Parties and Economic Policy in the USA

Abstract

The ability of parties to carry out campaign pledges is a central theme of democratic theory. While many scholars have viewed US parties as weak and ineffective, recent studies have suggested that the US system is surprisingly effective. We suggest that previous studies have not presented a clear picture of the relative success of each party under a variety of circumstances - i.e. `who gets what, when?'. We investigate each party's success in economic policy under united and divided government by analyzing fulfillment of the 384 economic policy pledges in both parties' platforms of 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988. We conclude that institutional control is fairly predictive of the relative success of the parties, although other factors are also influential. We find that, contrary to the assumption of some studies, the president's party does not have an advantage in overall economic policy unless it has some congressional control as well.