Up the Hill and Across the Aisle: Discovering the Path to Bipartisanship in Washington

• Autores: Matthew N. Beckmann
• Localización: Legislative studies quarterly, ISSN 0362-9805, Vol. 41, N. 2, 2016, págs. 269-295
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Appeals for bipartisan diplomacy pepper popular commentary, often with wistful references to a bygone era where leaders (like Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen) set aside partisan point scoring to serve the public interest. Here we reconsider the elements driving bipartisan contact in Washington. Stepping back from popular narratives, we situate the president-opposing leader relationship within a more general class of institutional bargaining, leading to the prediction that bipartisan negotiation emerges from a particular combination of incentives and institutions—namely, when the president is strong politically (rendering opposing leaders willing to compromise) but opposing party leaders are strong institutionally (rendering them crucial to passing the deal). Utilizing Presidential Daily Diaries, hypotheses are tested against original data on presidents' personal interactions with opposing Senate leaders across 40 years, 20 Congresses, and eight presidencies (1961–2000).