Removal of violations of the Master Ward Identity in perturbative QFT

We study the appearance of anomalies of the Master Ward Identity, which is a universal renormalization condition in perturbative QFT. The main insight of the present paper is that any violation of the Master Ward Identity can be expressed as a local interacting field; this is a version of the well-known Quantum Action Principle of Lowenstein and Lam. Proceeding in a proper field formalism by induction on the order in ~, this knowledge about the structure of possible anomalies as well as techniques of algebraic renormalization are used to remove possible anomalies by finite renormalizations. As an example the method is applied to prove the Ward identities of the O(N) scalar field model. PACS. 11.10.Cd Field theory: Axiomatic approach, 11.10.Gh Field theory: Renormalization, 11.15.Bt Gauge field theories: General properties of perturbation theory, 11.30.-j Field theory: Symmetry and conservation laws