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The United States first Federal Constitution had some potential for political diversity, even at the head of the Administration. The people were given two votes to issue for choices for the President. The candidate with the most votes, obviously was to be the President. The one with the next most votes was to be the Vice-President. One should seriously note, the un-amended Constitution does not say one word about political parties. Well, the political parties, of course, asked the people to vote for both their President and Vice-President candidates.
This back-fired on Thomas Jefferson and had him tied with his Vice-President choice. This put the choice of order between the two into the hands of the Congress. If I remember properly, they spent over a month 'living' in the hall before a tied breaking vote passed. This set the grounds for the 16th amendment to the Constitution which gives the people one vote for a parties set of candidates for President and Vice-President. The impact of the potential loss of an active check in the Administration was not generally voiced at the time. And given the relatively small size of the Federal government at the time, it probably hard to hypothesis a relevant case where other means of checking would not have sufficed.
Not too many years back, South Africa reworked their government and gave it active checks in the Administration. The minority 'white' population are heavily invested in the mining of gold and diamonds in that country. So they want something that would insure stability, if at all possible.
The arrangement, quickly described, gives any party that has at least 80 members in their Parliament (similar to our Congress) the potential to put a member of their choice into the Administration's cabinet as a Deputy President. I assume they could go to court and get a warrant to start an investigate, should the evidence sustain it.
Order came to South Africa and still exists. Hopefully the poorer majority will again see a proper education, and thereby be able to fully define the difference that this administrative check can make to the rest of the world. Some have said, after a generation (20 years) a significant difference will have occurred for the better as far as their educational and financial situation is concerned. What influence it will have on the workings of governance is, no doubt, to be seen.
CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA, ACT 200 OF 1993
http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/legislation/1993/constit0.html