60 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition seat cap, a clear violation of the principle of proportional representation which is recognized as one of the “four inviolable parameters of the Philippine party list system”. What are the effects of these rules on interest representation and party formation? From the point of view of representation, it appears that a wider set of interests are indeed represented in the PL system but this practice also magnies the problem of too many particularistic and narrow interests being represented with no established mechanism for aggregating such interests. An examination of the parties running under the PL system reveals a bewildering array of organizations representing diverse interests including mainly ethnic and religious concerns and all kinds of y-by-night dummy organizations opportunistically set up by powerful vested interests to win congressional seats. In fact, these narrow interest groups undermine the legitimacy of the truly programmatic parties running under this list which could gain more seats and exert a stronger impact on the legislative process in a truly proportional system of voting without seat caps. Thus, the current PL system has actually aggravated the problem of multipartism in presidential systems which could accentuate “immobilism” in the relationship between the executive and legislature or result in “purely opportunistic negotiated deals, wheeling and dealing, legislative log-rolling, etc.”(Sartori 1997). In short, the PL system as it has actually been implemented has resulted in a false sense of democratic representation which may in fact further strengthen presidential powers at the expense of the legislature. If a PL system with proportional representation (PR) is to be combined with presidentialism, already a problem by itself, it would be better to abide by the strict logic of the PR system of election by doing away with the seat caps but retaining a reasonable minimum winning threshold to control the excessive party fragmentation at work in the present system. Side by side with these reforms, it is also worthwhile looking into the possibility of increasing the seats allocated for the party list system to help balance the entrenched oligarchic power of the dominant political families in Congress. These rules would be an incentive for the programmatic parties representing broader interests as they can win more seats proportional to their actual strength while discouraging those identied with the narrowest interests and constituencies. Political Variables and Socio-Economic Outcomes Political leadership is a crucial factor in deciding concrete developmental outcomes locally and nationally. However, it is also the case that such leadership whether exercised through political families or non-traditional ones always needs to grapple with concrete historical and political constraints and its outcomes are also ltered through various institutions and practices. Moreover, other variables such as the initial conditions of growth and the impact of natural resources and geography also play important roles in