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The issue of autonomy of non-elected public bodies from political branches requires a brief account of how the principle of separation of powers was firstly combined with that of democracy. It is such historical background, rather than theoretical or logical premises, that explains how these principles melt together in constitutional democracies, as well as the challenges which autonomy of non-elected authorities are there currently meeting. According to a Montesquieu’s celebrated dictum, ‘‘There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals’ (Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. VI). While referring to the risks of concentration of powers into the same body “whether of the nobles or of the people”, Montesquieu relied on the ancient doctrine of the mixed government which Polybius had derived from the Roman Republic, where each branch was expected to represent a certain social class. The American and the French Revolution dissolved this feature of the mixed government, denying whatever principle of dynastic legitimacy and preventing noblemen from being represented in parliament. Few decades later, being aware of such change, Tocqueville warned however that a government entirely composed of elected authorities would result in a ‘tyranny of the majority’, and hoped for balancing democracy with an ‘aristocracy of talents and virtues’ which could rely on its own merits rather than on right of birth. Aristocracy, he asserted, is ‘more skilful in the science of the legislator than democracy can be’, emphasizing that

The Autonomy of Non-Elected Public Bodies and the Nature of Populist Governments