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Ive never seen a good explanation for how separation of powers is supposed to do anything. The ones given by people at the time, and often still repeated today, are basically that one guy cant just do whatever he wants if he cant have all the powers, and this is essentially bypassed by the existence of parties. We even talk about one party controlling all three branches of government explicitly. Now, the way these branches are appointed is not exactly the same, and that has some effects - not any 50% of people can steamroll everyone, and theres inertia.
But those could easily be replicated just within a legislature by changing how they are elected, how long the terms are, and what the quorum is. This last one is especially important - there are very good reasons why quora higher than 50%+1 are rarely used, and are always much less powerful in reality than on paper. This perhaps explains what we are seeing now. The whole separation of powers business just seems to me like what youd think if youd only seen monarchies.
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