5.3 Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances under Presidential

and Parliamentary Systems (a) The presidential model (exemplar: the United States) Built on the strictest formal separation: Separate origin and survival: the President is popularly elected for a fixed term; legislators are separately elected for fixed terms; neither depends on the other's confidence — no dissolution by the President, no removal of the President by ordinary no-confidence (impeachment for grave misconduct only). Strict incompatibility: no legislator holds executive office; the cabinet is appointed, not elected. Functional checks: presidential veto (overridable by supermajority); Senate ratification of treaties and key appointments; Congress's power of the purse, oversight and investigation; impeachment of the President, judges and officers; judicial review of both political branches (since Marbury v. Madison, 1803). Federal and bicameral additions further disperse power. Strengths: executive stability, energy, a national mandate, genuinely mutual checks. Weaknesses: gridlock under divided government; personalisation of power; difficulty removing a failed President between elections; the voter cannot dismiss the government as a whole. (Semi-presidential systems — France — add a premier responsible to the legislature: the presidential/parliamentary line is a continuum.) (b) The parliamentary model (exemplars: the UK, India, Nepal) Begins not with separation but with fusion of executive and legislature, disciplined by responsibility: Fusion of personnel: the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers are drawn from, and remain members of, the legislature; the head of state…