Checks and Balances:

Abstract

The principle of checks and balances is a guiding premise of the American Constitution and of the definition of the presidency and executive power. Where did it come from? Historians portray it as an eighteenth-century concept, adumbrated by Montesquieu and invoked to identify the wisdom of the English constitution. Yet its origins lay in the mid-seventeenth century, when that constitution had broken down. The England of the 1650s and the America of the 1780s underwent parallel experiences, which produced a parallel of political vocabulary. In both countries the removal of an alleged tyrant—Charles I; George III—was followed by alleged tyrannies of legislative power—the English parliament; Congress and the new state legislatures. In both countries a new executive office—the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell; the presidency—was created to prevent both extremes. The language of checks and balances was invented to vindicate Cromwellian rule.