Diagnosing Gridlock

In a thought-provoking article, Michael Doran provides both a framework for thinking about tax legislation and a specific application of that framework to explain certain recent trends. His framing focuses on three important aspects of the lawmaking process: legislator motivations, exogenous events, and legislative organization. These three factors weave together in complex ways, and his framework astutely acknowledges this complexity. Doran applies this general framework to explain two recent trends. The first trend is an increase in tax gridlock. The second is a decrease in the particularistic nature of tax legislation. He claims that these trends are "two sides of the same coin." The author argues that rather than considering these trends as two sides of the same coin, it is analytically revealing to disentangle them. It is useful to consider separately the possibility of legislative action and the content of such legislation. Gridlock relates to the possibility of legislative action. The decrease in the particularity of legislation relates to its content.