Philippine Constitutional Framework for Economic Emergency: Expanding the Welfare State, Restricting the National Security Apparatus

菲律賓經濟危機的憲政機制：擴展福利國家、限縮國家安全

面對全球經濟的崩解，菲律賓憲政主義最重要的挑戰是，這個管制型國家所浮現回應的不是如同「經濟大蕭條」般偶然和暫時的危機，而是開發中國家系統上及結構上的需要。
由於對獨裁政權的恐懼深植於心，菲律賓所有的緊急命令均由制度以及民意加以管控。經濟危機只能正當化解決特定問題的暫時措施。國家只能以發展的需求來從事長期的制度改革，但這也可能因為表面上一如往常的假象，阻礙國家推動更多的基礎改革。
無論如何，憲政主義在我國相當程度可說是西方移植的產物，若再放任國家擴權，貧弱不振的國家機器只會更輕易地為已在／正在腐敗的政客所把持。

Confronted by the global economic meltdown, the central challenge for Philippine constitutionalism is that its regulatory state emerged as a response not to an episodic and passing crisis like the Great Depression but to the systemic and structural needs of a developing country.
Due to deep-seated fears of a return to dictatorship, all forms of emergency powers are checked by institutional and popular safeguards. The economic challenge qua crisis can therefore justify only temporary measures calibrated to address specific problems. The state can embark on long-term institutional reforms only by construing the challenge qua developmental imperative, but can do so only by maintaining the fiction that everything is business-as-usual, thus disabling the state from undertaking more fundamental reforms.
Either way, to the extent that constitutionalism is a “Western transplant,” we overburden weak and underdeveloped state institutions which, thus expanded, become vulnerable to manipulation by corrupt and corrupting elites.