States throughout history have developed concepts and methods of separation of power. In England, parliament from its origins at least seven centuries ago was central to an struggle for power between the original executive (the monarch) and the councils of landowners, church leaders and commons. Similarly judges, originally representing the executive, developed increasing independence. Parliament was a significant force in an increasingly mixed form of government by the time of the Tudors and soon afterwards was directly challenging the doctrine of the divine right to power of the Stuart monarchs. The English Civil War (1642-60) between parliament and monarchy resulted in the monarchy continuing but under an arrangement which established not only parliament’s legislative authority but also opened the way to the development of cabinet government.
In his Second Treatise of Civil Government, English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) noted the temptations to corruption that exist where “... the same persons who have the powers of making laws to have also in their hands the power to execute them ... “. Locke’s views were part of a growing English radical tradition, but it was French philosopher, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), who articulated the fundamentals of the separation doctrine as a result of visiting England in 1729-31. In his The Spirit of Laws (1748), Montesquieu considered that English liberty was preserved by its institutional arrangements. He saw not only separations of power between the three main branches of English government, but within them, such as the decision-sharing power of judges with juries; or the separation of the monarch and parliament within the legislative process.
Locke and Montesquieu’s ideas found a practical expression in the American revolution in the 1780s. Motivated by a desire to make impossible the abuses of power they saw as emerging from the England of George III, the framers of the Constitution of the United States adopted and expanded the separation of powers doctrine. To help ensure the preservation of liberty, the three branches of government were both separated and balanced. Each had separate personnel and there were separate elections for executive and legislature. Each had specific powers and some form of veto over the other. The power of one branch to intervene in another through veto, ratification of appointments, impeachment, judicial review of legislation by the Supreme Court (its ability to strike down legislation or regulations deemed unconstitutional), and so forth, strengthened the separation of powers concept, though inevitably involving each branch in the affairs of another and to some extent actually giving some of the powers of one branch to another
It was a high water mark in institutionalising individual liberty through the separation of powers and one embedded even further by early judgements of the Supreme Court but, as the struggles, inefficiencies and political gamesmanship illustrated by the recent Clinton impeachment attempt or by Congress’s delaying of budgets, it also made government harder. This had been partly the intention. Few subsequent democracies have fully adopted the American approach, but the concept is widely aspired to, though taking varying forms amidst the complex interplay of ideas, interests, institutions and Realpolitik that are part of each system of government.
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