Does Partisan Polarization Lead to Policy Gridlock in California?

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, partisan polarization—the ideological distance between the typical Democratic and the average Republican legislator—has widened in Califor- nia. This article asks whether growing polarization has led to increasing legislative gridlock. Using journalistic sources to create a new measure of gridlock, it charts the percentage of major issues that state leaders were unable to resolve in the first year of every gubernatorial term from 1931 to 2004. It finds that divided govern- ment dramatically increases the level of gridlock, that legislative party polarization exerts no direct effect, but that higher levels of polarization magnify the impact of divided government on gridlock.