He believed that this would ensure the legislature's continued dependence on the people, those whom they were elected to represent. Accountability mitigates the legislature's greater amount of power. Nonetheless, although the legislature has weighted power separation of power is limited to creating laws.
The separation of powers serves the purpose of splitting power up so that not one group has exclusive charge over creating, interpreting, and executing laws. Despotisms, not democracies, function in this manner. Madison expands of Montesquieu's definition of tyranny. "The accumulation of all powers in the same hands whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed or elective may be justly pronounced the very definition of tyranny."" (Fed 47, 298) Montesquieu argues that when all powers are under singular control the liberty of a subject is subject to oppression and arbitrary control. .
Purposeful overlap in the delineation of the explicit constitutional powers of each branch made it possible to check power. In this way, the Madisonian model uses the nature of human self-interest as a necessity of productive governmental function. If Madison's definition of human nature holds, then each branch of government should behave in a manner conducive to accruing the most amount of power for its branch. But, in the process of so doing because powers overlap between branches, the attempt of any one branch to over step its constitutional limitations is likely to encroach upon that of another branch. The compromised branch is expected to check or limit the power of the branch infringing on its power out of the interest of maintaining its own power. .
The auxiliary precautions of the separation of powers, and a system of checks and balances served the role of maintaining the integrity of a democratic system by protecting it against tyranny. Nonetheless, it is also argued that these precautions also served the role of inhibiting the malleability of America's republican democracy.