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The Separation of Powers Revisited
| Article
# : |
11405 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
12,879 Words |
| Author
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George Carey
George Carey is professor of government at Georgetown
University and is the editor of the Political Science
Reviewer. He is coauthor with Willmoore Kendall of Basic
Symbols of the American Political Tradition and coauthor with
Charles Hyneman of A Second Federalist. His forthcoming book
is The Federalist: Design for a Constitutional Republic. |
Reform of our constitutional system has long been one of the favorite and principal preoccupations of American political scientists. Whereas the average American is inclined to revere the Founding Fathers and their handiwork, the typical political scientist tends to find fault with both. These alleged faults are varied and numerous, ranging from less than honorable motives on the part of the framers to inadequacies in the constitutional structures. As far as the basic principles of our Constitution are concerned, however, the separation of powers ranks high on their hit list. Indeed, almost every serious reform advanced by political scientists has had elimination of the separation of powers built into the Constitution as one of its principal objectives.
Evidence of this is seen in a reform report issued under auspices of the American Political Science Association in 1950. Entitled "Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System," the report is one of the more ingenious and ambitious reform proposals to come along in decades. The principal architects of this report not only wanted, as its title suggests, "more responsible" or "disciplined" political parties that could offer up programmatic policy alternatives for the voters at election time (thereby turning our elections into real "mandates"), but they also sought to overcome what they considered the deleterious effects of divided power a, which, in their view, prevented the national government from dealing effectively with critical social and economic problems. The parties, that is, if sufficiently responsible or disciplined, would provide a unifying link between the branches, capable of overcoming the centripetal forces caused by the constitutional division of powers.
This concern with the separation of powers extends, however, beyond political scientists. Consider the "Statement of the Problem" issued in 1983 by the Committee on the Constitutional System a committee composed of leading politicians, public officials, and academics. According to this statement, the "separation and balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches," "unique among the mature" democracies, creates "difficulties faced only in the United States." And the statement minces no words about the nature of these difficulties. "Three independent centers," each structured to prevent "any centralized" control over the machinery as a whole," have produced repeated "stalemate and deadlock" and "indecision and inaction in the face of urgent problems." Save for a "time of great crisis," the statement continues, "the government is now unable to act in a timely manner or not at all."
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