| Abstract: | Bicameralism in legislatures affects both the legislative processand partisan competition. In the United States, divided partisancontrol of Congress has been found to lead to interparty logrollsand increased budget deficits. In parliamentary systems, itis generally assumed that similarly divided legislatures havelittle effect on policy. I argue, by contrast, that party disciplinemeans that divided control of the legislature has the oppositeeffect: because cooperation dilutes party labels, parties havean interest in passing and claiming credit for policy, but alsoin preventing their counterparts from doing the same. The resultis a game in which chamber majorities balance the desire tomake policy with the need to differentiate themselves from eachother (to the extent that they are different). I test the hypothesisof an inverse relationship between divergence and policy makingin a nine-country, TSCS regression of deficits on an index ofchamber divergence. |
