Practice Quiz

CLEP US Government

Category - Separation of Powers

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In Federalist Paper #51, James Madison wrote, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.…If men were angels, no government would be necessary. You must…enable the government…to control itself.” In this passage, what was Madison proposing?
  1. Separation of powers
  2. Federalism
  3. Writ of habeas corpus
  4. Republicanism
  5. Confederated identity theory
Explanation
Answer: A- The reasoning behind separation of powers, along with checks and balances, was to make sure that no person or group of people had too much power. Madison reasoned that if you didn’t allow any one branch of government to control too many things, the government would be able “to control itself” because no one branch would want another branch to take too much power. This assumes that politicians are at least in danger of letting the power go to their heads and abusing that power by trying to get more.
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