Most people could probably tell you that Rick Perry is the current Governor of Texas, but can most people explain what type of power he really has? One can only truly do this if they fully understand that the executive branch of the Texas government runs under what is called the plural executive. What this basically means is that the governor has what most would consider “weak” power. Texas has been operating under the plural executive for most of its history. The plural executive, under the executive branch of the Texas government, makes this branch substantially different than the executive branch of the federal government.
In Texas the executive branch of the government operates under a plural executive. Most would think that that the governor of the state is the highest ranking person, but this isn’t necessarily true. According to the Texas constitution the governor is designated as “Chief Executive Office of the State” (Ferguson, 2006, p.383). This doesn’t really mean what most people would think it would mean. This is where the plural executive comes into
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Many of the issues go back to the civil war era, and during this time E.J. Davis was the governor of Texas. During his time as governor Davis used his power to and appointed over 8,000 public officials (Brown et al. 2014, p. 145). Many Anglo Texans have complained that during the time of Davis’s run as Governor he clearly abused the power that was given to him (Brown et al. 2014, p. 300). This was a big reason as to why the people of Texas wanted to limit the power that the governor can have. This shows why that even after so many years “Texans still distrust the strong executive model of the state government” (Brown et al. 2014, p. 300). Texas created the plural executive in order for the governor to have limited power. The plural executive was first created under the Texas Constitution of 1876 (Jillson, 2011,