Luis Pablo Hinojosa PS 163 Constitutionalism and Federalism Rusell Hardin suggests that a constitution is not a social contract. He explains that the function of a constitution is to resolve coordination problems before the contract starts. The creation of these incentives has become one of the main problems of political science. Some authors focus on the problem of cooperation between institutions and argue that there should exist a balance of power between them. In other words, it should be avoided to let one institution to capture all the power because it will contravene with democratic principles the government would become despotic.
Functional limits establish a clear separation between the duties each institution performs.
In contrast, the system of checks and balances consists on several mechanisms that allow institutions to control each other, conferring the capacity to intervene in other institution s authority. United States is an example of a presidential system and Canada of a parliamentary one. For that reason, it is difficult to distinguish responsibilities within different branches of government, since the separation of powers is also not definite because of the system of checks and balances. In the case of Canada, the legitimacy of the government resides in congress since it has a parliamentary system. Mexico presents a sui generis type.