Mixed government

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Mixed government

Mixed government, also known as a mixed constitution, is a form of government that integrated facets of government by democracy

Democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek language d?????at?a , "popular government" which was coined from d???? , "people" and ???t?? , "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political syst...
, oligarchy

Oligarchy

Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small Elitism segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military influence or occult spiritual hegemony....
, and monarchy

Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is absolutely or nominally lodged in an individual, who is the head of state, often for Life tenure or until abdication, and "is wholly set apart from all other members of the state." The person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch....
. Mixed government means that there are some issues (often defined in a constitution

Constitution

A constitution is a system for government — often codified as a written document — that establishes the rules and principles of an autonomous political entity....
) where the state is governed by the majority of the people, in some other issues the state is governed by few, in some other issues by a single person (also often defined in a constitution).

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Encyclopedia

Mixed government, also known as a mixed constitution, is a form of government that integrated facets of government by democracy

Democracy

Oligarchy

Monarchy

Constitution

Separation of powers

Separation of powers, a term ascribed to France Age of Enlightenment political philosopher Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, is a model for the governance of democracy states, having its origins in an ancient idea of mixed government....
.

Ancient Greek philosophers

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
in his book The Republic divided governments into four basic types:

democracy
Democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek language d?????at?a , "popular government" which was coined from d???? , "people" and ???t?? , "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political syst...
- government by the many
oligarchy
Oligarchy

Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small Elitism segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military influence or occult spiritual hegemony....
- government by the few (often called aristocracy, i.e. government by the "best")
timocracy
Timocracy

Constitutional theory defines a timocracy as either:# a state where only property owners may participate in government# a government where rulers are selected and perpetuated based on the degree of honor they hold relative to others in their society, peer group or class...
- government by socio-military complexes (i.e., the form of government used in Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
)
monarchy
Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is absolutely or nominally lodged in an individual, who is the head of state, often for Life tenure or until abdication, and "is wholly set apart from all other members of the state." The person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch....
/tyranny - government by the one

He found flaws with all of them and thus concluded that none were suitable systems of government. Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
largely embraced Plato's ideas and in his Politics
Politics (Aristotle)

Aristotle Politics is a work of political philosophy. The Nicomachean_Ethics#Chapters_6-9:_Politics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the "philosophy of human affairs." The tit...
three types (sans Timocracy) are discussed in detail. Aristotle views aristocracy to be the ideal form of government but he observes that none of the three are healthy and that states will cycle between the three forms in an abrupt and chaotic process known as the kyklos
Kyklos

The Kyklos is a term used by some classical Ancient Greece authors to describe what they saw as the political cycle of governments in a society....
. In his Politics he lists a number of theories of how to create a stable government. One of these options is creating a government that is a mix of all three forms of government. For Aristotle the idea is only one of many and he pays only scant attention to it.

Polybius
Polybius

Polybius was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his book called The Histories covering in detail the period of 220–146 BC....
argued that most states have a government system that is composed of more than one of these basic principles, which then was called a mixed government system.

Roman Era
The ideal of a mixed government was popularized by Polybius
Polybius

Polybius was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his book called The Histories covering in detail the period of 220–146 BC....
who saw the Roman Republic
Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
as a manifestation of Aristotle's theory. Monarchy was embodied by the consul
Consul

Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Roman Empire. The title was also used in other city states, and revived in modern states, notably French Republic before the Napoleon I of Franceic counter-revolution....
s, the aristocracy by the Senate
Roman Senate

The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic. According to the Greek historian Polybius, our principal source on the Constitution of the Roman Republic, the Roman Senate was the predominant branch of government....
, and democracy by the elections and great public gatherings of the assemblies
Roman assemblies

The Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Republic were political institutions in the ancient Roman Republic. According to the contemporary historian Polybius, it was the people who had the final say regarding the election of magistrates, the enactment of new Roman laws, the carrying out of capital punishment, the declaration of war and peace...
. Each institution complements and also checks the others, presumably guaranteeing stability and prosperity. Polybius also describes Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
as an earlier manifestation of this ideal. Polybius was very influential and his ideas were embraced by Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
.

Renaissance and Enlightenment
Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
became extremely well regarded during the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
and many of his ideas were embraced. Polybius was also rediscovered and the positive view of mixed governments became a central aspect of Renaissance political science integrated into the developing notion of republicanism
Republicanism

Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by other means than hereditary, often elections....
. Mixed government theories became extremely popular in the Enlightenment and were discussed in detail by Hobbes, Locke, Vico, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Kant. Apart from his contemporaries, only Montesquieu became widely acknowledged as the author of a concept of separation of powers
Separation of powers

Separation of powers, a term ascribed to France Age of Enlightenment political philosopher Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, is a model for the governance of democracy states, having its origins in an ancient idea of mixed government....
(although he wrote rather on their "distribution"). According to some scholars the notion also influenced the writers of the United States Constitution
United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America; the Federal Government of the United States; and all the State & local governments and Territorial Administrative bodies contained therein....
who based the idea of checks and balances upon the ancient theory. The constitution of Britain during the Victorian Era with a Parliament composed of the Sovereign (monarchy), a House of Lords (oligarchy) and House of Commons (democracy) is a prime example of a mixed constitution in the modern era.

Modern views
One school of scholarship, based mainly in the United States, felt that a mixed government was the central characteristic of a republic feeling that the U.S. has rule by the one (the President), the few (the Senate, which was originally supposed to represent the States), and the many (House of Representatives). According to Frank Lovett this school is largely defunct.

Yet another school of thought in the United States says the Supreme Court has taken on the role of "The Best" in recent decades, offsetting the direct-election of senators and preserving the mixing of Monarchy, Democracy, Republic, Oligarchy, and Military divisions of the federal government and ensuring a continuing separation of authority.

See also

Plato's Republic
Republic (Plato)

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, written in approximately 380 BC. It is one of the most influential works of philosophy and Political philosophy, and Plato's best known work....
Politics (Aristotle)
Politics (Aristotle)

Aristotle Politics is a work of political philosophy. The Nicomachean_Ethics#Chapters_6-9:_Politics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the "philosophy of human affairs." The tit...