102 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy Hence, it is deemed in this study that the more prudent approach of incremental change through a more modest legislative agenda should be pursued instead. Analyzing the Impact of Executive Hegemony This paper argues that the strong position of the president or the executive hegemony relative to the legislature and the judiciary in the presidential form of government weakens horizontal accountability and even threatens the very existence of this accountability such as in the case of executive coups (Diamond, Linz and Lipset, op.cit.: 39-42; also O'Donnell in Diamond and Plattner 1996: 94108). The strong president has military powers enabling him to rule by decree. Even in times when the executive is not exercising his military powers, his other powers enable him to encroach and diminish the authority of other state bodies which are unable to enforce accountability (O'Donnell 1998: 120). His other powers are not only legislative powers (see Croissant 2003: 68-98 for the analysis of his legislative power), but include the power over the budget, and appointment power, among others. These powers have made the president's authority nearly ubiquitous in the entire state apparatus. The difficulty of impeachment and the immunity from suits have placed him almost above the law. Moreover, the president and his political coalition employ the vast powers of the executive to pursue self-interest masked as the public good (O'Donnell op.cit). Guillermo O'Donnell calls this as “delegative authority”. When these powers are combined with the notion of “delegative authority”—the subordination of public good to private gain of the president, his relatives, friends and political allies; clientelism, corruption, and patrimonialism become intrinsic to a transitioning polity. These intrinsic features of the polity adversely affect its legitimacy and performance and provide an insight about the failure the president to implement his socioeconomic programs within his or her fixed term of office. The failures continue into the next administration which institutionally would meet the same fate. Hence, the transition to substantive democracy is stalled. The chronic economic and social problems are not effectively addressed, and the transition is unable to progress into a substantive democracy, much less a consolidated democracy. The political development of the Philippines since 1986 can be analyzed from this perspective of a stalled democratic transition. It should be emphasized however, that the transition discussed here is the transition towards substantive democracy from an essentially non-democratic polity. The Philippines is far removed from the consolidated democracy attained by Western polyarchies.