basis, as a share of personal income, or as a share of state and local government spending. To explore why this is so, this … relatively large role of state government in New England and government officials' concerns about debt levels may have …

alternative mechanism known as divided government. By dividing government control between the executive and legislative branches … states from 1975 to 2000, it is shown that the probability of divided government is 10-15 percent higher when governors are … control an otherwise unaccountable executive. -- divided government ; lame duck ; term limit ; accountability …

This paper studies how divided government - arising when control of the government branches is split between parties … they serve in a divided government than they are in a fully unified government. We find similar but smaller effects for …. However, in terms of policy implementation, we find evidence of moderation: when a unified Republican government loses a …

-scale collective action is needed - can improve government performance in three ways: 1) It can broaden government accountability …, making government responsive to citizens at large, rather than to narrow interests. 2) It can facilitate agreement where … citizen confidence in government as well as subjective indicators of bureaucratic inefficiency. The author further analyzes …