Contingent Party Pressure and Legislative Gridlock

Although several legislative gridlock models have produced different results in terms of legislative gridlock under divided government, these studies have neglected contingent party pressures. This paper suggests an alternative contingent party pressure model. The main result of this model is that legislative gridlock is affected by the interactions of issue salience and government types. High issue salience increases legislative gridlock under unified government and, in contrast, decreases under divided government.