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Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-1990. By David R. Mayhew. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, x + 228 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-300-04835-1.)
Perhaps historians, unlike many of us in political science, have not assumed that unified party control of Congress and the presidency makes for more effective government, particularly for more significant legislation, than the now familiar divided control. In that case, historians will be less shaken by David R. Mayhew's elegantly persuasive destruction of his discipline's conventional wisdom in favor of party government. Divided We Govern may even confirm the view of some historians that broad social forces, not transient political arrangements, are responsible for waves of innovative governmental policy making. But whatever their views, historians who read this book will encounter...