The growth in autonomy and overlap of committees has fragmented power of the Senate and of the House. This dispersion of power may, at times, weaken the legislative branch relative to the other two branches of the federal government, the executive and the judiciary. In his often cited article "History of the House of Representatives", written in 1961, American scholar George B. Galloway (1898–1967) wrote: "In practice, Congress functions not as a unified institution, but as a collection of semi-autonomous committees that seldom act in unison." Galloway went on to cite committee autonomy as a factor interfering with the adoption of a coherent legislative program. Such autonomy remains a characteristic feature of the committee system in Congress today.