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² Gallup, , Harris, and the CBS/New York TimesGoogle Scholar polls all show a lower public regard for federal political institutions compared with state and local institutions.

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⁷ I am grateful to Alan Ware for suggesting this possible research agenda.

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¹⁴ Jacobson, , Electoral Origins, chap. 4.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ Jacobson, , Electoral Origins, p. 135 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

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²⁵ Morris Fiorina acknowledges the importance of the 1988 result while rejecting historically specific explanations of the outcome of presidential elections as ‘facile’ (Fiorina, , Divided Government, pp. 1–3).Google Scholar

²⁶ Wattenberg, in Cox, and Kernell, , eds, The Politics of Divided Government, p. 39.Google Scholar

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³⁰ Quoted in Sundquist, , ‘Needed: A Political Theory’, p. 622.Google Scholar

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³² Sundquist, , ‘Needed: A Political Theory’, p. 630.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Such measures include bank and savings and loan deposit insurance legislation, the state-federal matching-basis status of the welfare provisions in the 1935 Social Security Act and the 1937 Public Housing Act.

³⁹ Fiorina, , Divided Government, p. 90.Google Scholar

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⁵² In constant 1982 dollars, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Tables 510 and 698. Of course, federal spending did increase massively in absolute terms during these years, as it did in constant dollars, but in relation to the size of the national economy which was growing rapidly throughout, it fell. Most commentators – and certainly most economists – measure public sector size as a proportion of the total size of the national economy.

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⁵⁵ Weatherford, M. Stephen, ‘Responsiveness and Deliberation in Divided Government: Presidential Leadership in Tax Policy Making’, British Journal of Political Science, 24 (1994), 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁶ The 1957–58 tax-policy negotiations ended in an effective compromise given the agenda had changed. See Weatherford, , ‘Responsiveness and Deliberation’.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Nixon's 1971 price and wage freeze was passed by Congress with relative ease and was, initially, very popular; see Stein, , Presidential Economics, pp. 176–90.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ The successful progress of Reagan's 1981 economic legislation is well documented, for a summary see Weatherford, M. Stephen and McDonnell, Lorraine M., ‘Ideology and Economic Policy’, in Berman, Larry, Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 122–55.Google Scholar

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⁶⁹ Michael Laver and Kenneth A. Shepsle discern broadly similar dynamics between the American system under divided government and European multi-party systems under proportional representation, ‘Divided Government: America is not Exceptional’, Governance, 4 (1991), 250–69Google Scholar. However, their analysis is purely theoretical. They certainly entertain the possibility of coalition politics producing ‘effective government’, in both systems, but provide no real world examples either of effective coalition politics (the Netherlands) or transparently ineffective coalition politics (Italy). Crucially, the failure of the Italian system and its subsequent reform was not precipitated so much by policy incoherence – which, it could be argued, was no worse in the 1990s than earlier – but by a crisis of the legitimacy of the political system. For a further discussion of the comparative position of the United States under divided government, see Fiorina, , Divided Government, chap. 7.Google Scholar