1958 and 1964, an influx of liberal Democrats from the Northeast infused the House Democratic majority with greater heterogeneity, specifically on social policy. The House reforms of the 1970s essentially shifted the balance of power to the Speaker and to the rank and file at the expense of the committee chairs and thus contributed to the strengthening of the congressional parties in the long run. The decentralizing reforms of the 1970s in combination with the electoral changes evident by the 1960s stripped the parties of their ability to influence the behavior of legislators and, consequently, their ability to shape policy.

Campaigns became candidate-centered, as members separated from the parties and strengthened ties to those who elected them. Since the 1960s, from nomination through election, members have come to rely on personal resources at the expense of political parties. Members are nominated in primaries, during which they must raise their own funds, organize and staff their campaigns, and distinguish themselves from opponents of their party.

Although the electoral connection between members and their party appears to be weaker after 1964, the voting records of members become more partisan in the post-1980 period. In an attempt to explain the rise in partisanship (and the rise in party bickering, as highlighted in the media) in a relatively weak party system, scholars turned their attention to the rise of divided government. Perhaps partisanship and deadlocked democracy were being promoted by the American constitutional system, which allows for separate election of the president and Congress and thus permits split party control of the government.

From 1900 to 1952, only four elections have resulted in split party control of the government; but since 1952, sixteen elections have brought divided government to power, and only nine have resulted in unified control. Between 1953 and 2003, the same party has controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress for only eighteen years, about one-third of the time.

Political scientists and pundits alike complained that divided party control of Congress and the White House was creating stalemates and a lack of significant policy change. They decry divided party control as lacking in party responsibility and effective policy making. Split party control of the government puts parties head-to-head, inevitably resulting in policy impasse, legislative paralysis, and irresponsible parties. Unified control, however, enables the majority leadership to rally the party around the president's policy proposals; unified party government is strong, responsible party government.

Inherent in the debate over unified government versus divided is the assumption that party matters. In a party-oriented interpretation of gridlock, the president bargains with the median of the majority party in Congress; when the two are of different parties, it is difficult to pass legislation to move policy away from the status quo. In such a scenario, unified party control would result in inherently less gridlock and more party-sponsored legislation, a sure positive for advocates of responsible party government.

If legislative impasses are not solely party-driven phenomena the heterogeneity of preferences in the electorate and in Congress, and the complexity of policy areas, maybe the sources of legislative stalemates, regardless of divided or unified control. Periods of divided and unified party government can be compared in terms of the amount of legislation passed, vetoes sustained, congressional hearings held, presidential treaties signed, and judicial appointments approved.

In sum, heterogeneous policy preferences within the parties create barriers to legislation in times of both unified and divided party control. For example, consider the 103^rd Congress, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House for the first time in twelve years. At the start of Bill Clinton's first term, it looked like unified Democratic government had cleared the way for legislation previously vetoed by President George H. W. Bush, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act. But Clinton soon faced divisions within his own party over health care reform, budget resolutions, trade policy, and even gun control. Unified Democratic government did not yield unified Democratic legislation on many fronts. The defeat of Clinton's 1994 crime bill came at the hands of his own party, and health care reform died without even a floor vote in either of the Democrat-dominated chambers. Conservative Democrats would not agree to his budget reconciliation without caps to entitlement programs. The Democratic president actually had to rely on moderate Republicans to get Congressional support for NAFTA, as he was unable to shift a traditional Democratic anti-free trade bias. Clinton's tactic of triangulation − positioning himself between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans to gain support of moderates − was a more successful route to pass legislation than relying on the unified support of his party.

Republicans in the 108^th Congress face divisions within their unified government as well. Even on the two most important components of their president's domestic agenda − tax cuts and Medicare reform − the party remains divided. Yet, the heterogeneity of preferences within the party varies according to policy arena, with tax cuts being the less controversial of the two: Republicans may disagree on how deep to cut taxes, but they do agree to cut them. The more difficult policy proposals are those that require a shift in traditional party policy, such as Clinton's asking Democrats to embrace free trade or Bush's trying to convince Republicans to expand an entitlement program such as Medicare. Even traditional policy arenas, such as those that determine the role and size of the federal government, create rifts not just between the major parties but within them as well. Many of the battles within the parties are waged across the institutions − White House versus Senate versus House of Representatives; thus, unified control may actually expose more intraparty heterogeneity than times of divided control, when policy impasses are merely blamed on the other party.

If parties are aggregates of their members' preferences and if these preferences are heterogeneous within a party on a particular policy, then unified party control of the government does not guarantee legislative harmony. Stalemates may simply be the result of legislation proposed that is too far from the median members in Congress, regardless of their party. Given the constitutional and institutional constraints on party in government, electoral majorities in the United States do not always translate into policy majorities.