The principles of checks and balances in the government are considered to be procedures that help people to be in place, by minimizing mistakes and preventing any form of improper behavior. The procedure can also be used to help reduce the risk of domination of power in the government. Thus, they help ensure that people do not have full control of the decisions made; rather they should base their decisions on their assigned duties (Eicher, 2016). Checks and balances can also be helpful in organizations as they help prevent people from having the power of making decisions on their own.
However, checks and balances can end up reducing efficiency since it is costly. Historically, they were established in the United States to help control abuse of power from the British monarchs (Wilson, 2017). In the United States government, the constitution offers checks and balances through the branches of the executive, legislative and judicial. The constitution has also ended up offering capabilities to the three branches. Their existence helps ensure that no sector in the government ends up having too much power compared to the others (Deeks, 2016). Due to this factor, the checks and balances have helped created a division of powers.
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In the government of United States, checks and balances work in a way that the legislature makes laws, but the executive branch creates power to the president ( Schattschneider, 2017) . In the end, the president may have the power to control and check the legislative branch. In contrast, the judicial branch imposes laws by putting them into action by the legislative branch ( Quirk & Bridwell, 2017) . The executive, legislative and judicial has the right to limit the power of each branch. The executive can limit laws made upon the legislative, but the legislative can still dominate a law issued to the majority.
In this case, checks and balances help prevent the three branches from dominating power over the others. The procedure also helps cooperation to take place among the three branches of the government. Through cooperation, the Congress will end up not passing any bill without the ruling of the Supreme Court (Haskell, 2018). Additionally, the president has power, but still, the legislative branch can end up overturning his power. Thus, this factor ensures that there is no misuse of power from the president for personal gains.
Despite the benefit of checks and balances, they still have a major disadvantage to the government. They tend to make the government processes to be slow in making decisions. In the end, they make the system to be prone to deadlock. Moreover, the process also proves to be time-consuming since policymaking takes time and may slow down a democratic process ( Alemanno & Spina, 2014) . This is because they tend to force the majority to make a decision based on the interest of the minority.
In summary, the principles of checks and balances originated from the government of United States. The procedures were created to help control the ruling power of the British Monarch. The checks and balances have helped the United States government to control power through the help of the three ranches. The three branches comprise of the legislative, executive, and judicial. Besides the control of power, they have helped promote cooperation in the American government. The disadvantages are that it is time-consuming since policy-making takes time and can result in deadlock to the government systems.
References
Alemanno, A., & Spina, A. (2014). Nudging legally: On the checks and balances of behavioral regulation. International Journal of Constitutional Law , 12 (2), 429-456.
Eicher, S. (2016). Government for hire. In Corruption in International Business (pp. 31-46). New York, NY: Routledge.
Deeks, A. (2016). Checks and Balances from Abroad. The University of Chicago Law Review , 65-88.
Haskell, J. (2018). Direct democracy or representative government? Dispelling the populist myth . New York, NY: Routledge.
Quirk, W. J., & Bridwell, R. (2017). Judicial Dictatorship . New York, NY: Routledge.
Schattschneider, E. (2017). Party government: American government in action . New York, NY: Routledge.
Wilson, W. (2017). Constitutional government in the United States . New York, NY: Routledge.
