Gridlock (politics)
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The word "gridlock" is used here as a metaphor – referring to the traffic standstill which results when congestion causes the flow to freeze up completely.
Proportional representation
In countries with
Majoritarian representation
United States
In United States politics, gridlock frequently refers to occasions when the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by different parties, or by a different party than the party of the president. Gridlock may also occur within the Senate, when no party has a filibuster-proof majority.
Political Gridlock by author Ned Witting identifies many of the causes of gridlock in the United States and outlines ways to get government working again.
Law professors such as
Marcus Ethridge, an emeritus professor of political science at the
Researchers such as David R. Jones argue that "higher party polarization increase[s] the likelihood of encountering gridlock".[7] When looking at figures of polarization within U.S. politics, "partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades" with 92% of Republicans being to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats aligning to the left of the median Republican voter.[8] This modern polarization paired with a system designed to operate on Burkean representation, not today's party-line voting, leads to seemingly inevitable gridlock.
Westminster systems
In parliamentary systems based on the Westminster system, parliamentary deadlocks may arise when an election results in neither or none of the major political parties having the numbers in the lower house (the house where the government is formed) to form a government, or when the votes in a lower house of parliament are so close that a government cannot be sure of getting its legislation passed through the house, or when another party (usually referred to as the opposition party) controls a majority of votes in the upper house.
A recent innovation has been to remove the power of the upper house to block supply, as well as some other bills.
The
See also
References
- ^ Tsebelis, G.: Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work
- ^ McGann, Anthony J., and Michael Latner. "The calculus of consensus democracy: Rethinking patterns of democracy without veto players." Comparative Political Studies 46.7 (2013): 823-850.
- ^ Brady, David; Volden, Craig (2006). Revolving Gridlock: Politics and Policy from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. p. 4.
- ^ Brady, David; Volden, Craig (2006). Revolving Gridlock: Politics and Policy from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. p. 8.
- ^ Ethridge, Marcus (Jan 27, 2011). The Case for Gridlock (PDF). Washington, DC: The Cato Institute. p. 1. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
- ^ Kelly, SQ (Nov 2010). "The case for gridlock: democracy, organized power, and the legal foundations of American government [review]". Choice. 48 (3): 593.
- JSTOR 449211.
- ^ "Political Polarization in the American Public". Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 2014-06-12. Retrieved 2020-01-05.
- ^ Section 57 of the Australian Constitution.