English

Verb

check and balance ‎(third-person singular simple present checks and balances, present participle checking and balancing, simple past and past participle checked and balanced)

1. Used other than as an idiom: see check,‎ balance.
2. (idiomatic) Provide mutual oversight and limitation by independant organizations in order to prevent abuses of power.
   • 1992, Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, ISBN 0801480019, page 145:

     A second distinguishing feature, Shackleton contends, is that the separation of powers also stresses the checking and balancing of one power against another, whereas the mixed state combines all interests solely to prevent or stall the inevitable degeneration of government, not to check power.

   • 1998, ‎Richard A. Brisbin, Jr., Justice Antonin Scalia and the Conservative Revival, ISBN 0801860946, page 46:

     Since each branch had exclusive powers, separated powers did not mean an aggressively political process of checking and balancing of executive policy choices by Congress.

   • 1999, Jethro Koller Lieberman, A Practical Companion to the Constitution, ISBN 0520212800, page 3:

     The Constitution achieves this checking and balancing function in several ways.

   • 2000, Lewis Edwin Hahn, Perspectives on Habermas, ISBN 0812694279, page 217:

     Rather, they should find their proper places in a dialectics of mutual checking and balancing toward forming a convergence and universalization of feelings.

   • 2011, Adam Graycar & ‎Russell G. Smith, Handbook of Global Research and Practice in Corruption, ISBN 1849805032, page 16:

     As technology takes new forms, it brings new opportunities for corruption and hence demands new checking and balancing.

Noun

check and balance ‎(uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) The mutual oversight provided by a system of independant organizations with control over each other.
   • 2009, Celly Luyinduladio, Hidden and Inaccessible Knowledge, ISBN 1469100738:

     Whoever has taken a critical and serious look at human history will indisputably come to conclusion that man's madness and craziness know no boundary or limit even when check and balance of power are being applied.

   • 2013, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Freedom of Expression Toolkit: A Guide for Students, ISBN 9230011142, page 36:

     Because of the check and balance function of journalists, they are sometimes called the “watchdog for the people”.

   • 2014, Yining Li, Beyond Market and Government, ISBN 366244254X:

     In this way, moral check and balance is combined with legal check and balance (i.e., legally based check and balance).

   • 2015, Ning Fang, China’s Democracy Path, ISBN 3662473437, page 158:

     Practices show that check and balance of powers and democratic oversight belong to two different categories, with differences in their subjects, objects, methods and other aspects.