Definition of Division of Powers: origin and responsibility

What is the division of powers? It is the democratic management model that separates the legislative, executive and judicial so that they act independently and limited to their functions within the government.

It is considered one of the most important theories of the modern political system, and adopted worldwide in recent times. It could be described as a way of organizing the State, grouping and dividing its functions into three spheres of power that exercise different functions that complement each other in harmony in a good system of government whose objective is to work for the good of the population and the growth of the country.

Threat of concentration of power

The basic purpose of this division is to avoid the concentration of power in a single state body, which of course would lead directly to despotism. Dividing public authority implies anticipating the danger posed by a political scenario anti-democratic, avoiding the possibility that one of the powers has the ability to install a regime authoritarian.

Normally, the maximum power falls on the executive power, hierarchically organized into mayors, governors, up to the distinction of the president, the highest representative of the nation. However, this importance in the presidential figure cannot be seen as a concentration of power since the legislative and judicial are always independent and central, they should at least be.

In some countries with a long parliamentary tradition (such as Great Britain), the most important power is the Legislative.

The 3 responsibilities of a democratic government: Executive, Legislative and Judicial

- The Executive power takes care of manage directly the state through officials such as the president and his secretaries and ministers.

- The Legislative power is responsible for the debate and the drafting, formulation and approval of laws, made up of the parliament or congress, which meets through its two chambers in this regard.

- The Power of attorney is in charge of the exercise of justice at all levels of the State, being imparted by the higher court of justice or supreme court and the lower courts.

Value of democracy

The democracy It is a form of government and organization of the state in which there are mechanisms of participation Based on the vote, it allowed the inhabitants of the community to elect their political representatives. This expresses a legitimacy in the leadership that is the winner of the electoral process.

Origin: Conception born in classical antiquity

The division of powers is a notion that was retaken and reinstated with force only at the end of the 18th century when thinkers and philosophers of the stature of Montesquieu or Rousseau began to reflect on the costs of monarchical and absolutist governments and on the benefits of a system in which power is divided into three different, controllable and cooperable spheres each.

In any case, we must say about the origin that the concern and occupation by the division of power was present many centuries ago. Prominent philosophers of Greek antiquity such as Cicero and Aristotle made proposals in this regard.

But of course, it was necessary for the situation to approve that demand and the favorable scenario was generated a few centuries later, after the French Revolution and the movement Illuminist who enlightened many intellectuals in this regard. Freedom was undoubtedly the most agitated value at this time and this generated the ideal context for the proposal of the division of powers.

However, this does not imply that in democratic governments, especially those of a presidential court where the authority of the president is well marked, there is no a deviation in the democratic proposal and the president ends up advancing on the other powers with the clear mission of maintaining his power by limiting the intervention of the others.

The division of powers is one of the fundamental rights of democracy and is, at the same time, one of the elements that is lost the fastest when dictatorial governments are established by the force since they come to focus on a single main person or on a very small group of people who perform all the functions among themselves without having been elected by the people.

Adobe illustrations: Bur_malin, Garikprost, Fotokon, Yuran, Draganm

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