Managing Divided Control—Puerto Rican Style

• In Event: Leadership, Political Institutions and Parties

Abstract

The precise nature of divided control in current U.S. national politics appears to have produced gridlock across a number of major policy areas. By way of contrast, during the 2005-2008 period, Puerto Rico also faced the threat of paralysis emanating from divided control. Interestingly, the Puerto Rican response to the potential stalemate was driven by a different set of forces, leading to a unique resolution. In Puerto Rico and the U.S., one or both legislative chambers were not controlled by the chief executive’s party.

However, while the polarization experienced in the U.S. Federal government is grounded in ideological conflict, governing Puerto Rico is not driven by its principal ideological fault lines, namely the much written about “status issue.” Instead, the ambitions of Puerto Rican legislators must be analyzed and interpreted in the context of distributive, or patronage, politics. Through an application of multidimensional scaling, we demonstrate how an interparty coalition was a logical, but not necessarily a surprising, outcome.

We compiled a data base which consists of legislative roll call votes of all Puerto Rican senators and house members. Subjecting 2004 and 2005 roll call votes to multidimensional scaling reveals the customary Government-Opposition and Distributive Policy axes, and uncovers a new one--Contested Pork Barrel, a dimension on which there were deep splits in the New Progressive Party (PNP). We suggest that the PNP rifts were not a function of ideology or issues, but a power struggle occasioned by competing political ambitions

Author

• William R Shaffer, Purdue University