From fusion of powers to separation of powers - a quantitative measure of form of government

Abstract

Regime types can be classified and subclassifed in a number of ways. A natural dividing line separates democracies from autocracies. Among the democracies of the world we usually make a distinction between countries with a presidential form of government and countries with a parliamentary form of government. In addition, there are a number of democratic Countries that have forms of governments that combine features of presidentialism and parliamentarism. This category of hybrid systems is actually rather heterogeneous but the Common denominator is that the executive power is divided between a president and a prime minister. Such systems are generally referred to as semi presidential systems. In the present paper I introduce a new way of operationalizing form of government and argue that it is, in principle at least, possible to regard the distinction between presidentialism and parliamentarism as a difference in degree instead of a difference in kind. By focusing on one central dimension of form of government, namely the separation of powers doctrine, it is possible to create a quantitative measure of form of government, ranging from complete separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branch to complete fusion of powers. The ambition of the present paper is to create such a scale along which it will then be possible to place the democratic countries of the world.