Federalism as a grand bargain

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needed to deal with many outstanding national security issues that the country is facing and will continue to face in the years China relations. There is no certainty that a prime minister at least in the transition period can provide decisive and stable leadership. The prime minister has to constantly rely on the support of a majority in the parliament, each one of them representing powerful factions. semi-presidential form of government provides a balance between decisiveness of a presidency and accountability in a parliamentary system.

Fourth, a presidency is needed to deal parliamentary systems, especially in a transition period where political parties are very system without a stabilizing and familiar an countries which swung from presidential to parliamentary systems. In the long run, when our parliamentary system has become strong, we can shift to a full parliamentary system. Most federal forms of government in fact are based on parliamentary systems.

Proportional representation

For a semi-parliamentary form of government to be effective, it has to be stable. For this to happen, the ruling party should have a comfortable majority in parliament. Ideally, there should just be a few national parties— Australia, among others.

democracies such as Japan. Before 1990, around 50 percent of all elected posts in Japan’s House political dynasties. Today it is about 10 percent. In the 1990s, elections were based mainly on personalities and not issues. Today, elections in Japan are now based more on political party platforms. Political parties have become central to Japanese politics and voters choose on the basis of policies rather than personalities.

What did they do? In the mid-1990s, they introduced a type of proportional system of representation called mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) method of voting with dual candidacy. Before that, they used single non-transferable voting (SNTV). Their goal was to shift from patronage/personality-based competition towards two-party competition, party-centered campaigning, and party centralization.

what we have now, and the other vote is for a political party with dual candidacy (i.e. you can be nominated for both SMD and as party - ted for SMD and the other half to the open list. Party leaders choose the candidates.

Twenty years after this reform, studies have shown that: 1) the goals of two-party competition, party-centered campaigning, and party - age/factions remain strong but their effects have clientilistic policies (local public and private goods) are giving way to much broader na has resulted in incumbency advantage. Even after 60 years in power, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) only managed to get 3.2 percent of district voters to sign up for party membership.

In addition to MMM, there are other possible mechanisms to channel the interests of political dynasties. For example, the effects of in poor/rural regions but not in urbanized areas that political dynasties are organized around provinces, cities and towns.

Therefore, if we have a regional governor who is elected at large by voters from provinces, incumbency advantages of political dynasties at the regional level will be mitigated. The downside is that smaller provinces might be initially disadvantaged by bigger ones (Bohol vs Cebu, Aurora vs Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan vs Ilocos Sur etc. under the current set-up). However, leaders from the smaller provinces could always coalesce and become large enough to have stronger bargaining powers.

What would happen to the the party-list sys following the Japanese model, the current party party. Instead of being limited to a maximum of three seats, party-lists can compete for as many seats as they can as a proportion of the total number of votes they receive up to a maximum of 40 percent of the total number of seats in the - litical dynasties would help ensure that smaller political parties can also compete in the regions.

Strengthening governance in regions

There are two other valid worries of both critics and proponents of federalism that of uneven administrative capacities in the regions—some regions are strong while of decentralized corruption that could result of the regions. The solution to this is to commensurately strengthen the powers and capacities of constitutional watchdogs such as the Commission on Audit and Civil Service Commission to prevent the abuse of power. Much remains to be done also to improve the governance of local government units as they are given more powers and responsibilities.

- ments would have the capabilities commensu budgets would be to transfer existing regional government agencies to the control of a regional governor. At present, these agencies are held Economic Development Authority will play in a monitoring and coordination and reporting directly to the regional governor. The capacity of middle government—the regional government—would also have to be substantially strengthened. Successful parliamentary systems in fact are associated with a strong civil service.

This arrangement has many important advantages. First and foremost, there is no need to create another layer of bureaucracy and hence no additional cost for personnel. Second, the directors of these agencies will for purposes of coordination over technical standards and policy implementation. This is an arrangement called dual reporting system similar to the arrangement of the administrative staff of India. Third, regional civil servants will be subject to the same national professional qualifications standards to ensure consistency of qualifications nationwide. Civil service will remain national in character.

In addition to strengthening the regional civil service, there is also a need to strengthen the commission on audit and special courts - man at the regional levels. The goal is to ensure that these agencies can effectively hold regional and local governments accountable and to allay fears about abuse of power and decentralized corruption.

In conclusion, for federalism to succeed, we reinforcing political, electoral and admin