The Philippine Pro-Parliamentary Position and the Comparative Constitutional Design Literature

This paper aims to illustrate how the comparative literature on constitutional design that is skeptical of the pro-parliamentary claims can be employed to critically review one of the central arguments of the Philippine pro-parliamentary position. This argument is the claimed superiority of parliamentary over presidential systems in promoting more efficient and harmonious executive-legislative relations and in avoiding political gridlock between the two branches. The paper argues that the counter-arguments of some comparative constitutional design scholars pose serious challenges to the validity of the Philippine pro-parliamentary position. Hopefully, this preliminary effort can serve as a template that can be used and developed by those interested in pursuing a similar comparative constitutional design literature-based criticism of the other arguments raised by Filipino parliamentary advocates.