Check Balances

The separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary as modeled after the ancient Greece and Rome is seen in many federal countries today .The best example is that of the United States where there are three branches of the government, the legislature, executive and the judiciary which act as checks and balances so that no branch becomes over dominant over the other. But in the United States where is fusion of power and the executive which consists of the Prime minister and the cabinet is more power than the legislature. There are countries that have a mixed government that follows the federal system like the US and parliamentary system like the U.K. Example of such hybrid kind of government is France and India. French philosopher Montesquieu stressed on need for the division of power, specially the independence of the judiciary. Constitutions of different countries have laid down different degrees of checks and balances. While in U.K there is fusion of power, India though follows the U.K pattern of a parliamentary form of government, has clear cut separation of powers among the three bodies of the government ( Lok Sabha the lower house of the Parliament, Rajya Sabha,the upper house of the Parliament and the Judiciary).The President is the head of the nominal head of the state while the Prime Minister and his cabinet is the real executive head of the entire country. However, countries like Canada and New Zealand do not make the best use of the separation of powers though in theory there is separation of powers among the branches of government. Therefore countries that follow the separation of powers as a means to check and balance the power held by different branches of the government, each branch has specify duties to perform. For instance, the legislature makes laws for the countries, the executive executes the laws and the judiciary interprets the laws and raises objection if they are unconstitutional.