¶ … balance of power between institutions such as the Executive, Bureaucracy, Legislature, and the courts? The state selected for this essay is the State of Washington. The State of Washington is made of three branches that are contextualized after the federal government and these are the executive, legislative, and the judicial. To begin with, the executive consists of the state's governor and the other elected state officials. In particular, these officials carry out and execute the laws passed by the Legislature. Imperatively, the governor is endowed with the power and authority to appoint members of the judicial branch. Moreover, any bills that are passed by the legislative branch have to be sent to the governor in order to be vetoed or signed. The second branch is the legislative branch. It is made of the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the balance of power within the state, the legislature has the authority to enact bills into laws. In particular, the Senate is comprised of 49 elected officials standing for the number of legislative districts contained within the state. On the other hand, the House of Representatives is made up of 98 elected members, two for each of the 49 districts in the state (Access Washington, 2017).

Third, there is the judicial branch. It is made up of the state courts. First is the Trial Court that encompasses the Municipal, District and Superior Courts. Second is the Court of Appeals and lastly there is the Supreme Court. These courts of the states have the power of making decisions and rulings with regard to the constitutionality and legality encircling the execution of a law, as ratified and passed by the legislative branch and signed by the state governor (Access Washington, 2017). Lastly, the bureaucracy encompasses an administrative group of nonelected officials that are given the task of carrying out and implementing functions linked to a sequence of policies and programs. In particular, these are civil servants as well as political appointed who usually fill the non-elected positions within the government of the state.

Is the culture of the state considered liberal, moderate, or conservative? How did you make this assessment?

In delineation, liberalism is a political philosophy that, in its essence, criticizes and condemns economic and social inequity. In particular, equality of opportunity is perceived by liberals as fundamental, and to attain that end, they have the conviction that discriminatory practices have to be eradicated...

On the other hand, conservatives have an overall preference for the prevailing order of society and an opposition to majority of endeavors to generate swift or significant change. Different from liberals, conservatism wishes to augment individual liberty by maintaining government small aside from different aspects such as national defense. It insists that individuals necessitate strong leadership institutions and stringent moral codes. Lastly, moderate more often than not represent an amalgamation of both conservative and liberal ideologies (The Saylor Foundation, 2012).
The State of Washington is considered to be liberal. In accordance to Webley (2013), this is owing to the fact that the state legalized marijuana for recreational purposes and also made the approval of same sex marriage. At the same time, despite the state's landscape being largely rural, its people have voted for the Democratic candidate and nominee in every presidential election that has taken place since 1988. In addition, for just about the past thirty years, the state has elected a Democratic governor. Moreover, it is not only geography that actually divides the two sides, it is just about every aspect. Approximately two-thirds of the state of Washington people reside on the richer, urban west side of the state, which is consists of Amazon, Microsoft, together with the biggest public research university in the entire state. In contrast, the eastern side of the state is rural and its significant industries consist of farming and lumber. Even in the recent United States election, Washington people voted for Hillary Clinton and most of the counties within the state were filled with votes for Democrat nominees. In fact, the pattern of voting for a Democrat nominee with Hillary having more than 90% of the votes in the state whereas Donald Trump only got 4%. In addition, Washington State is known to have several liberal policies including the increase in the minimum wage, having less restrictive policies on abortion and also the legalization of…