Does Partisan Conflict Lead to Increased Bureaucratic Policymaking? Evidence from the American States

Abstract Scholars of American politics debate the consequences of polarized and divided government on lawmaking but have largely neglected the impact of institutional conflict on the policy outputs of the bureaucracy. We argue that lawmaking gridlock creates opportunities and demands for governors and civil servants to pursue policy goals through rulemaking. To explore these dynamics, we draw upon a comprehensive dataset of over 150,000 proposed and adopted rules issued by US state agencies from 1994 through 2009 and compare differences in rulemaking output within states across periods of divided and unified party control. We find that policy conflict (measured by the presence of a party divided legislature) leads to a 3%–7% increase in the number of proposed and adopted rules. We then explore how variation in state powers of legislative oversight affect rulemaking, and find that these effects are concentrated in governments with weaker powers of legislative review. Our research speaks to debates in the literature regarding the nature of bureaucratic policymaking and highlights practical consequences of legislative gridlock and partisan polarization.