Separation of Parties, Not Powers

74 Pages Posted: 21 Mar 2006

See all articles by Daryl J. Levinson

Daryl J. Levinson

New York University School of Law; New York University School of Law

Richard H. Pildes

New York University School of Law

Abstract

American political institutions were founded upon the Madisonian assumption of vigorous, self-sustaining political competition between the legislative and executive branches. Congress and the President would check and balance each other; officeholders would defend the distinct interests of their distinct institutions; ambition would counteract ambition. To this day, the idea of building self-sustaining political competition into the structure of government is frequently portrayed as the unique genius of the U.S. Constitution and largely credited for the success of American democracy. Yet the truth is closer to the opposite. The success of American democracy overwhelmed the branch-based design of separation of powers almost from the outset, preempting the political dynamics that were supposed to provide each branch with a will of its own. What the Framers did not count on was the emergence of robust democratic competition, in government and in the electorate. Political competition and cooperation along relatively stable lines of policy and ideological disagreement quickly came to be channeled not through the branches of government but rather through an institution the Framers could imagine only dimly but nevertheless despised: political parties. Parties quickly came to serve as the primary organizational vehicle for mobilizing, motivating, and defining the terms of democratic political competition, creating alliances among constituents and officeholders that cut across the boundaries between the branches and undermined Madisonian assumptions of branch-based competition.

Few aspects of the Founding generation's political theory are now more clearly anachronistic than their vision of legislative-executive separation of powers. Nevertheless, few of the Framers' ideas continue to be taken as literally or sanctified as deeply by courts and constitutional scholars as the passages about interbranch relations in Madison's Federalist 51. This Article reenvisions the law and theory of separation of powers by viewing it through the lens of party competition. In particular, it points out that during periods - like the present - of cohesive and polarized political parties, the degree and kind of competition between the legislative and executive branches will vary significantly, and may all but disappear, depending on whether party control of the House, Senate, and Presidency is divided or unified. The practical distinction between party-divided and party-unified government thus rivals, and often dominates, the constitutional distinction between the branches in predicting and explaining interbranch political dynamics. Recognizing that these dynamics will shift from competitive when government is divided to cooperative when it is unified calls into question basic assumptions of separation of powers law and theory. More constructively, re-focusing the separation of powers on parties casts numerous aspects of constitutional structure, doctrine, and institutional design in a new and more realistic light.

Suggested Citation

Levinson, Daryl J. and Levinson, Daryl J. and Pildes, Richard H., Separation of Parties, Not Powers. Harvard Law Review, 2006, NYU Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 06-07, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 131, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=890105

Daryl J. Levinson (Contact Author)

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States
212-998-6237 (Phone)

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
United States

Richard H. Pildes

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States
(212) 998-6377 (Phone)
(212) 995-4341 (Fax)

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