ABSTRACT
The advent of democracy in the last century brought a decisive change in the range of governmental powers. For centuries efforts had been directed towards limiting the powers of government; and the gradual development of constitutions served no other purpose than this. All democracy that we know today in the West is more or less unlimited democracy. The greatest and most important limitation upon the powers of democracy, which was swept away by the rise of an omnipotent representative assembly, was the principle of the ‘separation of powers’. Prevailing forms of democracy, in which the sovereign representative assembly at one and the same time makes law and directs government, owe their authority to a delusion.
