Branches of Government Paper - Essay Example

The Three Branches of the Government ID Number: of School Teacher's Word Count: 743 July 10, 2011 The main reason why the founders of America divided the government into the three branches of government which are co-equal with each other is the separation of their powers. It was intended to prevent one person from gaining too much power which can lead to graft, corruption, abuses, nepotism and despotism (Northrup, 2003, p. 44); framers of the American Constitution were so obsessed with preventing this from happening after experiencing cruelty by absolutism under the British monarchy before gaining their independence.

This principle of the separation of powers is embedded in the American system of checks and balances. The system is quite a complex set-up but has amazingly worked for the past centuries since this country gained its independence from its former colonial master (Hargrove, 2000, p. 8). Main Benefits – besides safeguarding democracy and freedom in the new nation by ensuring no one individual gains absolute political power, each of the three branches are also independent and co-equal from each other.

In other words, the three branches which are the executive, legislative and judicial branches can check and balance on the other two branches. It was the great French political philosopher and social commentator Montesquieu who gave the founding fathers this idea of separation of powers as a preventive measure against abuses and some critics of this system had said it had led to periods of political paralysis in which an agenda of the government cannot be pursued due to blocks within this system.

The main benefit of this separation of powers through checks and balances is that all three branches are encouraged to do their best in performing their duties and responsibilities least they be criticized and censured by the other two branches of the government. This style of checks and balances is often referred to as the “Madisonian model” of government in order to forestall human nature of greed and self-interest in manifesting itself in politics in which a person or only a small group of people will be able to control the reins of government and in turn manage to get themselves wealthy at the expense of other people.

As each branch is co-equal and independent, the executive exercises some oversight on the legislative by the veto power of the president on the laws that will be passed by the US Congress; the president exercises some control on the judiciary by the power of appointments in selecting people whom to recommend to vacant positions in the judiciary. The legislative branch in turn can check and balance the power of the executive by impeachment which is a legal way to remove a duly-elected president, pass new tax measures, approve the budget for the next year as submitted by the president, approve the recommendations for appointment to departmental and ambassadorial posts and lastly, the power to decide on a winner of elections in case there is a tie in the electoral votes in the electoral college system.

It has the sole power to introduce amendments to the US Constitution (Bardes, Shelley and Schmidt, 2010, p. 55). Obstacles by the Division of Powers – this system of separation of powers is also a very cumbersome way of governing a country. It can lead to what is called as a “deadlock” in the government in which nothing substantial gets done due to much wrangling and quarrels. It can be seen in the way Washington works today, in which one political party blocks another party's agenda by filibuster and other means of delaying the passage of important legislation; this paralysis is termed as a “deadlock in democracy” (Goldwin and Kaufman, 1986, p. 165). Important pieces of legislation cannot be acted upon with dispatch such as the debt ceiling.

Conflicts Then and Now – the founding fathers experienced what it was like to be a colony under an absolutist monarch and the abuses committed under his name such as the tax power of the British king without representation or consultation from the American subjects. They therefore did not want the possibility of any future despot from arising in American soil and one way to ensure this does not happen was their checks and balances through separation of the powers of the three branches of government by making them co-equal with each other.

This separation principle has however weakened the federal government to some extent with secessionist tendencies of some states resulting in the civil war (O'Brien et al. 1991, p. 166). References Bardes, B. A., Shelley, M. C. & Schmidt, S. W. (2010). The essentials: American government and politics today. Boston, MA, USA: Cengage Learning. Goldwin, R. A. & Kaufman, A. (1986). Separation of powers – does it still work? Washington, D.C., USA: American Enterprise Institute. Hargrove, J. (2000).

Judicial branch of the government. Dayton, OH, USA: Lorenz Educational Press. Northrup, C. C. (2003). The American economy: a historical encyclopedia. CA, USA: ABC-CLIO, Incorporated. O'Brien, S., McGuire, P. & McPherson, J. M. (1991). American political leaders: from colonial times to the present. CA, USA: ABC-CLIO, Incorporated.