One of the more surprising findings of political science is that, historically, divided government has not made it more difficult to pass legislation. Granted, the quality of what's passed matters just as much as the quantity -- it's not a coincidence that the core of the New Deal and Great Society were built during periods of united government with unusually large congressional majorities. But divided government has generally not led to gridlock.
Whether this will be the case for the current situation is a different question. The pattern identified by scholars like David Mayhew was part of a system in which party discipline in Congress was unusually weak for a liberal democracy. This party system, however, has vanished. American political parties are now relatively ideologically coherent. In and of itself, the decline of "bipartisanship" is nothing to mourn -- among other problems, weak parties undermine democratic accountability, as voters can't know what policies they're voting for. But can the American system function with a high level of party discipline? I believe that Jack Balkin's pessimistic take on this question is correct. I urge you to read the whole post, but this is the key point:
The key point is that even though cooperation from the minority party may be necessary to govern effectively in a presidential system, the minority party does not have sufficient incentives to cooperate if voters will not punish them -- and may even reward them at the next election -- for making things worse instead of better.
As Balkin says, the minority-empowering institutional features of the Senate are particularly disastrous given the current party system. But even if (perhaps I should be optimistic and say "when") the filibuster is done away with, divided government is likely to lead to very dysfunctional government. The apparent willingness of a minority of Senate Republicans to hold the institution hostage until their demands are met is the canary in the coal mine.
-- Scott Lemieux
