The importance of the seperation of powers

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Nielsio]

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It prevents too much power from being centered into one person or group's hands. It creates "a government of laws and not of men." I'm curious as to what other people see as its benefits and drawbacks.
Are you from the U.S. tom?

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So it seems the moral argument is that centralization of power is bad and decentralization of power is good.

Is this correct?

If this is correct, what would be the logical conclusion of this argument?

[Phil153]

Moral argument?? It's a practical one. There is no logical conclusion. I love how you guys try to earn cheap points, though.

And it's not decentralization either - that's something completely different. It's separation. Decentralization is when no one person is in command, and power and autonomy is spread to a large number of units. Separation is when each a few entities split up centralized power into specific roles.

[AWoodside]

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Moral argument?? It's a practical one. There is no logical conclusion. I love how you guys try to earn cheap points, though.

And it's not decentralization either - that's something completely different. It's separation. Decentralization is when no one person is in command, and power and autonomy is spread to a large number of units. Separation is when each a few entities split up centralized power into specific roles.

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How many entities is "a few entities" and what is the point? From what I've read in the thread so far it seems like the point is to prevent abuse by limiting the probability that all these roles will be acting in concert. If this is the case it seems like you'd reduce your variance and potential risk of ruin by spreading the role over as many people as possible, no? i.e., 3 branches of government is better than 1, 100 members of the senate is better than 1 elected official etc. If we're trying to avoid power being concentrated in one single minded individual or a group of people acting towards their own, unified ends, we'll do a better job the more people are involved. The logical conclusion to this line of thought seems fairly similar to what Neilso was implying.

[qwnu]

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it seems like the point is to prevent abuse by limiting the probability that all these roles will be acting in concert. If this is the case it seems like you'd reduce your variance and potential risk of ruin by spreading the role over as many people as possible, no?

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Well, you have to balance the benefits of separation against the costs. Almost everybody agrees that separation has a high cost in terms of government efficiency. Some probably say this decrease in efficiency is exponential, so that, say, 10 branches of government would be orders of magnitude less efficient than three. At some point gridlock sets in and nothing gets done. Whether this point is 10 branches or 300,000,000, who knows? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[meleader2]

This image illustrates the need for seperation of powers rather nicely. I'll let others elaborate on why. I hope UCY.

[Kaj]

I agree with the separation of powers, which is why the federal govt is dangerous, no matter how many branches of govt. Those who promote separation of powers and don't agree that municipal-level political organizations are better than a federal system don't really support true separation of powers, but rather promote the appearance of separation of power.

[Kaj]

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I linked a study some time back done by the World Bank about degree of corruption vs type of government. Parliamentary governments, with far less in the way of separation of powers, and specifically the Westminster system, came out ahead of any other system.

I think part of the reason is that almost all countries with the Westminster system derived great benefit from the example of British rule. The British just know how to run things, and most countries they've touched have become civilized and extremely stable.

I think the presidential system is flawed. It invests too much power in an individual while giving them too little accountability. When the lawmakers and the executive form the same unit, one set of hands guides the entire policy of the nation, and the buck stops entirely with them. Such a system seems to encourage self restraint rather than excesses.

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All true. And the fact that we have winner take all leads to a 2-party system -- you don't have separation of powers when everyone comes from the majority parties and there is zero representation from other views. Many Euro countries have as many as 20 viable parties ... we have an entrenched power system catering to just two views which portend to be polar but are not. Our system is broke -- the Constitution isn't the fix, it is part of the very problem.

[boracay]

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." - James Madison, Federalist Papers #47

"Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control." - Lord Acton (1834-1902)

[ConstantineX]

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I think the verdict of history is that separation of powers just isn't necessary. Lots of Western countries have much more unitary governments than the US and do just fine.

Also, this thread is exactly what people think of when they say "AC hijack." Not so much because tom's point is irrelevant, but because 2/3 of the posts in this thread are about it and he still hasn't actually made any kind of point.

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Really? Of the few things I still believe from high school civics, the separation of powers and our adversarial system are core. IMO it's the reason gets such good outcomes without needing "technocrats". Could you elaborate?