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The U.S. Constitution achieved limited government through a separation of powers: "horizontal" separation of powers distributed power among branches of government (the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, each of which provide a check on the powers of the other); "vertical" separation of powers divided power between the federal ...
Madison's dilemma refers to the debate regarding how institutions should be designed in order to balance the tension between limited and effective government. [2] Madison was concerned with how political institutions can limit government power in order to preserve individual rights and freedoms and prevent tyranny, while also creating a government capable of accomplishing goals and ...
The American Revolution marked a departure in the concept of popular sovereignty as it had been discussed and employed in the European historical context. American revolutionaries aimed to substitute the sovereignty in the person of King George III, with a collective sovereign—composed of the people. Thenceforth, American revolutionaries ...
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain sovereignty over the government and where offices of state are not granted through heritage. [76] [77] A common modern definition of a republic is a government having a head of state who is not a monarch. [78] [79]
Moreover, whether reflecting a descriptive or prescriptive focus, treatments of the concept of constitutionalism all deal with the legitimacy of government. One recent assessment of American constitutionalism, for example, notes that the idea of constitutionalism serves to define what it is that "grants and guides the legitimate exercise of ...
In a multiparty system of government, multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government offices, typically by competing in elections, although the effective number of parties may be limited. A majority government is a government by one or more governing parties together holding an absolute majority of seats in the ...
Home rule in the United States relates to the authority of a constituent part of a U.S. state to exercise powers of governance; i.e.: whether such powers must be specifically delegated to it by the state (typically by legislative action) or are generally implicitly allowed unless specifically denied by state-level action.
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. [1] It expresses the principle of federalism, whereby the federal government and the individual states share power, by mutual agreement, with the federal government having the supremacy.