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Presidents, Unified Government, and Legislative Control

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Presidents, Unified Government and Legislative Control

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics ((PASTPRPO))

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Abstract

This book aims to explain why some presidents are more successful than others in winning the support of legislators during periods of unified government. This book covers five presidential and semi-presidential systems such as France, Indonesia, Mexico, Taiwan, and the United States with a wide variety of institutional arrangements and political dynamics. This book elaborates on explaining how institutional factors such as confidence vote, electoral system, candidate nomination, and presidential unilateral power influence the ability of presidents to pass their legislative agendas through comparisons across presidential and semi-presidential systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    When government was divided during this period, only a slightly higher percentage (53.8%) of the agenda was deadlocked (Binder 2003: 45).

  2. 2.

    Mayhew (2008: 124–125) indicates that even during the period from 1993 to 1994, when there was unified party control under the presidency of Bill Clinton, some landmark bills, such as the health care bill, failed to pass.

  3. 3.

    This situation can also arise under the British parliamentary system. Of the 167 members of the ruling Labour Party in the House of Commons, 138 voted against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which they knew to be unpopular with voters (Owens 2003: 26–27). Benedetto and Hix (2007) argue that members of parliament who have been refused ministerial office or who are ex-ministers cannot be controlled by the promise of ministerial office and are hence free to vote against the government and in accordance with their own policy preferences. However, in general, party unity in governing parties is higher under parliamentarism than under presidentialism (Carey 2007: 95).

  4. 4.

    Ruling party bills include bills initiated by the president or the cabinet or sponsored by legislators from the ruling party.

  5. 5.

    Cohesion and discipline are different concepts. Cohesion is a party acting in unison and discipline is simply one way to achieve this outcome (Hazan 2006: 3).

  6. 6.

    Lundell (2004: 30) argues that the dimensions of centralization versus decentralization and inclusiveness versus exclusiveness also to some extent overlap.

  7. 7.

    Itzkovitch-Malka and Hazan (2017) argue that candidate selection methods can condition the effect of electoral systems on legislative attitudes and behavioral norms, and under exclusive candidate selection methods, substantial differences of degree of party cohesion exist between proportional representation (PR) and single member district (SMD) electoral systems. This means that cohesion can be influenced by many institutional or interactive factors. For related discussions of electoral systems and candidate selection, see also Hazan and Voerman (2006).

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  1. Department of Political Science, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Jung-Hsiang Tsai

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  1. Dept of Politics, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-yi, Taiwan

    Jung-Hsiang Tsai

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Tsai, JH. (2021). Presidents, Unified Government, and Legislative Control. In: Tsai, JH. (eds) Presidents, Unified Government and Legislative Control. Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67525-7_1

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