Divided Government and the Expansion of Federal Power, 1946 to 2008 (original) (raw)

This examines the impact of divided government on the expansion of federal power. I hypothesize based on the existing literature that unified government will generally expand federal power more than divided government. In addition, I hypothesize that the effect will vary by type of policy. I use the analytical model developed by Sean Kelly (1993) to analyze a modified version of the Mayhew (2005) dataset of significant legislation that excludes foreign, defense, and immigration policy, but includes emergency management policy.