Polarization, defined as the ideological distance between the Democrat and Republican parties in Congress, has increased dramatically in Congress since the 1970s. Research on polarization in the U.S. Congress primarily focuses on the sources of this increase. Relatively little work has been done on the consequences of polarization for Congress? relationship with the president and the passage of legislation. This dissertation corrects this omission by examining the influence of polarization on several key aspects of the legislative process. It examines the impact of polarization on the interaction between Congress and the president, including the president?s strategy in supporting or opposing legislation and the success the president has on bills when he takes a position. It also examines the effect polarization has on the overall passage of legislation. An empirical examination was undertaken using significant bills in Congress over a sixty year time period (1947-2006). The results indicate that the effects of polarization on the legislative process are contingent upon the presence of divided government, defined as times when the president and a majority of members of Congress are from different parties, and the chamber of Congress under examination. As polarization increases, the president is more likely to support legislation and be successful when his party controls Congress, but he opposes more legislation and is less successful as polarization increases under divided government. Legislative gridlock, the inability of Congress to pass important or innovative legislation, tends to decrease in both the House and Senate as polarization increases under unified government. However, as polarization increases under divided government the overall passage of bills into law decreases. The dissertation also offers an improved method for modeling the impact of divided government on gridlock. Prior studies model divided government without regard for whether the president takes a position on a given bill. This study shows that when the president takes a position on a bill under divided government the probability it passes decreases, but the probability of passage increases when the president does not take a position. This finding implies that previous research may underestimate the true effects of divided government on gridlock.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-206).

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Thesis Abstract In recent years, each county and municipal government and parliament is leading separately by different political parties, form the so-called ¡§ the divided government¡¨ and it has already become normal gradually.This divided pattern is extended from local to the central government after 2000 General Presidential Election.So, as for central or local level, the government pattern built by administrative and legislative department, which no matter is handling by different or the same political party, the implied executive-legislature relations, leadership efficiency and administrative result then become topic and focus that scholars pays close attention to. This text drafts to such divided government¡¦s system in Kaohsiung county, under the situation of most seats controlling long-term by KMT, discussing about the executive-legislature relation in the name of YU Zheng Xian, Yang Qiu Xing, representing of DPP, who take over the county business of Kaohsiung county for 16 years (1993-2009).It is aim to find out, under the few seats of ruling party, the influence between three factors of the political relationship, interests inducement and human feeling, made by the leading strategy which administrative chief uses.Also to inspect if the structure of great power of opposite party, and the reciprocation of leading behaviors of leaders, will influence directly or indirectly the executive-legislature relations, such as like the bad inquiring atmosphere, the deducting budget widely, forcing to lay aside or reject the important bill etc. ¡@¡@In other words, under the inferior position of a few seats kept by a ruling party, the administrative chief¡¦s leading behavior and style seems extremely important.As for YU Zheng Xian, he knows ¡§political art¡¨ and local political ecology very well.He uses many kinds of strategy to achieve political support and cooperation by striving for Congressmen of different parties and he leans to the transactional leadership.However, Yang Qiu Xing is great different from Yu Zheng Xian's leadership style.After Yang Qiu Xing is on board, he is focusing in developing the vision of organizations.He does not like Yu Zheng Xian, using some strategies to trade off benefit with Congressman of different political group.Yang Qiu Xing usually judges people by facts, ot by identity, so he leans to transformational leadership.Hence, what¡¦s the influence both leadership and structure will make in the interaction of executive ¡Vlegislature of Kaohsiung county? This text tries to review, within the era of Yu Zheng Xian and Yang Qiu Xing, by literate description and statistic analysis in using the three important indicators : ¡§the executive-legislature supervising status of inquiring¡¨, ¡§deleting range of annual budge in Kaohsiung county¡¨ and ¡§adopt proportion of bill proposed by Kaohsiung county¡¨. ¡@ The result of study finds, Yu Zheng Xian would like to bend his knees and compromise with the Congressmen, therefore he won¡¦t meet too much obstructions in inquiring atmosphere, bill promotion and budget delet.This should result from his application of transaction leadership behavior.What is interesting is Yang Qiu Xing has different leading style from Yu Zheng Xian's, so have minor difference with the theory in such aspects as budget checking and the bill promotion.Therefore it shows Yang Qiu Xing's leader has not performed its function well, which should be referred to influence by structure of political party.And more, his attitude is relatively tough and has his own personal judgments, he will suffer more obstructions in various than Yu Zheng Xian in the case of lacking benefit interchange with Congressmen. In sum, if the leaders make good use of the leading behavior, regardless of its structure, can cause good executive-legislature interaction, and in promoting bill of different fields will be even relatively smooth.Therefore, the result of study find out that leading behavior do influence the operation of executive-legislature relations.

In this dissertation, I explain why scholars are unable to conclusively find evidence that divided government is the main determinant of legislative gridlock. I argue this unsettled debate is largely attributable to an imprecise conceptual view of inter-branch tensions, and that these conceptual limitations are exacerbated by unrefined measurement practices. I argue refined measures such as party polarization and gridlock intervals better explain institutional behavior than divided government. Using unique datasets estimating legislator preferences on domestic and foreign policy, findings show that when compared to more refined measures, split-party government is not the sole or even the most important source of partisan conflict. In addition, compared to other studies on divided government, I argue the reason the distinction between unified and divided government is often blurred is that a number of underlying political and institutional pressures make sweeping policy change difficult even for most unified governments. These factors contribute to the public’s growing dissatisfaction with government’s inability to solve many economic and social problems. / text

Quantitative studies of the presidential use of executive orders have attempted to determine whether presidents are more prone to resort to unilateral action when faced with legislative opposition. To date, the results have been mixed however, with studies demonstrating that the type of executive order is an important factor in understanding the conditions under which presidents will resort to unilateral action. Despite this advancement in theory, there has been little consensus regarding the actual conditions under which presidents will issue the different types of executive orders that have been identified in the literature. This thesis addresses this puzzle through an empirical analysis that engages the "Two Presidencies Thesis," which argues that presidential decision-making, action and success is conditioned by policy area (foreign and domestic) and executive order type (major, routine, or symbolic). An original dataset was constructed by coding all executive orders issued between 1953 and 2008 as related to either foreign or domestic policy. Thus, an analysis is undertaken of major executive orders, minor executive orders, foreign policy-based executive orders, domestic policy-based executive orders, and major and minor categories of each policy area. A multivariate analysis is completed using negative binomial regression given that the dependent variables are overdispersed count variables. The effects of divided government and ideological distance are the primary independent variables examined. The ideological distance variable consists of the absolute distance between the president's ideology and the ideology of the median member of the Senate. Various other control variables are included, including presidential party, election year, and approval ratings. The findings indicate that executive order type does matter in predicting presidential use of executive orders and that the prevailing political climate does influence the president's use of executive orders.

This study examines the effect that divided or unified government, in the United States of America, has on the delegation of trade authority to the President. Using a qualitative analysis approach, I examine competing views and formulate an independent opinion based on the peoples’ preferences and evaluation of the principles of America’s Constitutionalism. I conclude that overemphasis on the impact of divided government is misleading because trade issues provide the primary mechanism which determines the implementation of America’s trade policies, and the principles of Constitutionalism are valuable guidelines. Blended with the discussion is the awareness of an American ethos which challenges formulation of trade agreements in an era of increased globalization.

In this paper, the ¡§divided government¡¨ is defined as a situation in which the president and the parliament are controlled by different parties respectively. The formation of a ¡§divided government¡¨ depends on whether the president is able to control an absolutely majority of seats in the parliament through election or not. Some literature think that a divided government is easy to lead to policy gridlock or inefficiency and even causes stalemate in the legislative and executive branches. However, many scholars feel that a divided government may lead to policy gridlock or inefficiency, but it is in agreement with the principle of checks and balances in the constitutional system and is able to meet the expectation of majority voters. The eras of the Third and Fourth Republic in France had the same political situation as today¡¦s Taiwan, i.e., deadlock legislation, impeded policy implementation, unsteady political situation, and frequent changes of premiers. During the period of the Fifth Republic, the political situation became steady gradually after France went through three times of ¡§La Cohabitation¡¨ commencing from 1986. It formed a ¡§constitutional convention¡¨ and set a good model for constitutional governments in the world. The constitutional system of Taiwan has been similar to the ¡§semi-presidential system¡¨ of France during the era of the Fifth Republic since the constitution of the Republic of China was amended in 1997.However, in the opinion of Chen Shui-bian, he thought a president is elected by the people directly, and the prime premier may be nominated by the president directly without the consent of the President of Legislative Yuan, so the constitutional system of Taiwan should be ¡§presidential system¡¨ instead of the ¡§semi-presidential system.¡¨ Therefore, after Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election in 2000, he ignored the fact that Kuomingtan held a majority seats in the parliament, which constituted a ¡§divided government¡¨, and refused to hand over the right of forming a cabinet to Kuomingtan, the majority party in the parliamen, or endow the power to a majority alliance.Consequently, the regime changed from a ¡§government for all people¡¨ led by Chen Shui-bian and Tang Fei to a ¡§minority government¡¨ controlled by Chen Shui-bian and Su Chen-chang in the past 6 years. Till now, there have been five presidents of Executive Yuan changed.Owning to the long-term conflict and stalemate between the executive and legislative branches, the politics of Taiwan is in a state of chaos, leading to today¡¦s constitutional crisis. In view of the situations mentioned above, this article investigates into the system factors contributing to the formation of ¡§divided government¡¨ in Taiwan and the political operation and political influences of individual actors from the viewpoint of historical institutionalism. Also, the in-depth researches and studies were conducted to find out the reasons why the political situation of Taiwan became unsteady and the country fell into the constitutional crisis in the past 6 years after President Chen Shui-bian held the reins of government and discuss how to solve those problems. The author also compared and analyzed the ¡§minority government¡¨ of Taiwan, the alternating mechanism of the ¡§La Cohabitation¡¨ in France, and the formation of ¡§coalition cabinet¡¨ in order to draw lessons from their experiences and establish a good interaction among the president, the cabinet and the parliament.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-132).