Talk:Separation of powers

Splitting off 'branches of government': The solution to finally advancing past 'start class'?

Here's a thought. Why not move large parts of this article – the ones dedicated mostly to describing the structure of individual governments – to a separate article by the name "branches of government" (or something similar).

The way things are now, the principle and theory of separated powers is overwhelmed by the detailed and lengthy accounts of each country's arms of government, which I feel misses the point. I would consider "separation of powers" primarily a political philosophy, constitutional studies, and constitutional law concept, whereas the branches of government parts seem more like their own thing, mostly in the remit of descriptive political science (specifically, comparative government).
Readers might have an easier time finding what they are looking for if we distinguish these differing focuses. There's clearly a lot of interest in institutions and branches of government as a topic in itself, so it's probably worth its own article.

I think this split would also help better maintain WP:NPOV in the separation of powers article. Another pragmatic editorial reason to have two distinct articles is that they probably call for two somehwat different types of editor/expert: the more conceptually inclined and systematic ones for the separation of powers principle, and the more taxonomically inclined and particularist ones for the listing of different institutional structures of individual governments.

I'm at the beginning stages of this idea, so I'm happy to brainstorm reasons for and against. So, my fellow editors, what say you?
—§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 19:57, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. Pecopteris (talk) 01:27, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Support this. All that would have to be done would be to create a new article would be to split off the "In different countries" section. I've deleted some of the original research from that but not all of it: especially the United Kingdom section, 4 10-sentence paragraphs long and entirely unsourced. It might be difficult to pass the notability guideline: there are a few good sources in there (at least 2 by my count), but they're not all directly about separation of powers, even if they talk about it. However, it could be justified by it just being a page split, and sources obviously existing. Think it can be done. Mrfoogles (talk) 01:48, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

You should probably just do it, this talk page is probably not going to get much traffic. Mrfoogles (talk) 01:48, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Created Draft:Branches of government, and cleaned up the formatting a bit. It still needs a lead, and I'm not sure how it would do with new page review, so I'm not going to move it to mainspace, though. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:48, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

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I'm pleased to have received positive feedback from the both of you, and no objections. I told myself I'd observe the talk page for one month, and then perform the split – provided there were no substantiated objections to negate the presumption of WP:Consensus, naturally. The discussion seems to have come to a close organically after not quite a month. I guess now the 'branches of government' article exists, with the worthwhile sections from the second heading serving as a basis for the draft, the next step is the big one: deleting the entire second heading? So that, in effect, it will have been draftified?

Thank you also for doing a lot of necessary cleanup, Mrfoogles. I've come to realize that the explanation for the article's low quality may lie just as much in its approach – just listing a bunch of instances of the thing, rather than providing analysis and summary (for a description of this phenomenon, see essay WP:CARGO) – as it lies in off-topic material; but I balk at making sweeping deletions. The lack of sourcing for large parts is another good reason to remove them, however.

Funnily enough, even though, as you say, this talk page doesn't get much traffic, it garnered two responses within a few weeks; whereas my invitations to participate here, which I extended to WikiProject Philosophy, to WikiProject Politics and to WikiProject Law – each having ostensibly far busier talk pages – seem to have gone unacknowledged entirely.

—§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 21:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I am late to this party but I also support this idea. Novellasyes (talk) 15:39, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

citing checks and balances

this is an often made claim and there is obviously truth value to it, but i cant seem to find any good source. any ideas? 216.164.249.213 (talk) 06:56, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Which claim do you mean, in particular?
I'm also a bit dubious whether 'truth value' is such a simple matter here – the relation between the principle of differentiating and separating powers and the idea of letting one power check and balance another is rather unclear and glossed over in much of the literature. —§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 20:43, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

What are the three branches?

The article says the three branches are law-making, adjudication, and execution. I don't think "execution" is a good word. I have always learnt that the third branch is responsible for *enforcement*, and typically means police. Police can use force and can (in a sense) violate basic human rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement. It's important that the law-makers set the rules of what the police can do, that adjudications done according to the rules. The three are supposed to be independent, but obviously if they start violating their remit, then the other powers have to intervene, and if they don't intervene, a higher power still must intervene. The sovereign used to be a higher power, and in a constitutional democracy the people are sovereign, and what the King or Queen can do is limited by the elected representatives of the people, ie by the lower house of parliament. OK, just my thoughts here, I am not a political scientist Richard Gill (talk) 12:00, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

You are right to question the terminology here.

The activities of government ministers, diplomats, the civil service, the police, and the military ‒ those entities conventionally argued to belong together in an 'executive' arm of government ‒ are extremely varied, and it is debated whether their function can truly be subsumed under the category of 'execution', as in, the carrying into force of laws and lawful top-level decisions (or acting independently/provisionally in the public interest in the absence of law). Whether there is a more accurate descriptor than 'executive' is a thorny issue that goes to the heart of the matter, and should be further explored in the article.

However, I think there is merit in sticking to the longstanding and well-recognized terms 'executive'/'execution', barring revolutionary leaps in the philosophical analysis of what government does. —§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 10:30, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Propose to remove the paragraphs on John Calvin and early New England colonies, and to rethink the relationship of checks and balances to separation of powers

The 'early modern' subsection in the 'history' section of the article begins with a paragraph extoling the French-Genevan Protestant reformer John Calvin's advocacy of republicanism, the rule of law, and limited government through inter-institutional checks.

These remarks bear some relation to the subject of the article, yes, but I do not think they ought to be included in a succinct, encyclopedic treatment of the s. of p.: after all, the rule of law, checks and balances, limited government, republicanism, democracy etc. etc. are all closely related, but one must first distinguish them to then relate them to one another.

So far as I can tell, John Calvin is not a particularly notable voice in early modern s. of p. discourse. I would expect Gwyn 1965, especially, to discuss Calvin in relation to s. of p., since this source is ‒ to quote its subtitle ‒ "an analysis of the doctrine from its origin to the adoption of the United States Constitution [in 1789]," and thus focuses squarely on the time period covered by the subsection. Yet the source makes no mention of Calvin at all. There are some clues that this paragraph's addition may have been down to tendentious, POV-driven editing by User:Speahlman (see this talk page entry from the same year, and compare the same out-of-place Calvin quote at Mixed government), who last made an edit a decade ago. Neither did this editor distinguish between checks and balances and separation of powers (see, e.g. here).

The following paragraph (begun by the same author, as far as I can tell), reciting facts about the structure of government in the early New England colonies, also does not sufficiently relate its assertions to the subject of the article. The last sentence does contend, in a few words, that the colonies' governing structures separated government powers. The way these governments are described in the foregoing sentences seems to partly contradict that conclusion, though, since e.g. the Plymouth General Court and the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (see Massachusetts Bay Colony § Government), which were assemblies of all freemen (technically, company stockholders) in the colony, mostly devoled their governing role to the small Council of Assistants, which exercised executive, judicial and legislative powers (John Dickinson, "The Massachusetts Charter and the Bay Colony (1628‒1660)", Chapter V in Commonwealth History of Massachusetts (A. B. Hart, ed.), Vol. I: Colony of Massachusetts Bay (New York: The States History Company, 1927), p. 103 ‒ via Internet Archive). In any case, just pointing to these governments as examples of the s. of p. doctrine put into practice does not justify giving them more than a passing mention to illustrate a larger point.

If no one is adamant that the offending paragraphs be kept, I will go ahead an remove them.

A more complicated question is that of the relation between the s. of p. doctrine and the idea of checks and balances. Though it is frequently elided by classic authors (such as Bolingbroke, cf. Gwyn 1965, pp. 94 et seq.) and modern experts alike (Waldron 2013, passim and in the article abstract), subject-matter experts agree that these normative principles can be differetiated (see in particular Waldron 2013, pp. 441 et seq., with reference to Vile 1967's attempt to formulate a 'pure doctrine' of s. of p. [at p. 14]). Checks and balances is either a way of structuring government so that the separation of powers and the distribution of power can be maintained (maintaining one organ's independence by giving it the power to hinder another organ when its actions may endanger that independence: this is the view taken by the introductory paragraph of the 'checks and balances' subsection in the s. of p. article, citing to Federalist No. 48), or a principle that must be brought into equilibrium to achieve an optimal, 'balanced' government (this is, e.g., Bolingbroke's view, according to Gwyn; see also Waldron 2013, ibid.).

Most of the subsection explicitly dedicated to 'checks and balances' discusses the idea without properly explaining how it is relevant to the more narrow subject of the article. Towards the end, it expatiates on checks and balances in lengthy direct quotations from primary sources. Parts of the section may be salvageable, but much will need to be cut. Furthermore, I don't think it sensibly belongs in the 'History' section.

—§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 14:13, 25 May 2025 (UTC)