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Legislative Fragmentation and Government Spending in Presidential Democracies: Bringing Ideological Polarization into the Picture
Author(s) -
Eslava Marcela,
Nupia Oskar
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12152
Subject(s) - presidential system , legislature , ideology , polarization (electrochemistry) , divided government , negotiation , fragmentation (computing) , political science , political economy , public administration , economics , law , politics , chemistry , computer science , operating system
We claim that, in presidential democracies, the effect of increasing fragmentation on government spending should be conditional on polarization, defined as the ideological distance between the government's party and other parties in Congress. We build a model where this result follows from negotiations between the legislature and an independent government seeking the approval of its initiatives—as in presidential democracies. Using cross‐country data over time, we test the empirical validity of our claim finding that, in presidential democracies, there is indeed a positive effect of fragmentation only when polarization is sufficiently high. The same is not true for parliamentary democracies.