ABSTRACT
The separation of powers involves not only presidents and parliaments, but also the constitutional status of courts and administrative agencies. The argument then takes a more constructive tack. Despite their many institutional disadvantages, separationist systems can express a distinctive and valuable vision of democratic life — a vision that he had described elsewhere as the ideal of dualistic democracy. This inquiry leads him to expand the model of constrained parliamentarianism to embrace a new separation of powers designed to express dualistic insights. The regular recurrence of this founding scenario may lead one to suspect that there really is a deep connection between the separation of powers on the level of the union and the vitality of the states on the periphery. Otherwise, the functional separation of powers will serve merely as a fig leaf for corruption and clientelism. On the human side, functional specialization presupposes the availability of well-trained specialists.
