The Public Philosophy > Chapter V. The Two Functions > The Protection of the Executive
During the nineteenth century good democrats were primarily concerned with insuring representation in the assemblies and with extending the control of the assemblies over the executive power. It is true that the problem of the inadequate executive, overridden and dominated by the assembly, was very much in the minds of the Founding Fathers at the Philadelphia convention, and it has been a continuing concern of the critics and opponents of democracy. But until the twentieth century the problem was not sharply and urgently posed.
That there was such a problem was well known. But it was not the immediate problem?
For some generations before 1914, the West enjoyed fine political weather. Moreover, the full force of the coming enfranchisement, emancipation, and secularization of the whole population had not yet worked its consequences. Governments still had authority and power, which were independent of the assemblies and the electorates. They still drew upon the traditional sources of authority - upon prescription, hereditary prerogative, and consecration.
Yet the need to protect the executive and judicial powers from the representative assemblies and from mass opinion has long been understood. Many expedients have been devised to soften, to neutralize, to check and to balance the pressure of parties, factions, lobbies, sects. The expedients have taken, says Bryce, two general forms, the one being to put constitutional restrictions upon the assembly and the other, by a division of the whole power of the people,’ to weaken it. This has been done by electing the legislature and the executive separately, or by having the legislative bodies elected by the differing constituencies and at different times.
The constitutional mechanisms have never themselves been sufficient to protect the executive. And much invention and reforming energy have been applied to finding other ways to insulate the judicial, the executive and the administrative functions from the heavy pressures of 'politics'' and 'politicians.’ The object has been to separate them from the electoral process. The judiciary must be independent of fear and favor. There must be no connection between the judgment of the courts and the election returns. The civil service, the military services, the foreign service, the scientific and technical services, the quasi-judicial administrative tribunals, the investigating commissions, the public schools and institutions of learning, should be substantially independent of the elections. These reforms were inspired by the dire effects of the spoils system, and they were pushed as practical remedies for obvious evils.
Yet implicit in them there is a principle which, if it can be applied deeply enough, gets at the root of the disorder of modern democracy. It is that though public officials are elected by the voters, or are appointed by men who are elected, they owe their primary allegiance not to the opinions of the voters but to the law, to the criteria of their professions, to the integrity of the arts and sciences in which they work, to their own conscientious and responsible convictions of their duty within the rules and the frame of reference they have sworn to respect.