Zwischenwahlen in den USA sind nicht nur Stimmungsbarometer für den Erfolg einer Präsidentschaft. Die Machtverhältnisse im Kongress entscheiden über den Handlungsspielraum des Präsidenten: Ein divided government - in dem mindestens eine Kammer des Kongresses nicht von der eigenen Partei...

We investigate empirically how party ideology influences size and scope of government as measured by the size of government, tax structure and labor market regulation. Our dataset comprises 49 US states over the 1993-2009 period. We employ the new data onthe ideological mapping of US...

We investigate empirically how party ideology influences size and scope of government as measured by the size of government, tax structure and labor market regulation. Our dataset comprises 49 US states over the 1993-2009 period. We employ the new data on the ideological mapping of US...

The ability of voters to use the available electoral instruments is crucial for the functioning of democracies. The paper shows that voters consider the institutional environment when making electoral decisions. Voters recognize that executives who face binding term limits (i.e., lame ducks)...

This paper looks at several developments that have taken place in domestic politics on Taiwan since the election of Chen Shui-bian as president of the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1998. After discussing the political successes and failures of the incumbent Chen administration, it analyses its...

Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is...

Over the past 50 years, partisan polarization—the ideological distance between the typical Democratic and the average Republican legislator—has widened in California. This article asks whether growing polarization has led to increasing legislative gridlock. Borrowing the approach of the...

This study represents the first systematic analysis of the interactions between pro-Zapatista and counter-Zapatista protestors in Chiapas, Mexico, and the first empirical test of movement–countermovement theories in a transitional democracy. Three claims are tested: (1) movement protests...

Does congressional opposition constrain the president's conflict behavior in response to poor economic performance? Other research has shown that legislative constraints such as divided government reduce the executive's propensity to initiate conflict. But institutional constraints on democratic...

We estimate a non-linear and discontinuous relationship between the tax level and the degree of alignment between the legislature and the governor, measured as the number of seats in the legislature that belong to the governor’s party. In the states with the line-item veto, there is a jump in...