7 - Policy making and legislating: executives and legislatures

Summary

Governments are there to get things done. At the highest level, the most important things they do are formulate public policies and frame the laws of the land, and at the heart of the policy and law-making process lie the two main branches of government – the executive and the legislative assembly. This means that the study of the relations between executive and legislative branches is a topic that lies at the very core of comparative government.

Sometimes the executive and the legislative branches cooperate and act together, sometimes they fight and struggle for power. Since democratic constitutions deliberately divide the powers of government between different branches, so that they check and balance each other, there is nothing wrong with the political struggle between them. However, some analysts argue that all is not well with the classical system of checks and balances because the golden age of legislatures, some time in the nineteenth century, has given way to the twentieth-century supremacy of executives. What were once powerful elected assemblies with a great deal of control over the affairs of state are now little more than rubber stamps for decisions made by their executives. If true, this has obvious implications for the state of democracy in modern executive-dominated government.

Others claim that presidents and prime ministers have not acquired such great power. They argue that legislative assemblies were never that powerful to start with, that the balance of power between executives and legislatures has not changed much and that executives are still dependent upon the support of their elected assemblies.