Montesquieu and Theory of separation of powers
Montesquieu (1689-1755) was a French social commentator and political thinker who is famous for his theory of separation of powers. His early life was influenced by the Glorious Revolution of England whereby England had declared itself a constitutional monarchy; and succession of the five-year-old Louis XV after death of his father Louis XIV.
According to him, individuals were so fearful that they avoided violence and war. The need for food caused the timid humans to associate with others and seek to live in a society. As soon as man enters into a state of society, he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war. This state of war among individuals is what that needs the existence of a government. According to him, the main purpose of government is to maintain law and order, political liberty, and the property of the individual.
Montesquieu opposed the absolute monarchy of his home country and favored the English system as the best model of government. His first notable work was the De l’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) 1748, which advocated the constitutional form of government. This work quickly rose to a position of enormous influence and was later banned by the Catholic Church by putting it into the Index of Prohibited Books. However, it received the highest praise from the rest of Europe, particularly Britain.
Montesquieu divided French society into three classes (trias politica): the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the commons. Montesquieu saw two types of governmental power existing: the sovereign and the administrative. The administrative powers were the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. He said that these should be separate from and dependent upon each other so that the influence of any one power would not be able to exceed that of the other two, either singly or in combination.
This was a radical idea because it completely eliminated the three Estates structure of the French Monarchy: the clergy, the aristocracy, and the people at large represented by the Estates-General, thereby erasing the last vestige of a feudalistic structure.
