80 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition example Gasiorowski and Power (1998: 740-771). Moreover, in a comprehensive listing of the problems of democratic transition, Professor Jose V. Abueva identied 24 issues that have to be addressed, and many of them are society-oriented issues (Abueva in Miranda op.cit: 10-48). It should also be noted that other society-oriented analysis of the Philippine polity has pointed to its “patrimonial” or “personalistic” or even the “predatory nature of the elite” as the most important factor that affects the democratization process (Budd 2004: 1-6; see also Kasuya and Quimpo 2010: 1-6). Another society-oriented study sees the weak Philippine state as showing potency in the civilian supremacy over the military and electoral politics (Abinales 2005: 27-62). In the context of institutionalism, however, the sharp focus on institutional aws and reforms can help move the transition to substantive democracy. The study of Ethan B. Kapstein and Nathan Converse asserts this view. These two authors' data suggest that political institutions, “the institutions that place effective constraints on executive power, play a crucial role in democratic consolidation” (Kapstein and Converse 2008: 57). Discussions of democratic constitutional structure cover the Presidential, parliamentary and hybrid forms of government. In comparative politics, the usual example of the presidential form of government is that of the United States of America while the common example of the parliamentary form is that of the United Kingdom. The French Fifth Republic is an example of the hybrid form of presidential and parliamentary government. The parliamentary form of democracy appears to be the favored constitutional structure over the presidential form for democratizing countries (Stefan and Skatch 1993 cited in Abad; Linz in Diamond and Plattner 1996: 124-42). Many stable democracies have adopted the parliamentary form of government while many new democracies that have followed the presidential form of government are deemed unstable. Advocates of the federal-parliamentary form of government here, like Professor Jose V. Abueva and others, cite this view. They also cite the consensual nature of the parliamentary form of government, as contrasted from the winner-take-all feature of presidentialism and the absence of term limits as the foundation of its strength and resilience. The presidential form of government in Latin America and Asia appears to be unable to transform into consolidated democracies and apparently conrms this view. A specic type of presidential government in Latin America and Asia that is unable to graduate into a consolidated democracy has been called by Guillermo O'Donnell as a “delegative democracy”. Wolfgang Merkel asserts that this is one of the subtypes of defective or embedded democracy. The others are “exclusive, domain and illiberal democracies” (Merkel 2004: 33-54). The delegative type of transitioning presidential government ts the Philippines in one important sense; it has what might be called executive hegemony relative to the legislature and judiciary as well as other constitutional bodies. This weakens horizontal accountability and enables leaders who adhere to the delegative notion of political authority to distort the principle that public ofce