INTRODUCTION   

With a close presidential election predicted in November, most U.S. and foreign media are focusing on the race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush. But it is important to stress that, under the U.S. system, separate elections will be held for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

In the United States, the president, the leader of the executive branch of government, is elected by the votes of all of the people, as is his vice president. He is elected for a term of four years and may be reelected for another four-year term. But there is a two-term limit. The president appoints the members of his Cabinet who do not sit in the legislature, as is the case under parliamentary systems of government. This is because, in the U.S., the three branches of government -- executive, legislative and judicial -- are separate, and under the Constitution, check and balance each other.

On the same day that Americans go to the polls to elect the next president, they also will separately elect senators and representatives. All 435 seats in the two-year-term House of Representatives, and one-third in the six-year-term Senate, are up for election. These elections are critical since a president can only pass his program with sufficient support in the two legislative bodies that form the U.S. Congress.

Currently, the United States has divided government at the federal level. The presidency is held by a Democrat, Bill Clinton. But both Houses of Congress have Republican majorities. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives, however, is slim -- 222-209, with two independents and two vacancies -- and most commentators speculate that either party could win a majority in November. Current predictions are that the Republicans -- with a 54-46 margin -- will retain control of the U.S. Senate.

The separation of powers in the U.S. system may be confusing to some observers more familiar with parliamentary and other forms of government. But the U.S. Constitution provides for divided government, if that is what the people want. The principle is enshrined in the doctrine of separation of powers -- of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government -- that the Founding Fathers believed was necessary to prevent arbitrary rule.

The importance of this doctrine in American governance has long been stressed by constitutional lawyers, but never more eloquently than by Louis Brandeis, one of the most renowned Supreme Court justices. Speaking in 1926, Brandeis said, "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency, but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."

The concept was rooted in the American experience of colonial domination by Great Britain. The Founding Fathers did not want to replace arbitrary power exercised from London with arbitrary power exercised from the U.S. capital. So they looked for a new model of government. A primary influence on their thinking was a Frenchman, the Baron de Montesquieu.

In his book, On The Spirit of Laws, published in 1748, Montesquieu argued for the idea of separate but equal powers among the three branches of government. "When the law making and law enforcement powers are united in the same person," he wrote, "there can be no liberty."

James Madison, regarded as the Father of the U.S. Constitution, believed strongly in Montesquieu's vision of the separation of powers and sought to include this principle in the U.S. system. "The accumulation of all powers -- legislative, executive, judiciary -- in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny," Madison wrote.

The Founding Fathers were aware that the separation of powers could lead to weak government. As far as is known, none of them used a word like "gridlock," but they clearly knew that it could occur in a system based on separation of powers. But because of their experience with colonial rule, they were much more afraid of government that was too strong than government that was too weak.

As George Washington, the nation's first president, remarked in his farewell address: "It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another."

If the American people want strong government, they are free to elect a president and Congress from the same party -- and more so, free to elect persons of the same ideological persuasion. But there have been many times in American political history when, in effect, the American people have voted to check the power of the president by electing a Congress dominated by members of a different party or vice versa.

That is the case currently -- with a Democratic president and Republican control of both Houses of Congress. In the 1980s the reverse was true. Republicans Ronald Reagan and George Bush held the White House, but the Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives throughout the 1980s and the U.S. Senate for part of the decade.

At other times, especially during crucial periods in the nation's history, Americans have voted for strong, undivided government. This was the case, for example, in 1932 when the country was facing the Great Depression. In that year, the people elected not only Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) but they also voted in an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. The Democrats won 313 seats in the House of Representatives that year and 59 seats in the Senate. The Democratic sweep enabled FDR to pass extensive legislation known as the New Deal.

In more recent decades, however, divided government at the federal level has been more the rule than the exception. To some observers, such limits on the power of the central government -- even when sanctioned by the people -- may seem confusing, self-defeating and obstructionist.

But Americans believe the separation of powers has served their country well -- and not only Americans. An Englishman once wrote in a widely quoted book, "The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is dominated by the executive." The Englishman was Edward Gibbon, and the book was The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.