How Montesquieu Got Britain Wrong

Episode summary: Hungary's parliament just passed a law dissolving the Constitutional Court's power to review legislation—the latest step in a decade-long democratic backslide. We trace the intellectual history of separation of powers, from Montesquieu's misreading of Britain to Madison's cynical design for ambition-checking-ambition, and ask why formal checks fail when informal norms erode.

Show Notes

This episode explores the theory and practice of separation of powers, starting with a timely crisis: Hungary's parliament has effectively dissolved its Constitutional Court's review power, part of a global pattern of democratic backsliding tracked by the V-Dem Institute. The conversation begins with Montesquieu, whose 1748 *The Spirit of the Laws* famously argued that liberty requires separating legislative, executive, and judicial powers—but who mistakenly believed Britain had achieved this. In reality, 18th-century Britain fused powers, with the Crown appointing judges and ministers sitting in Parliament. Yet Montesquieu's error became foundational: the American founders built the system he thought he described. John Locke preceded him with a three-power model (legislative, executive, federative) that folded courts into the executive. James Madison operationalized the theory in Federalist 51, arguing that institutions must channel self-interest into equilibrium. Modern thinkers like Robert Dahl expanded the concept beyond formal branches to include civil society, media, and political competition. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt distinguished hard constitutional guardrails from soft norms of toleration and forbearance—and showed that authoritarians attack the latter first. The episode compares presidential systems (US, with its dual legitimacy problem) to parliamentary systems, and notes troubling data: the US Supreme Court expanded executive power in 73% of relevant cases in the latest term.

Listen online: https://myweirdprompts.com/episode/separation-of-powers-democracy