As their number has proliferated in constitutions around the world and their ambits have expanded, scholarship has begun to turn attention to the ways in which fourth branch institutions function within liberal democracies. This scholarship increasingly presents the fourth branch as providing important checks on executive aggrandisement and protection to key constitutional values such as democracy, legality, impartiality, probity, and human rights fourth branch institutions are, in the view of many, important tools in the fight against democratic decay. ‘[I]f well designed’, Fombad argues, they can provide ‘considerable scope for countering the numerous threats posed by majoritarian abuses and can also protect ordinary citizens from the consequences of their own naïveté́, ignorance and impetuosity’. The centrality of the fourth branch has also been advanced in recent accounts for more positive pro-poor liberal democratic practice.
