Karl Loewenstein
Karl Loewenstein (November 9, 1891 in Munich – July 10, 1973 in Heidelberg) was a German philosopher and political scientist, regarded as one of the prominent figures of Constitutional law in the twentieth century. His research and investigations into the deep typology of the different constitutions have had some impact on the Western constitutional thought. He studied in his native city of Munich (Bavaria), where he got a doctor's degree in Public law and Political science. When Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party took power in 1933, he was exiled and went to the United States, the country where  he would carry out most of his doctrinal work and writings. His philosophical and political views. Loewenstein has a clear leaning towards liberal democracy, as shown in the most important book he wrote, "Political Power and the Governmental Process". Constitutional classification. Ontological classification. Loewenstein states that there are several types of Constitutions, but a "true" constitution is one that, besides containing essential guarantees and an outline about the organization of the supreme political institutions of a country, also "incarnates" the deepest values of liberal democracy, as well as the (historical) reality of the social group it will be imposed upon . This is what he calls "ontological classification". Analytically, Loewenstein considers three different kinds of constitutions: On the other hand, Loewenstein discarded the idea of trying to devise a "perfect theoretical constitution", instead claiming that "an ideal constitution has never existed, and will never exist". Political systems. Regimes. Loewenstein claims that political regimes are divides into: According to Loewenstein, this classification not only has to be made looking to the laws that regulate those institutions, but also to the political practices "actually" observed, because the mere existence of a constitution is "not" enough to tell whether a certain governments is a  democratic or an authoritarian one. A new tripartite division of power. Loewenstein considered it was extremely difficult to try to change the division of power into the executive, legislative and judicial branches -as established by Montesquieu- which is a sort of "sacred dogma" for the constitutional theory and practice of liberal democracies. However, he presented a new "tripartite" division of power into (three) functions. The most efficient mechanism to "divide" power and to "control" the national political decisions is to "distribute" the main government functions into different "departments", and do the same with their subordinate equivalents in the state, provincial  or regional level. Power distribution means that the (usually three main) different administrative departments are like a "watertight compartments" that "mutually" control and limit the otherwise potentially expansive sphere of influence of the others. In the modern parliamentary and presidential republics this is traditionally done through "counterweights" usually referred to as "checks and balances". Loewenstein considers that this last function is the most important in his views about the tripartite division of the political power, because if it didn't exist the other two would automatically "fall apart", as even the reach and implications of the national political decisions could n't be determined or estimated.