Maharlikan Federalism

The historical Maharlika implemented a democratic confederation system similar to the one implemented by the Greek city states, the European Hanseatic league, and the Swiss Confederacy. This is the opposite of the centralized imperial system imposed by the Romans, Arab Muslims, and the Chinese.

However, a confederation is weak against empires. The Greeks were easily gobbled up by the Romans, just as the North African tribes were swallowed up by the Arabs under Islam.

An alternative to a confederation is a federation which has a central ruler and legal system, making it stronger. Examples are the Dutch Republic (United Provinces) and the United States.

Maharlikanism is the plan that follows the democratic system as a federation. This includes the following:

• Constitutional virtues as the foundation of Maharlikan morals instead of the Bible or the Quran. Christian and Islamic morals can be added on top of those constitutional virtues
• Semi-independent federalized states similar to the United states
• A bicameral parliament where the senators are elected from congressmen and the President and Vice President are elected from the senators
• A free trade system that allows both money and barter and implements EF Schumacher’s Multilateral Clearing that creates a common universal interest, as opposed to the national interest that dominates the current systems
• A renaming of the Philippines, as ordered by the Katipunan:

Maharlikanism itself is an implementation of the solutions applicable to the Philippines, given by the Western Enlightenment (Socrates, Spinoza, Montesquieu, David Hume, Adam Smith) and Eastern Enlightenment (Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism) which we unified as Social Superphysics

Unknown to many, the Katipunan founders had a thirst for enlightenment ideas which were blocked off by the Catholic Church. This desire ranked number 11 in their list of 22 demands on Spain :

Other countries will have their own implementations. For example, our suggestion for the overhaul of Afghanistan is an Islamic federation that emphasizes the opposition to be female-led in order to counterbalance the male-dominated ruling party, and to implement Afghan constitutional virtues.

The 27 Federal States

Pimentel suggests the states to follow the current divisions as Region 1, 2, 3, etc. However, this is wrong because such divisions were drawn arbitrarily by the Spanish and Americans who did not know the the natural linguistic and tribal divisions.

Instead of the old regions, we suggest 27 federal states that will have the following properties:

• share the common language or dialect
• have a port with access to the sea
• be in line with any existing large-scale infrastructure and economic links or logistics
• have at least 1 million people

The Bangsamoro can be a template on how states will be created.

Corruption Patterns

The high corruption patterns are:

• Centralized political parties + decentralized taxation
• Decentralized constitution + centralized taxation
• Decentralized constitution + decentralized political parties
• Decentralized constitution + more levels of government
• Decentralized taxation + more levels of government
• Centralized constitution + Decentralized political parties + Centralized taxation (Philippines has this)

The low corruption patterns are:

• Centralized constitution + decentralized taxation (US)
• Decentralized taxation = low corruption

“The results for these variables are consistent with earlier research fiscal decentralisation is associated with lower corruption ratings”

The benefits of federalism, specifically decentralized taxation, has already been proven by studies. The bureaucracy that you mentioned is called spatial decentralization which reduces corruption initially, but increases it if the law-making capacity is also decentralized. You can see this in lobbying in the US.

The Philippine version of federalism is:

• Decentralized constitution + Decentralized political parties + Decentralized taxation

Canada and the US are in the top20 low corruption countries in the Corruption perceptions index and are both federal. A paper shows that decentralized taxation (federal taxation) consistently reduces corruption.

So the current PH situation is high corruption: Centralized constitution + Decentralized political parties + Centralized taxation = high corruption

The PH version of federalism is: Decentralized constitution + Decentralized political parties + Decentralized taxation