The image of the citizen as a prospective or potential absolute ruler emerges clearly from the following thought-experiment. It takes us to a modern Western-style democracy in which the legislative power is both formally sovereign and for all practical purposes absolute. Moreover, it is a regime in which the parties of the parliamentary majority also, by custom or law, form the government while still retaining all the rights of a parliamentary party (including voting rights in plenary sessions and commissions). The same party (or coalition of parties) controls the government and the parliament. In other words, the so-called separation of powers is reduced to a sham, at least where the legislative and the executive powers are concerned