Contested democracy and the left in the Philippines after Marcos

Abstract

When “people power” toppled Marcos in 1986, the Philippines was held up throughout the world as a shining example of the restoration of democracy. Since then, however, scholars of Philippine politics have qualified the country’s democracy with various depreciatory adjectives: “elite democracy,” “cacique democracy,” a “weak state” dominated by powerful political families; “patrimonial oligarchic state”; “boss-democracy,” etc. How exactly is democracy - and politics, in general - in the Philippines to be characterized or interpreted? What is being done to deepen Philippine democracy and to rid it of the various depreciatory adjectives being appended to it? What role is the left playing in this process? Is the Philippine left a democratizing force or is it a threat to democracy? I put forward a three-part argument. The first part consists of an alternative interpretative framework of Philippine politics. The three prominent interpretations of Philippine politics - the patron-client framework, the elitedemocracy or patrimonial view, and the neocolonial or dependency analysis tend to be somewhat incomplete, static and top-down. The “elite democracy” view, which I believe has now emerged as the dominant interpretation (with such variants as “cacique democracy,” “patrimonial oligarchic state” and “bossism”), tends to focus only on elite action and intra-elite competition, and to ignore the efforts towards popular empowerment and social justice of many Filipinos - but especially the poor and marginalized classes, sectors and communities - for “democracy from below.” The Philippines, I contend, is a “contested democracy.” In the second part, I argue that the deepening of democracy in the Philippines depends a great deal on the outcome of the contest between “elite democracy” and “democracy from below.” The oligarchic elite basically seeks to maintain a deficient type of formal liberal democracy in which it dominates, while the subordinate classes and communities want to transform this truncated formal democracy into something more substantive - i.e., to deepen it into a participatory and egalitarian democracy. The third part of my argument has to do with the Philippine left - a political force that has long challenged elite rule and that avowedly fights for “democracy from below.” I contend that while the Communist Party of the Philippines and the CPP-aligned “national democratic movement” remain the single biggest left force and still pose a threat to Philippine democracy, new left parties and groups that are democratically oriented have emerged and are helping to transform the Philippines’elite-dominated democracy into a participatory and egalitarian one. The early section of the dissertation focuses on the first two parts of my argument. The core chapters of the study deal with the Philippine left and its engagements in various arenas or lines of work - civil society, elections, public office and governance, popular political education, work for political reforms, and local work. These chapters expound on the third part of my argument, but they relate to the first two parts as well. The experiences of the left, particularly of the emergent left parties and groups, in the different arenas show the complexity of the contestation between “elite democracy” and “democracy from below,” and the problems and difficulties that were or are still being confronted by those working for the deepening of democracy in the Philippines. The complexity is such that in the different arenas, there are other clashing concepts and perspectives. I examine contending versions of the “civil society argument” and contending perspectives in governance - contentions that reflect the clash between the “harmony” and “conflict” models of power. Within the left itself, there are contending views on democratic institutions and processes, on governance, and others. Show more