This task links to the Course Assessment Specification (CAS): The executive branch -the distribution of power & the relationship between the executive and other branches of government.

Fusion of powers is a feature of some parliamentary forms of government, especially those following the Westminster system, where the executive and legislative branches of government are intermingled. It is contrasted with the European separation of powers found in presidential and semi-presidential forms of government where the legislative and executive powers are in origin separated by popular vote.

Fusion of powers exists in many, if not a majority of, parliamentary democracies, and does so by design. However, in all modern democratic polities the judicial branch of government is independent of the legislative and executive branches.

The system first arose as a result of political evolution in the United Kingdom over many centuries, as the powers of the monarch became constrained by Parliament. The term fusion of powers itself is believed to have been coined by the British constitutional expert Walter Bagehot.

Read the document from the House of Commons Library attached to the top of this post. Do you think that Bagehot was right? Is the UK more of fusion of powers rather than a separation of powers? Leave your comment below: