Two Treatises of Government · Chapter
XII: Of the Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power of the Commonwealth explained
Locke distinguishes three powers in a commonwealth: legislative, executive, and federative.
What happens
Locke distinguishes three powers in a commonwealth: legislative, executive, and federative. The legislative power directs the use of force for preserving the community and should not be always in session, nor should the same persons who make laws also execute them, to prevent self-interest. The executive power is always in being to enforce laws. The federative power deals with foreign relations, war, peace, and alliances, and is naturally united with the executive, as both require the force of the society.
Themes in this chapter
Separation of Powers
Locke argues for separating legislative and executive powers to prevent abuse and protect the public good, and notes the federative power is distinct but practically united with the executive.
Limited Government and Rule of Law
Locke emphasizes that even lawmakers are subject to the laws they make, ensuring no one is above the law and that government serves the public good.
Key passages
“it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them; whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making and execution, to their own private advantage”
Allowing the same people to both make and enforce laws creates a dangerous temptation to exempt themselves from those laws and shape them for personal gain.
Locke's argument for the separation of legislative and executive powers to prevent corruption.
“the legislative and executive power come often to be separated”
In well-ordered governments, the law-making and law-enforcing powers are usually kept distinct.
Locke's principle of separating powers to protect liberty.
“the whole community is one body in the state of nature, in respect of all other states or persons out of its community”
In relation to other nations or outsiders, the entire commonwealth acts as a single entity still in a state of nature.
Locke's concept of the federative power as natural and distinct from domestic governance.