| Abstract: | Recent scholarship has documented the increased cohesion and influence of the congressional parties. In this new context, the status of the government as either unified or divided should function as an independent variable in determining presidential success rates. Occurring in just such a period, the Bush and Clinton presidencies can be used to test whether presidential success rates vary according to whether the national government is unified or divided. All the relevant data and comparisons confirm the hypothesis. In addition, a comparison of the presidential success rates for Carter and Nixon's first four years indicate that in the preceding period of less cohesive congressional parties there was a much weaker relationship between presidential success and the status of government as either unified or divided. |
