ABSTRACT
Many scholars have observed that the partisan configurations surrounding budget processes affect the behaviour of main budget actors. More recent studies have investigated how partisan configurations define the information-processing capacity of main budget actors. In sum, different partisan configurations result in different fiscal choices. When executive branches and legislatures are dominated by the same party, the partisan configuration exemplifies unified. For state governments, if the governor's party is the same as the majority party in both chambers of the state legislature, this is called a unified government. Interbranch partisan configurations differ between split-branch governments and split-legislature governments. The conventional view of party government theorists argues that a divided government invites strategic standoffs between competing party politicians divided governments are likely to experience higher institutional conflicts and costs. Many studies showed that legislative productivity declines under divided governments. Thus divided governments are more likely to produce punctuated budgets, due possibly to the weakening information-processing capacity of budget decision makers.
