122 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy 2011). In this context, the developmental role of the state should be geared towards improving the quality of life of the people. Sen calls this the “expansion of freedom”. The United Nations Development Program calls it “human development”. The link between good governance and human development has long been recognized by the United Nations. Good governance has been a high priority of international financial institutions. The World Bank, for example, has supported anti-corruption programs to help member-states to more efficiently utilize development assistance. This is also a priority of donor countries like Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. In the Philippines, the anti-corruption programs launched by both the government and civil society groups have not significantly curbed the perceived corruption in government. It continues to be a serious challenge which has in fact become the clarion call of the Aquino III administration. Former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo estimated that the government loses 20 billion pesos annually to graft and corruption. It is not surprising at all to see that research organizations rank our country below the regional East Asian average in World Governance Indicators, particularly in regard to control of corruption and political stability (Appendix A). This measure has been cited by credible research undertaken by the UNDP and the Human Development Network. This finding supports the observation of this study that executive hegemony of our Presidential system weakens horizontal accountability and encourages a dominant delegative authority and leads to the poor performance of the Presidential system in the Philippines. The World Governance Indicators also shows the declining percentile rank of the Philippines from 1996-2009 in all of the indicators (Appendix B). The biggest decline however can be seen in political stability and control of corruption. This measure further strengthens the empirical basis of poor governance in the country. The importance of good governance to social and economic development cannot be overemphasized. It is an imperative for the vision of a substantive democracy. Reforms aimed at strengthening horizontal accountability through transparency are imperative to minimize the employment of delegative authority for better governance. The United Nations is not only pushing for good governance. It has also pushed, in the last six decades of its existence, the agenda of economic and social development. Due to its limited financial resources, the efforts of the world body in this aspect of its functions have been deemed a mixture of successes and failures (Henderson 1998: 405-08). But the United Nations is unrelenting. In 2000, it launched the “Millennium Declaration” which aims to “wipe out poverty and the worst forms of human deprivation by the year