Divided Government and International Cooperation in Austria-Hungary, Sweden-Norway and the European Union

Abstract

A growing consensus maintains that divided government makes international cooperation more difficult. This paper takes issue with this claim. While divided government does make treaty ratification more difficult, it also affects the outcome when cooperation breaks down. To understand this effect of divided government, I bring the reversion point into the heart of the analysis of cooperation. If divided government makes this reversion point more unattractive than the reversion point under unified government, it may make cooperation more likely. Divided government also varies in ways previously overlooked in the literature, most importantly in whether the negotiator or ratifier controls the reversion point (or status quo). I test these claims against three supranational polities, the dual monarchies of Austria-Hungary and Sweden-Norway and the European Union today.

Reforming the equilibrium? Veto players and policy change in the European constitution-building process

“…Inspired by the "Paradox of Weakness" (Schelling 1960;Putnam 1988), two level game-analysts predict that status quo-biased domestic actors increase the power of a negotiating member state by credibly tying the hands of the negotiator (Schneider and Cederman 1994;Milner and Rosendorff 1996;Milner 1997;Pahre 1997). Pahre (2001) demonstrates that benefits from domestic constraints not only depend on the preferences of the member states but also on the actor controlling the position of the status quo. Hug and König (2002) found that the status quo-preference of both government and ratifying pivot explain the exclusion of issues from the negotiation table.…”

Trade Structure and the Effectiveness of America's "Aggressively Unilateral" Trade Policy

“…Her conception of the term differs from the most common definition of "divided government," which refers to different party control of the executive and legislative branches. Various studies Lohmann and O'Halloran, 1994;Hammond and Prins, 1999;Karol, 2000;Pahre, 2001! have debated the effect of divided government in the partisan sense on trade policy, but have yet to reach definitive conclusions as to whether different party control of the two branches increases inter-branch disagreements on trade issues.…”

Bringing Parliaments Back in

“…The final possible source of power which we examine is divided government. Two previous two-level game studies (Milner and Rosendorff, 1997;Pahre, 2001), both employing a similar spatial model, demonstrate that divided government under certain conditions can benefit negotiators, while under other conditions it can harm their bargaining stance. Milner and Rosendorff (1997) demonstrate that as a unified government becomes more divided (the negotiator's preference remains relatively integrationist while the legislature becomes less integrationist) the negotiator first witnesses benefits as the negotiated outcome moves closer to his ideal point, but then as the legislature becomes more hawkish, the outcome moves beyond the ideal point of negotiator to a point where it more closely reflects the less integrationist position of the legislature.…”