Loss Imposition and Institutional Structure: The Case of Automobile Insurance Reform in North America

Recent scholarship emphasizes the importance of governments' abilities to impose losses on powerful groups, and suggests that loss imposition is more problematic under separation of powers systems. Yet the empirical evidence for this judgement is thin. In this article I attempt to obtain more leverage on the empirical question by comparing the policy decisions of a large number of subnational jurisdictions in the United States and Canada, and focusing on an issue particularly conducive to identifying the impact of institutional structure: automobile insurance reform. I find that the separation of powers systems operating in the American states indeed appear to make loss imposition more difficult. I also critique the notion that ease of loss imposition is necessarily desirable.