Separation Of Powers In Federalist 51, By Alexander Hamilton

Under the Constitution, government is separated into three different branches with the ability to check the power of one another. With this intention, it was meant to produce a desire within each branch to have a will of their own, and pursue political advancements that benefitted their sector. However, with the creation of free and fair elections, it also created political parties that were assembled in order to represent certain citizens as a group. Additionally, these political parties found themselves at the forefront of political activity, rather than each branch. Government officials are at a point where they find it more beneficial to fulfill party interest rather than the interests of their corresponding branch. The separation of powers

Alexander Hamilton laid out the checks and balances that distinctively characterize the American system of separation of powers. In Federalist 51, Madison explains that government institutions would be so contrived, “…as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.” By differentiating between executive and legislative powers and separating the legislative into two chambers, they intended that the separation of powers system would harness political competition within a government that executed necessary checks when needed. The system would be self-enforcing, relying on interbranch competition to police institutional boundaries and prevent tyrannical collusion if one branch exceeded in power. All in all, it would be a system that would run itself, not requiring any other form of intervention or involvement. It was a system that in theory was destined for the success, but without accounting for the creation of parties through a democracy, it fails to influence the proper behavior of each

Political parties were present in democracies before the fabrication of the constitution, so it’s puzzling why they weren’t accounted for within this system. However, since political parties weren’t seen as a threat to the founders, it has left constitutional discourse about this system of the separation of powers with no conceptual resources to understand some basic features of the American political system. Ignoring the existence of parties, the law and theory of separation of powers are a perfect fit for the government the Framers designed initially. So, that is why some institutional designs must be rethought in order to account for the involvement of political parties within the government. For instance, Madison saw the need for a linkage between the interests of the man and the constitutional rights of the place, but never provided a mechanism by which the interest of actual public officials would be channeled into maintaining the proper role for their respective branches. Party affiliations pollute the interests of government officials and don’t allow them to pursue the intentions Madison laid out. However, Mann and Ornstein suggest the transformation to a parliamentary system in order to make our current institutions and parties