Talk:Separation of powers/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

The fourth estate

The Press (which include other media) is now regarded as the Fourth estate.

Could opinion polls be regarded as the Fifth estate?

What about Separation of Church and State; that is surely a kind of separation of powers where it is best not to have all power residing in one pair of hands.

Are there any examples where powers have to be concentrated?

AWS 11 Mar 2004 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.29.136.13 (talk • contribs) 11:49, 11 March 2004 (UTC)

The article stated that "It has never, however, been a formal branch of government;" That's not true. The press was a very formal part of Hitler's Third Reich. If the paragraph on the Press is talking about just in the U.S., it should explicitly state that. I have changed it. 129.63.129.170 (talk) 19:37, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Dropping the dominant branch

For seperation of powers to work, the different branches need to be balanced against each other. If there is a dominant branch (in an older version of the article a dominant religeous branch was mentioned), then there is effectively no separation of powers, so we can safely drop that eventuality from the discussion here. Kim Bruning 19:51, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Some comments on NPOV:

• Seperation of church and state:

Stating that Separation of church and state is good, and lack of it as bad might seem POV if you read it at first. Here's why not:

Stating that "holding your hand in a flame Will Hurt" is POV if it's a religeous dogma or your opinion. However, if 10s of people before you have put their hand in the flame and report "It Hurt", you generally start believing that maybe it's an Empirical (and thus NPOV) statement instead.

Many nations started out with no separation. Writers from those times reported that It Hurt the state (see the relevant wikipedia articles). So if this is an empirical finding, then it must be NPOV. (I think it's probably still NPOV even if some people don't actually *like* the finding)

More accurately, having church and state non-separate means that practically, you're going to have quite a lot of trouble maintaining a proper separation of powers, so logic and pragmatism dictate you can either have the one or the other, but generally not both at once. Controversy over the matter seems to be drawn exactly along those lines (namely, people who are pro-theocracy are (or claim to be) contra- separation of powers, and vice versa.) Kim Bruning 20:39, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• I'm not sure the statements on why the press are considered a fourth power are on the mark. The power of the press seems more to be to be that they check on the government by investigation and then balance the power of the government by reporting their findings.

Kim Bruning 20:29, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There seems to be some terminological confusion here. Firstly, whether the Press has been referred to as the "Fourth Estate" or not is altogether beside the point, as this here is not a discussion of social classes (high clergy and nobility forming the First and the Second Estates and the bourgeoisie the famous Third Estate). Secondly, "separation of powers" (and I would argue that it should be singular: "separation of [political] power") does not refer to just any dividing-up or distribution of power. The separation of church and state may be an equally important concept, but it is a completely different one. <KF> 20:30, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, well, this is what we've had to work with so far. :-) The divisions chosen by Montesqueie are along lines which prevent people from "breaking out" of their assigned powers. (Like a political form of chroot jail ;-) ). See if you can improve the article! I'll help edit.Kim Bruning 07:50, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Parliamentary supremacy

"Constitutional documents such as the the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provide limitations on parliamentary supremacy and arrive at the same result as the U.S. concept of separation of powers."

This is wrong. Parliamentary supremacy is a UK concept and not a Canadian one. Second, the CCRF gives you something very different from the US concept of separation of powers.

Roadrunner 16:42, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Removed text above.

This is wrong for two reasons

1) Canada doesn't have a doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.

2) The Notwithstanding Clause provision makes the political dynamics of the CCRF somewhat different than the situation of the United States. Basically for at least some of the CCRF, the legislature can take a law outside the review of the courts, which the US legislatures can't do.

Roadrunner 04:08, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Rewrote the section on UK parliamentary supremacy. I still think the section is largely incorrect, but I removed most of the obvious factual errors.....

Parliamentary supremacy is limited in *practice* by a whole host of things, but except for the

obscure issue of jurisdiction over Scottish churches, it isn't limited in theory by British

constitutional law. In particular the power of Parliament is *NOT* limited by the English

Bill of Rights.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/england.htm

The English Bill of Rights was a compliant against the English monarch and in no way limits

the power of Parliament.

Again, my general objection to Ms. Bruning's edit is that she is assuming that things in

democratic societies work the same way that they do in the United States and they do not.

Anyway enough for now.

Roadrunner 04:17, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm a mr. :-P Hmm, and actually I've never set foot in the new world really. I first learnt about trias politica as applied to a constitutional monarchy in high school (in The Netherlands). IIRC we were also taught a bit about other nations as examples, including France, Germany and the USA.

While it's true that the USA is one of the very first countries to adopt modern trias politica, currently they are only one of many. The concept of trias politica has been very important to politics across the globe for over 2 centuries now.

(To save folks some looking up: trias politica basically covers the concepts of separation of powers and checks and balances, and supplies a political framework with which you can apply those.)

Kim Bruning 07:49, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Note that the german and french wikipedia also discuss separation of powers as seen in those countries specifically. Germany is explicitly a federal republic, so as you might expect, the german wikipedia subdivides separation of powers horizontally (three-way separation: executive/legislative/judicial) and vertically (federal/state/county).

Kim Bruning 23:27, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Propose reorganisation

How about merging checks and balances here, and having the generic separation of powers 'rules' from there on this page, and moving the USA example to it's own "Separation of powers in the USA" article. I think maybe using a federal republic as an example might be a bit complicated even, since there's also vertical separation to contend with. How about (also or instead) using some simple single state (substate of a federation or a nation state) as an example? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kim Bruning (talk • contribs) 07:52, 23 July 2004 (UTC)

Separation of powers under the United States Constitution already exists, handily enough. It might indeed be a good idea to keep only the best and clearest examples of separation of powers in the US federal system and keep those here, and merge the rest into the other article. The full detail is not necessary in order to explain the general concept. If you're trying to find a simpler example (e.g. one uncluttered by federalism), I'm skeptical that one exists. France has been mentioned as a candidate...I've not been able to find nearly as much documentation about the principles of the French (Fifth Republic) Constitution on the Wikipedia, though. It also has vertical separation of power issues with the EU and also departments and city governments. Anything other than a city-state is probably going to have vertical separation issues. Are there any established, democratic, non-EU city-states? I've pretty much ignored the role of the states in the federal US example, so I think it's about as simple and classic a case study as one might find. That said, it'd be nice to hear more about how the concept of "separation of powers" applies to other countries, and related strengths, weaknesses, and complexities. (This has been discussed on Talk:Checks and balances.) -- Beland 02:57, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How about if we don't constrain ourselves to a certain time period? We're really just looking for a good example, so a european state around hmm 1950 or 1960 (depending a bit), when there's no colonies, and no EU to contend with might be interesting. A country like the Netherlands or Belgium (1960's) do have provinces as administrative divisions, but they are not true federal states, so they don't clutter up the constitution too much. Alternately, how about New Zealand? IIRC .nz wasn't federal. But the New Zealand constitution probably has all this strange common law stuff ;-) Let's see, Iceland seems to be nice and tidy, haven't looked at their constitution yet. Maybe some of the more east european nations might as yet have a simple system of government.

Hmph, You're right, it IS a bit tricky to find a country with a simple constitution for to demonstrate. I guess that's the kind of thing we're here for though ;-) Summing up: We could still look at Netherlands (1960), Belgium (1960), New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland (has home rule now, interesting.), hmm any others? Sometime in my copious free time, I'll try to find and start reading some of those constitutions I guess. Kim Bruning 09:10, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I contribute rather hesitantly since I think this whole area is so horridly flawed in the way its handled by wikipedia that I don't know where to start. However: separation of powers is a relatively modern political doctrine (older concepts meaning something quite different), which was deliberately incorporated into the US constitution. But, its important to understand that a state can exhibit a degree of separation of powers without any deliberate planning. By contrast, check and balances are almost always built in to a constitution in order to undermine the separation of powers by permitting one power to influence another's sphere, so that no power becomes too important (eg Presidential nomination of members of the supreme court; or impeachment of the executive by the legislature). Impeachment existed in the English constitution (and then in that of the UK) but without any deliberate planning (it originated in quite another way) and it would be wrong to describe it as a "check" or "balance" in the same way. The point I am making is that the two ideas are, to some extent, quite different but are constantly confused. Better to keep them separate. Francis Davey 19:36, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Separation of Powers outside the US

I thought I would inject some knowledge into this discussion. I am a lawyer, with some public law practice, based in England. I thought I ought to correct some misconceptions.

In the first place, as has been remarked elsewhere, in the UK we do not have a traditional conception of the separation of powers. Our constitution is based on the fundamental principle of the Supremacy of Parliament. Parliament can do anything, except restrict its future freedom (there is some dispute as to the practical effects of this in Scotland, but they may not be judiciable).

The system of party discipline is such that the lower house of the legislature (the most powerful of the three parts of the Parliament) is almost identical to the executive and there is very little to prevent the executive doing whatever it wishes. The only real exception to this is that the UK parties have been reluctant to jeopardise the UK's international standing and so various treaties (principally the treaty of Rome) act as constrants on Parliamentary sovereignity, but this is at least partly a statement of practice.

I am unhappy with the analysis of the separation of powers as a fundamental part of democracy because it is *very* US POV. One difficulty is that it distorts one's understanding of a country's constitution if it is analysed from one POV and described in terms of how much it does and does not satisfy a set of ideas that are alien to its history.

I agree. Strong separation of powers is not essential to having a liberal democracy. Look at Latin America, all those countries tried seperation of powers and they all failed at being democracies until very recently. The two attempts at parliamentarianism, Jamaica and Belize, did succeed.

Most political scientists actually favor parliamentarianism. Presidentialism is considered good for dealing with emergencies, but not, in the absence of a political culture that favors democracy, fostering democracy. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dinopup (talk • contribs) 16:16, 5 September 2004 (UTC)

For example, a very important principle, at least historically, in the UK has been the concept of an independent civil service. Most of the executive is out of the day-to-day control of the government, which cannot hire and fire whoever it pleases: something that is not true in the US. The idea that an ambassador might be appointed because of party affiliations and personal friendship to the head of government or state would be seen in the UK as a hallmark of the worst kind of banana republic, but is a commonplace in the US.

Similarly the importance of an independent judiciary was an essential element of the constitutional settlement after the Glorious Revolution. Although the appointment of judges is far from transparent and is on the advice of the Prime Minister, in practice appointment is much less political than it is in the US. From this side of the pond we can wonder how the US constitution really operates at all.

So, separation of powers is an idea, popular in the US, that a state has three branches, and that their should be checks and balances between them. You can analyse other countries using that criterion but it will only confuse because the detailed checks and balances will be quite different in so far as they operate at all.

So, for example, in the UK the legislature can impeach members of the executive but would never do so (because they are really the same thing) and haven't done so for over a century. Judges cannot strike down legislation. Treaties are a matter for the executive only and aren't ratified anywhere or otherwise controlled. I could go on.

The CIA factbook is quite misleading (for the above reason). For example if one looks at France it would give no hint that half of the judicial system is really a part of the government. Now that really screws up any idea of separation of powers and (from a US POV) would seem to hopelessly compromise the system of public law in France. By contrast from a French perspective it is seen as a strength and a part of the French constitutional system. The experience is that judges who are also members of the civil service are much more ready to interfere with their colleagues decisions than ours, who are members of an independent judiciary and reluctant to step out of their proper constitutional sphere.

I hope this provides some assistance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Francis Davey (talk • contribs) 19:14, 14 August 2004 (UTC)

(replying to 2 unsigned anons above)

I am a citizen of the Netherlands, and I learnt about separation of powers in high school. Separation of powers does occur in many countries in continental europe at the very least, including my own. Separation of Powers is an ideal, making it work in practice must have often been a rather interesting challenge! ;-)

It's hard to hold a discussion with two people of Anglo-Saxon POV all on my own. Phew, tricky! :-) Kim Bruning 16:38, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You wrote: "The idea that an ambassador might be appointed because of party affiliations and personal friendship to the head of government or state would be seen in the UK as a hallmark of the worst kind of banana republic, but is a commonplace in the US."

This is, unfortunately, quite common in Australia. Australia has a parliamentary system modelled on the United Kingdom. — Yama 09:33, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Separation of powers is a myth, based on an error. Those countries which try to follow Montesquieu's model are aiming to achieve the impossible. Montesquieu thought he was describing the Westminster system. He got it wrong - why aim to implement his erroneous ideal of the British constitution?

Montesquieu believed that the English constitution was the best in the world, and a model to emulate. I agree with that. But it was the parliamentary system, constitutional monarchy, and rule of law that was the core of that success - not a magical separation of powers. Those countries who have most or all of those will be functioning democracies.

The draughters of the America constitution were heavily influenced by his error, and accordingly aimed to create a chimera based on his ideals. It doesn't work in practice, and certainly cannot be seen as a model of democracy, or an ideal for the rest of the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.197.15.138 (talk) 05:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

trias politica

I'm not sure "trias politica" is actually a synonym for "separation of powers". Is anyone familiar with what it actually means? I'm guessing based on Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu that it refers to the three Estates: monarchy, aristocracy, and the commons. I'm tenatively removing the term from the article until we know how to use it properly... -- Beland 01:13, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That was what I was taught in high school. If you have a scholarly reference, I'd love to see it. Kim Bruning 16:27, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A quick Google search comes up with nothing particularly clear..more scholarly sources are needed. Clearly, this phrase means "three" something, but whether it's the three branches, the three estates, or some Third Principle of Politics, I'm not sure. -- Beland 02:15, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I can't remember seeing that phrase anywhere in Montesquieu. I have studied comparative constitutional law and the separation of powers and frankly I think that the reference to "trias politica" ought to be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.237.157.136 (talk) 01:14, 14 September 2005

Multilanguage

I checked the other language wikis which I could read. English wikipedia now contradicts fr, de, and nl (nl has a very short article though). Something isn't right here. Kim Bruning 16:52, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"The media branch: . . ."

Though I agree with the characterization of the corporate media, I don't think this is the right place for this kind of editorializing. It gives the impression that Montesquieu was referring to corporate media. That's not really possible, is it?

EA 3/1/05 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.90.133.225 (talk • contribs) 14:20, 1 March 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced statements

"and today there are more parliamentary democracies than presidential."

I really have no idea whether or not this is true, though it's certainly plausible. There was no cited source, though. I have added an enumeration of the countries of the world to the "todo" list for this article, and once that is complete, it will either confirm or disprove this claim. -- Beland 02:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Except for the United States, every country that has attempted a presidential system has failed in its first try at democracy

My intuition found this statement dubious, so I removed it. If there is a reliable source, the statement can be re-inserted with a citation. -- Beland 02:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

The fact about every presidential government failing at least once came from "How Democratic is the United States Constitution?" I have seen it corroborated in several places including

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/pres.htm

Dinopup 02:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I assume you mean How Democratic Is the American Constitution? by Robert A. Dahl? I'll see if I can't get a copy from the library. The web site says:

When other countries imitated this plan -- as in virtually all of Latin America and some countries in Africa, Asia, and the post-Soviet arena -- they typically experienced break-downs followed by despotism. By contrast, in the United States, despite severe crises such as a major Civil War and the Depression, the system has survived until today, a truly exceptional experience that calls for explanations, as proposed here.

It's good to define "fail", which this quote does, but it doesn't go so far as to say every presidentialist country except the United States had those problems. The original statement also seem to cheerlead for the parliamentary POV...we need to be careful about not doing that for any particular system. -- Beland 01:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I have finished reading How Democratic Is the American Constitution? and it doesn't quite support the removed statement. I'll be updating the article that summarizes the book in a few days, and then will revisit this question. -- Beland 01:27, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I have finished updating How Democratic Is the American Constitution? I have read the entire 2001 edition, and as far as I can tell, the book does not support the statement, "Except for the United States, every country that has attempted a presidential system has failed in its first try at democracy". The main comparisons are to democracies that have been stable since 1950, of which the author identifies 22. He doesn't really make any systematic history analysis, and he says it's disputed whether presidentialist or parliamentary systems are better for stability.

Perhaps the systematic survey of world governments that is on the todo list would shed some light on the issue. -- Beland 06:14, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I have good friends who do not read books I recommend, so I am very flattered that an online stranger would read something I mentioned. The information about presidentialism only consistly working in the USA is also found in

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/pres.htm

"INTRODUCTION. The frequent collapse of presidentialist regimes in about 30 third world countries that have attempted to establish constitutions based on the principle of "separation of powers" suggests that this political formula is seriously flawed. By comparison, only some 13 of over 40 third world regimes (3l%) established on parliamentary principles had experienced breakdowns by coup d'etat or revolution as of 1985 (Riggs 1993a) (1)"

There is also a study, The Failure of Presidential Democracy by Juan Linz.

If you feel that the allegation that _every_ presidential experiment except that of the USA has failed, then perhaps the article could be changed to simply "presidentialism has failed in Third World countries more frequently than parliamentarism." I think that idea is well-established. Dinopup 12:10, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree it's well established that developing countries' governments have often failed, and that many of these have been presidentialist. I don't think it's well-established that the reason these regimes have failed is that they chose this particular form of government. It could easily be a conincidence that countries attempting to become democratic during a particular era tried to emulate the American system, for various cultural, policical, etc. reasons, rather than the common European one. That context should probably be presented to avoid the impression that the article was implying a causal relationship.

As for which type of system has failed more often, the scholars that Dahl cites say that parilamentary systems have fared worse. Does this mean that they have their own list of "failures" that shows parliamentary systems failing more frequently? Indeed, answering the question of what counts as a "failure" is an opportunity to introduce significant bias into what is then presented as an objective number.

Apart from concerns about bias, it's actually really interesting for readers to know which events scholars are actually counting up. Instead of making generalizations, can we get an actual list of "failures", so we can evaluate the strength of the various claims? It would also be nice to see if there were any confounding factors. -- Beland 22:59, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Fred Riggs actually compares Third World countries in the post-WWII environment. He empirically shows that a significantly higher percentage of presidential states have had coups, presidential power grabs etc. than parliamentary states. Of ~41 parliamentary states, over thirty have made it as uninterrupted democracies. Dinopup 02:50, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

After further research, the statement remains dubious. The presidential system article says there are lots of these types of governments in South America. Neither that nor the parliamentary system article seems to have a complete list, so a full enumeration is definitely needed. -- Beland 06:14, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Text removed from UK section

In contrast, many countries which have adopted separation of powers (especially in Latin America) have suffered from instability (coups d'etat, military dictatorships etc.) and no obvious case exists in which the separation of powers has prevented such instability.

This are POV remarks in the presidential vs. parliamentary debate, which do not belong in the UK section. -- Beland 22:39, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Historical Development?

Checks and balances was first created in 585 B.C. when Thales assumed that all human beings were made of of one element: water.

This excerpt confuses me a bit. It either needs to be better explained or, if it isn't actually relevent to this article, removed. Jeff Silvers 18:40, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Civilian control of the military

Just a small note to editors who might be interested in this topic, I've expanded civilian control of the military a fair bit lately and am looking to send it to peer review soon; if anyone has any insights to its improvement before I take that next step, your comments are invited on the talk page. Thanks. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 00:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

I just caught some severe vandalism that had survived since Nov. 28 [1]...we should keep a closer eye on this article. I'll put it on my watchlist too. Everyking 05:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Once upon a time

I was accused of writing on this article in an america centric POV. (Even though I hadn't ever been in the USA back then). Coming back to it now, I find that it now has, wait for it... an america centric POV, including many things that are just... wrong... about things outside the usa. What happened here? Kim Bruning 19:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

UK in eighteenth century

It is not well remembered, unfortunately, that there was a separate executive power in the UK prior to the evolution of "responsible government" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The monarch's powers are now exercised only on the advice of the prime minister, but this was not always the case, and Parliament and the King checked each other. Aaronrp 02:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Economic Supreme Court

Added the Economic Supreme Court.

PM. My book "Voting theory for democracy" contains a conclusion that presidential elections are unwise, and that best is the parliamentary system (premier chosen by parliament) with proportional representation.

Colignatus 02:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Congress does not have sole power to pass Constitutional amendments

Congress does not have sole power to pass Constitutional amendments. The state legislators on the application of 2/3’s of them can hold what is called a “Constitutional Convention” and pass amendments then. Except on state level (State Constitution’s that have different rules for how to go about doing this) it’s never been done to my knowledge, but it can be done.

Article. V. The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Source: http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution_transcript.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monorprise (talk • contribs) 08:58, 7 April 2006

If you'll notice, The words say 'sole Federal agency' the States can pass, by convention, ammendments, but the Congress is the only FEDERAL agency that can do so. Bo 11:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Failed GA

This article failed the GA nominations due to lack of references. Tarret 13:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

There are four most basic branches of power, not three!

The four fundamental columns are the legislative(s), the executive government, the judicary and the accuser's office (also called Attorney General in US parlance).

In countries where the accuser is subordinate to the government, like the USA, there is no true democracy! Due to gov't abuse the accuser will push false charges or refuse to make charges at all to keep people in legal limbo (see Guantanamo Bay Camp X-ray). Due to the very nature of court proceedings, judical process is slow and thus false charges take up to 5 years to clear, meaning people can be stripped of up to 10% of their active lifespan (the magyar people live for less than 50 years) if they are held in confinement throughout the case. This amounts to cruel punishment, because no settlement $ can return the years you lost.

I am very proud to be Hungarian, because our constitutional court declared that the public accuser's administration shall enjoy the same liberties invested in the judicary branch (report only to the parliament and change of budget only by 2/3rd vote of parliament). Thus magyar people cannot be falsely accused or denied to have their case judged in court. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.70.32.136 (talk • contribs) June 16, 2006 (UTC)

The Attorney Generals responsibilities are Executive, he enforces the Laws. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.131.23.208 (talk) 23:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Police

What branch do civilian police belong to? matturn 07:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The executive. 217.23.170.233 19:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC).

Indonesia

In Indonesia, the military form a branch of government that overlaps with the legislative branch. If I knew more about the situation, I'd add something about it to the article... matturn 07:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

This ceased to be the case in 2004. matturn 03:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

UK bias

The article currently says:

Thus it can be seen that in the United Kingdom the three "powers" are not separated, but are entwined. However, this has never threatened British civil government. In contrast, many countries which have adopted separation of powers (especially in Latin America) have suffered from instability (coups d'etat, military dictatorships etc.). Some observers believe that no obvious case exists in which such instability was prevented by the separation of powers.

Despite the words "some observers", I think this section has a pretty clear bias. First of all, showing a few examples of unstable countries with separation of powers, and contrasting a stable one with no such separation, does not make for a decent logical argument. But even aside from the weakness of the argument, if we're going to be impartial here, I think we should cite this opinion, and/or provide the opposite opinion so the reader has a balanced view. --Doradus 18:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

US Section

The US specific section is unbelievably big, especially considering that there is a page for the Separation_of_powers_under_the_United_States_Constitution! Usually when there is a {{Main|MAIN PAGE}} clause, the following abstract is just that: an abstract.

Can someone who is more knowledgeble than I take it upon themselves to merge most of the stuff into the main article? Otherwise I'll just be bold. --Swift 21:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Branch overview table

The table is huge. I was thinking it should possibly go into a separate page, such as United States branches of government. 20:53, 30 June 2006 version. --Swift 21:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the table is a good idea (better to organize the information that way rather than in a rambling narrative), but I find it confusing: I expect each row to talk about the powers of only that particular branch and their checks on the other branches. IOW, here's what I expect:

Branch	Powers	Checks on Exec	Checks on Legis	Checks on Judic
Exec	Exec's powers	checks on self	Exec's checks on Legis	Exec's checks on Judic
Legis	Legis's powers	Legis's checks on Exec	checks on self	Legis's checks on Judic
Judic	Judic's powers	Judic's checks on Exec	Judic's checks on Legis	checks on self

But here's what I see:

Branch	Powers	Exec counterbal	Legis counterbal	Judic counterbal
Exec	Exec's powers	checks on self	Legis's checks on Exec	Judic's checks on Exec
Legis	Legis's powers	Exec's checks on Legis	checks on self	Judic's checks on Legis
Judic	Judic's powers	Exec's checks on Judic	Legis's checks on Judic	checks on self

Am I the only one who finds the current layout illogical? - dcljr (talk) 09:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

For the record, this part of the article has been changed (not by me). - dcljr (talk) 19:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring and archiving talk page

Started refactoring the talk page. Did so up to Revision as of 02:50, 24 May 2005. I'm going to wait a bit for comments before continuing.

I suggest that we also archive some of the older topics. --Swift 05:05, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree :) Drum guy (talk) 00:49, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

where is the executive

when you mention the branches (you say there are 3 but you only state 2) and their powers you fail to mention the excutive branch and it's powers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.240.159 (talk) 00:29, 18 October 2006

Separation of powers in the Presbyterian Church

The US government structure has much in common with Presbyterian polity. Indeed, many issues of state governance reflect problems of church governance. Someone once told me that the US government structure was in fact based on Presbyterian church structure. Many writers point out the influence of Scottish thinkers on the American Constitution; the link could be made directly to the Presbyterian Church. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.124.125.57 (talk) 03:30, 24 December 2006 (UTC).

Checks and balances

Is checks and balances limited to the US? Because if it's not, then this page's section on it is horrifically America-centric. Not to say the rest of the article isn't; it mentions the States way too often. VolatileChemical 07:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Most of this article is comparison between the US and the UK systems. So I added the worldwide view thing. 80.222.50.237 16:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Montesquieu is wrongly credited for being the inventor of the checks and balances system. The british introduced it after the war against the Frecnh (which ended in 1713), so that the parlement could control spending better. This and the glorious revolution were the two major reasons the British created the checks and balances system. It was 50 years later when Montesuieu took interest in this system, and worked it out to a fully seperation of powers.

source: GERARD, E., hedendaagse geschiedenis, Leuven, 2005. -grtz, Titirius. Titirius (talk) 09:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

How far should the powers should be separated?

If the branches of government are separated and isolated to make sure one doesn't control or exert power over another unfairly, doesn't that mean one branch can do whatever it wants and the other branches are powerless to stop it? VolatileChemical 11:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

That's what the "checks and balances" stuff is about. The branches are largely separate, but overlapping. So there's some monopoly action happening, and some competition. matturn 03:16, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Dang anglo-saxons!:-)

I worked on this article early on, and at the time worked from the perspective of civics lessons I'd taken in .nl. I was promptly accused of U.S. bias (despite never having set foot in that country at the time ;-) ... and ... it promptly got rewritten with a U.S. bias, where it stays to this day. It stands as one of my abject failures :-(

Most prominently, I notice that "parliamentary systems can't have separation of powers" or words to that effect? In fact, there's very little about .eu at all!

Here's a quick rundown on what I read on the different wikipedias: nl.wikipedia explains how this works for Belgium and the Netherlands. (It would be insane for .nl and .be not to have proper separation of powers, they are modern democratic nations that both had their constitutions updated in the 19th century.) Germany is a federal nation, so it works a bit like France or the USA. The Danish wikipedia explains how separation of powers works in the parliamentary Denmark. French wiki starts with aristoteles, and then goes on to explain Locke and Montesquieu.

I wonder if I could get some translators to help me NPOV-ise this article?

--Kim Bruning 19:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Being Belgium, a student of history and as a sane person. I must add that Belgium and the Netherlands have indeed seperation of powers.

I do not know about other countries, but, being Italian, I can tell that the depiction of Italy's system is just wrong. In fact, the situation is exactly that described in the previous paragraph, with the de facto merging of executive and legislative powers enforced at all levels of government. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.26.167.30 (talk) 10:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

discussion on merging 'fifth power' to this article

I disagree to merge 'fifth power' to this article, because the concept 'fifth power' is not as established as the concept 'separation of power'. As a proof I mention the number of interwiki links .Penpen0216 15:51, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Titirius (talk) 09:36, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Weasel Words

It can be argued is pure weasel; just to name one. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 09:01, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Some observers believe is another weasel. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 09:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

POV

Characterizing the lack of "universal health care" in the US as a failure of government is not NPOV. I have therefore edited the offending sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.17.143.99 (talk) 06:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I would argue that health care would be a central mandate of an executive branch (or 'government') of any democracy,

and the lack of it would indeed be a failure to see to the best interests of the constituency.203.206.94.94 (talk) 06:29, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

WP Law assessment

Assessed this as B class - thought it was solid and close to be ready for a GA nomination (have just read above that it was submitted for GA in May 2006 and failed due to lack of references; sounds about right). I think it is a high level importance article for that WikiProject. --Legis (talk - contribs) 23:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality in US Section

In the section United States: Three Branches, the language is not very neutral. The author says outright that the executive branch is attempting to usurp the legislative branch. The author also incorrectly quotes Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution as saying that congress contains all political power in the US. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rampage455 (talk • contribs) 22:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Separation of Function

The system of government where the legislature makes the law and the judiciary only interpret and apply the law. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.96.129.217 (talk) 20:00, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

advantages and disadvantages

Just as the fusion of powers article has an Advantages and Disadvantages section, so should this article. NorthernThunder (talk) 11:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Separation of duties

User 81.184.2.146: thank you for that interesting additional link. Please sign with a username in future contributions. --Wikiain (talk) 11:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

United Kingdom

yeah, I simply corrected the United Kingdom's section, but was reverted, and it was tagged as vandelism.

I simply changed;

• Parliament-legislature
• Prime Minister, Cabinet, Government Departments & Civil Service-executive
• Courts-judiciary

to

• Queen in Parliament under God - the Crown; Parliament: Legislature
• Queen in Council under God - the Crown; Privy Council, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet: Executive
• Queen on the Bench under God - the Crown; Supreme Courts, Privy Council: Judiciary

I improved the section, adding the appropriate names and the correct functions, yet got reverted...why?...i will dispute anyone who tells me this is wrong user:geord0 —Preceding undated comment added 16:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC).

Citations

This page should be fantastic and has brilliant suggestions to do at the top of the page but there are no citations. where have they all gone is this page suffering from vandalism does it attract a lot of teenage through traffic? my virdict please citate lot easier to do it as you go along i have no idea what books this could of come from.

And saying the queen depending on where she is is something diffrent is a lie. if you are not from britain then perhaps this is just down to confusion between head of state and parliament.please take the knowledge of the majority seriously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Delighted eyes (talk • contribs) 13:33, 27 September 2011 (UTC)