1. The division of the executive (Executive Yuan). 2. The division of the legislative (Legislative Yuan). 3. The division of the judicial (Judicial Yuan). 4. The division of censorship, impeachment and accounting (Control Yuan). 5. And the division of the examination system (Examination Yuan).
It is an illustration of the further difference between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and Western democracy, that each of the divisions, even the legislative, was to have a single head. The whole government was to be departmentally, not camerally, organized.
The system of Five Powers emphasizes the implied dyarchy of government and people in the _San Min Chu I_ by assigning to the government itself functions which, in the usual course of events, are supposed to be exercised by the people themselves in Western democracies. The people are supposed to eliminate unfit officials and decide on the merits and trustworthiness of incumbents. By the expedient of non-reëlection, the people are supposed to remove officials, who are incapable or unsuitable for public office. The two functions have been taken over by the Examination and Control Yuans, respectively; the Four Powers of the people are not, in all probability, instruments for continual popular intrigue and meddling in government, but almost revolutionary implements for shifting the course or composition of the government.
The Five Rights are instruments for the self-government of the official class (Examination and Control), and for the government of the people by the official class (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). The Four Powers are the instruments for the government of the official class by the people. Out of the checks and balances of government and people the integrity, efficacy, and stability of Sun Yat-sen’s democracy was to be assured.
The exercise of the Four Rights of the people could, in the theory of Sun Yat-sen, be used to check the development of an arrogant, inefficient or irresponsible bureaucracy, in that the people would assist in the selection of officials and would be able to remove incompetents at any time. The civil service mechanism of the government would, on the other hand, resist the too free play of popular caprice. No incompetent person would be elected to office, since the civil service would extend even to elective offices. The voters could remove a bad official but they could not replace him with an untrained person; they would have to select their candidate from the roster of scholar-officials eligible for the rank of the office in question. The people were to supervise the operations of the age-old Chinese civil service, as revivified by the nationalists; they were to appoint and remove officers, to repeal and enact laws; but in no case were they to tear down the structure of the civil service and inaugurate a spoils democracy such as that found in the United States. This blending of extreme democracy and traditional administrative hierarchy would result, said Sun Yat-sen, in perfect government.