Partisan Politics, Divided Government, and the Economy

Integrates economics and politics, theory and econometrics, to provide the first coherent and general formal model of US political economy.

Alberto Alesina (Author), Howard Rosenthal (Author)

9780521436205, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 January 1995

300 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.46 kg

"Alesina and Rosenthal have made what will surely be an enduring contribution....This book represents a genuine advance in the political business cycle literature....This book is accessible and holds value for both economists and political scientists. It should prove very useful to graduate students, but will also be stimulating to readers who are already familiar with the existing literature on political business cycles. This book would make a nice addition to a graduate seminar on applied political economy; any course which covers political business cycles would be incomplete absent this book as a required text." Jeffrey Milyo, Journal of Politics

This book develops an integrated approach to understanding the American economy and national elections. Economic policy is generally seen as the result of a compromise between the President and Congress. Because Democrats and Republicans usually maintain polarised preferences on policy, middle-of-the-road voters seek to balance the President by reinforcing in Congress the party not holding the White House. This balancing leads, always, to relatively moderate policies and, frequently, to divided government. The authors outline the rational partisan business cycle, where Republican administrations begin with recessions, and Democratic ones with expansions, and the midterm cycle, where the President's party loses votes in the midterm congressional election. The book argues that both cycles are the result of uncertainty about the outcome of presidential elections. Other topics covered include retrospective voting on the economy, coat-tails, and incumbency advantage.

1. Introduction
2. Models of policy divergence
3. A theory of institutional balancing
4. The midterm cycle
5. Diversity, persistence, and mobility
6. Incumbency and moderation
7. Partisan business cycles
8. The President, Congress, and the economy
9. Economic growth and national elections in the United States: 1915–88
10. Partisan economic policy and divided government in parliamentary democracies.

Subject Areas: Political structure & processes [JPH]