Balance of power is what we no longer have in the
US government. The
Constitution originally laid out an
elegant and
balanced system of government under which no one
division of government could gain too much
power. For example, the
legislative branch needed the
executive branch for
approval of
legislation. Both branches needed the
judicial branch to
rule on legislation. There was balanced
interdependence of the parts of government. This is still the case to some degree; however, "innovations" like
executive orders have allowed too much power to be transferred to the
President. Furthermore, the practice of
judicial review has been stretched to absurd proportions; the judiciary (primarily the
Supreme Court) has been changing the
law unofficially by means of this practice.
Balance of power has been greatly lost in other ways as well. For example, a major cause for the writing of the Constitution was that the states were too independent under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution set about to fix this by creating a stronger central government to balance the power of the state governments. Now, balance has shifted extremely far in the other direction. I would guess that somewhere around two-thirds of what the central government does is out of their proper jurisdiction.