Diane, Thanks. My RA did not find your article with John so I’m glad you pointed it out. Here is an interesting part of what my Sonya found: Conservative, Bill Niskanen concluded that divided governments lead to more spending. Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley found the opposite. In an interesting cross-country comparison, Alberto Alesino found that Great Britain, where the executive and legislative branches are necessarily from the same party, had a debt to GDP ratio of 60% while countries such as Belgium and Italy, which have fragmented coalition governments, have debt to GDP ratios of over 120%. Of course, there may be other differences between UK and Italy–food for example. Maybe divided governments produce better food. Yum! Refs Alesino, Alberto. 2000. “The Political Economy of the Budget Surplus in the US.” NBER Working Paper 7496. Kinsley, Michael. “Numbers don’t lie but sometimes they mislead.” Slate. February 17, 2006. Article at http://www.slate.com/id/2136481/ and spreadsheet at http://slate.com/kinsley/2006-02-17/kinsley_chart5.html. Niskanen, William. 2003. “The Case for Divided Government.” The Cato Institute. http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-07-03.html.