Check And Balance Meaning

(idiomatic) Provide mutual oversight and limitation by independant organizations in order to prevent abuses of power.

Example: Used other than as an idiom: see check,‎ balance.
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.