Duterte and institutional design

LISTENING TO the supporters of Rodrigo Duterte talk about the wonders of federalism and the parliamentary form of government for the Philippines is like listening to medical interns confidently prescribing simultaneous heart and brain surgery for a patient disabled by knee arthritis.

The proponents’ main argument is the supposed superiority of both a federal system of government and a parliamentary form of government to the Philippines’ current unitary system and presidential form of government. For them, once the country becomes federal and parliamentary, it would, like a wheelchair-bound patient running again, break free of corruption, regional neglect, poverty, political dynasties, secessionist movements, party turncoatism, political gridlock, and whatever other political and economic ills there are.

Like a patient scheduled for life-threatening surgery without the benefit of an MRI, CT scan, or any other diagnostic workup, Filipinos are supposed to believe this federal-parliamentary superiority argument without the benefit of solid research, scholarship and political reflection.

Instead, proponents offer a ragtag collection of statements, primers, articles, websites, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, draft constitutions, readers, and a draft congressional joint resolution—all of a quality that does not inspire confidence that they are aware of the enormous intellectual sophistication demanded to give credibility to their argument. It is like medical interns going to their first surgery thinking that what they learned from an introductory medical textbook on the locations of body organs is sufficient. Excited by the correctness of their view, the interns forget their ethics to advise the hapless patient to seek a second opinion on the risky operation. This second opinion is critical for the Philippines because of the novelty and dubiousness of the recommended surgery on the Constitution.

Novelty because no democratic country with an existing unitary-presidential setup has ever simultaneously transited to a federal-parliamentary setup. Dubiousness because this risky operation may not only turn out to be unnecessary but may even be counterproductive.

The best authority from which to draw this second opinion is none other than the very literature in political science that specializes in these institutional questions.

The institutional design (or constitutional engineering) literature tackles how the specific design or redesign of a country’s political institutions—such as its system and form of government, electoral system, party system, legislative structure and judicial system—affects or will affect, among others, the accountability, representation, popular empowerment, elite capture and coherent policymaking of the state.

There are at least three major insights that can be mobilized from a review of this institutional design literature to challenge the federalism-parliamentarism prescription:

First, there is no consensus in the literature on the superiority of a federal to a unitary system of government or of a parliamentary to a presidential form of government. This should deflate the hubris of many Duterte supporters who present their federal-parliamentary superiority argument as if it were a self-evident truth.

Second, the recommendation of top scholars for democratic countries with functioning systems or forms of government is to reform rather than overhaul their institutions. Instead of surgery, the recommendation is physical therapy for the patient.

This is partly because of the multitude of institutional features needed to make a federal-parliamentary setup work properly. Since most of these features are subject to the inevitable compromises with existing political power bases that profit from the current institutions, scholars warn of the grave danger that a constitutional overhaul may produce institutional Frankenstein outcomes that combine the worst of the old and the new.

On the other hand, piecemeal reforms that move the current setup to a more parliamentary-like (for example, party system reforms against turncoatism) or a more federal-like (for example, increased regional autonomy) direction usually involve only legislation. If there are errors in the reforms, it would be easier to return to the old setup or to address these through new legislation. This will be excruciatingly difficult to do in a messed-up charter change surgery.

Third, the diagnosis that a country’s main political pathologies are explained by the system and the form of government is rejected by many scholars of the literature. Instead, they identify other institutional features. As such, it is neither the heart nor the brain but the knees or some other body parts that caused the patient’s disability. For example, the claims on the positive effects of a parliamentary form of government on party discipline are challenged by the alternative view that political parties are more affected by the country’s electoral system than by its form of government.

There are many more insights that can be found in the institutional design literature to fortify this second opinion. But another source simply comes from the irony of Philippine reform itself circa 2016: The country will go through its most serious institutional overhaul attempt since Edsa I under a president whose contempt for democratic institutions is at its most vehement. This should be fair warning to all beguiled by the siren song of federalism-parliamentarism being played by the incoming Duterte administration.