WebBalances, and government essay. The Constitution set forth a government composed of 3 branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. Each branch was given certain powers Estimated Reading Time: 3 mins WebThe principle of checks and balances is defined simply as being an instrument, which promotes openness and assures other objective such as fairness and controlling WebBecause the number of checks and balances present in a political system affects the ability of that system to produce new legislation, it also impacts a government’s ability to handle
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This sample Checks and Balances Essay is published for informational and educational purposes only. Free essays and research papers, are not written by our writers, they are contributed by users, so we are not responsible for the content of this free sample paper. If you want to buy a high quality essay at affordable price please use our custom essay writing service. James Madison famously wrote in Federalist No. Because the underlying causes of factions cannot be removed, Madison argued for a political system—the U. Constitution—capable of controlling them. The division of the legislature into two chambers and the balancing of the presidency against the legislative branch mean that no one faction is likely to control the entire governing apparatus.
In addition, federalism balances power of the states against the power of the central government and independent courts adjudicate disputes that arise between the various branches of government. The U. political system was designed to prevent one particular ideological faction from gaining control of the entire system of government, a situation that the Founders believed would lead to despotism. However, the checks and balances inherent in the U. system also create the possibility of gridlock. Because each branch of government must agree with all other branches for a bill to become a law, lawmaking is more difficult than it would be in a system with fewer checks and balances.
This has led some to argue that a democratic system with fewer checks, such as Westminster parliamentary democracy, is superior. While normative arguments both in favor of and against checks and balances can and have been made, it is also possible to examine checks and balances from checks and balances essay positive perspective. Indeed, most political science literature of the last several decades has taken a positive, rather than normative, approach to checks and balances. The ability of one branch of government to act as a check on another branch depends upon the power granted to it within the political system.
Perhaps the strongest form of check is veto power, checks and balances essay the ability to block a bill from becoming law. In the United States, the House, Senate, and the president are all veto players because no bill can pass without the support of all three. Tsebelis argues that as the number veto players within a political system grows, and as their preferences over policy become more ideologically diverse, it checks and balances essay more difficult to make new policy. In other words, the policy status quo becomes more difficult to change, and, therefore, more stable. Veto power arises from two different sources. In some instances, actors such as the House, Senate, and president have constitutionally defined veto rights.
Separation of powers checks and balances essay, in which the president and the legislature are elected in different elections, and the president is not accountable to the legislature through a vote of confidence, by definition have several constitutionally defined, checks and balances essay, or institutional, veto players, checks and balances essay. In other political systems, veto rights emerge as part of the political process. In parliamentary democracies, where the government is elected by, and serves at the behest of, the lower house of parliament, there may be only one institutional veto player—formally the parliament itself assuming there is no upper legislative chamber with veto power —but numerous partisan veto players.
In parliamentary democracies with multiparty systems, coalition governments are the norm. If no single party controls a majority of the seats in parliament, a coalition is likely necessary to pass laws. Each party in the governing coalition has the ability to block legislation by informing its members of parliament to vote against the bill. Tsebelis refers to these parties as partisan veto players, because the political system generates veto rights for parties through governing coalitions, despite the fact that the constitution does not provide them with a formal veto rights. When examining checks and balances within a political system, it is necessary to consider both types of veto players. Federal separation-of-powers systems, such as the United States or Brazil, checks and balances essay, have several constitutionally defined veto players, checks and balances essay, while unitary parliamentary countries with multiparty coalition governments, such as the Netherlands and Israel, have many partisan veto players.
The separation-of-powers systems have institutionalized checks and balances, checks and balances essay, while other systems generate checks through partisan coalitions. The effects, however, are the same. All else equal, the more actors with veto power, the more difficult it is to produce policy change. In some instances, checks and balances essay, supermajority requirements can generate additional checks by making it easier for actors to veto legislation. In the U. Senate, for example, the filibuster rule means that a supermajority of sixty senators is required to pass important bills. Because Senate rules require sixty votes to cut off debate and hold a vote, forty senators can effectively block legislation.
In the other cases, supermajorities are sometimes sufficient to overcome checks, thereby weakening them. Two thirds supermajorities in the House and Senate can also override a presidential veto, meaning the president cannot block a bill when two-thirds of both houses desire to pass it. Similar veto override provisions exist in many presidential systems. By definition, veto players are all alike in their ability to block legislation, but their powers may vary with regard to agenda setting. Although the term agenda setting may have a variety of meanings in everyday language, in works of formal theory it means something very specific: the ability to make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to another actor. The president has no formal power to checks and balances essay a bill that Congress has sent, and can only sign the bill into law or veto it.
If the president wishes to make amendments to a bill, it would require a veto of the bill, then to checks and balances essay a member of Congress willing to reintroduce a new version of the bill in Congress, checks and balances essay, and subsequently hope the amendments survive the congressional process. The last part of this process is the least likely. The opposite is true in a parliamentary democracy. In parliamentary systems, such as the United Kingdom, the government drafts legislation and makes a take-it-or-leave-it proposal to the parliament, checks and balances essay. Although a parliament can debate the merits of bills, there is usually little room for substantive amendments.
Governments in parliamentary systems tend to get their way, leaving parliaments to complain that they are rubber stamps. Agenda-setting rights grant an actor a great deal of power. Exactly how much power, checks and balances essay, though, depends upon precise decision- making rules as well as the ideological alignment of veto players. Agenda setters have more power when all checks and balances essay players consider checks and balances essay status quo to be unsatisfactory. If everyone agrees that the current policy is inferior and that particular direction requires change, checks and balances essay, the actor possessing agenda-setting authority can simply propose the preferred policy.
The other actors are then forced to compare the new proposal to the inferior status quo. When there are one or more veto players whose preference is relatively close to the status quo policy, the power of the agenda setter diminishes. Assuming the agenda setter prefers a substantial change, the agenda setter will not be able to propose the preferred policy because the veto player close to the status quo will veto it. Instead, the agenda setter must propose a policy preferred by all veto players over the current policy. The precise checks and balances essay of formal agenda-setting authority varies greatly both within and across countries.
For example, while it is generally the case that the U. Congress has formal agenda-setting authority, the president can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the Senate when appointing cabinet members and judges. The president makes appointments, but the Senate has the power to scrutinize and veto the appointees. The president, though, can temporarily bypass the requirement of Senate approval by making an appointment while the Senate is in recess. Likewise, the U. president has formal agenda-setting authority when negotiating foreign treaties. The president may negotiate a treaty with other checks and balances essay, but the treaty must then be approved by a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
The Senate cannot, however, amend the treaty. In other countries, presidents have more formal powers to amend legislation than the American president, thereby reducing the agenda-setting power of the legislature. The Argentinean and Brazilian presidents, for example, can pass into law the sections of a bill they approve, and veto the sections they do not. In the United States, this procedure is referred to as a line-item veto, and it was briefly granted to President Clinton before the Supreme Court deemed it to be unconstitutional. In some countries, such as Brazil, the president has the right to initiate the budget, while in the United States all revenue bills must originate in the House.
In parliamentary systems, legislatures generally have fewer agenda-setting checks and balances essay as the vast majority of bills come from the executive branch. However, there is significant variation in the powers of parliaments as well. Some parliaments, such as the Norwegian Storting and German Bundestag, have numerous permanent, specialized committees that participate in the drafting of legislation. In the United Kingdom, committees in the House of Commons, on the other hand, tend to be set up on an ad hoc basis and have significantly fewer powers. Parliaments and their committees also vary in their ability to oversee the executive, checks and balances essay.
The European Affairs Committee of the Danish Folketing is often noted for its exceptionally high degree of oversight in the area of European Union affairs. While oversight committees in the United Kingdom tend to be weaker, question time in the House of Commons provides Parliament members of an opportunity for government oversight in a very public forum. When discussing checks and balances, federalism and bicameralism are two political institutions that warrant special attention. Federalism is an arrangement that divides power among a federal government and its constituent states. Each level of government must have certain powers delegated to it, and these powers must be constitutionally protected.
Federal bargains, by their nature, create checks on government authority. Some scholars have suggested that the checks and balances inherent in a federal system provide economic benefits by creating competition among states. Barry Weingast has argued that federalism helps preserve market economies by preventing government interference in the market. Others, like Daniel Triesman, however, have pointed to problems associated with decentralization. Regardless, when states have the ability to block legislation, they become another veto player in the political system and they may make policy change more difficult. Bicameralism closely relates to federalism and can greatly impact policy making as well. States often have their interests represented through an upper chamber of a bicameral legislature, where they collectively have veto rights.
This was case in checks and balances essay United States prior to the direct election of senators in Even though U. senators today represent citizens directly, rather than state governments, the states receive equal representation regardless of size in the Senate. In Germany, state representatives in the German upper house, the Bundesrat, have the ability to veto certain types of legislation passed by the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. When the upper chamber can veto legislation and has policy preferences that differ from the lower chamber, policy stability becomes more likely due to the presence of an additional institutional veto player. Regardless of their effects on economic growth, federalism and bicameralism are likely to make policy change more difficult. After legislation has been written, bureaucrats must implement the law and judges checks and balances essay interpret it.
The degree of freedom that judges and bureaucrats have with regard to interpretation and implementation relates to the checks and balances present within the political system. In systems with a greater number of checks and balances more veto playerschecks and balances essay, judges and bureaucrats have more discretion to interpret and implement the law. This is because politicians have limited ability to overturn what judges and bureaucrats do through the political process.
Checks and Balances for Dummies
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WebThe principle of checks and balances is defined simply as being an instrument, which promotes openness and assures other objective such as fairness and controlling Web19/10/ · This way of balancing the powers was called checks and balances. The legislative branch can check the executive branch by: refusing to pass a bill the president wants, passing a law over the president's veto, using the impeachment powers to Web11/12/ · So overall, Checks and Balances is a very important system to the constitution because by keeping the three branches equal to power, everyone in the
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