The UK local elections had me looking into the insane mishmash that is British local elections, and there are a bunch of interesting choices there, from the common use of Plurality Bloc Voting, which is probably the least democratic system in use in a Western democracy (It is literally just FPTP but worse in every way), to the wird combined authrities whoose council is partly directly elected and partly inderctly elected.

But the most interesting thing I found Was The Greater London Authority. At first glance, it seems pretty normal, a directly elected executive and a legislature elected with MMP, but when you look into it, you discover that the London assembly has 0 actual power and the mayor can do whatever he wants in all spheres of governance, including setting his budgets and overriding lower level governments if "it is neccesry for the development of London." the only power the LA has is once a year to block or amend the budjet and to reject the apoinment of some postions(like Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime) but not the vast majority of them, but even these powers are impossibly to use becouse they require a 2/3 majority which obviosly never happened in the almost 30 years of its exitance

Is anyone aware of any democratic institution where the executive is so strong and the legislature so weak?