The Philippines as a Democracy in Progress

The Philippines as a democracy in progress

(Understanding civic culture)

• The pork barrel scam: when defining the problem is part of the problem

Kontrabida?

Bida?

Those who were not in the rally

The politician as provider

The politician as provider

“Hardware” (governance issues) versus

“software” (problems of citizenship)

One hundred years (of formal democracy)

Sultans, rajahs, datus

Rizal’s insight

•

An immoral government is matched by a people without morals; an administration without

conscience, by grasping and slavish townsmen

Culture talk: When analysis results in paralysis

• The concept is vague and static• As total "way of life" --- gives the illusion of

permanence• Values education programs: exercises in

futility

Paradigm shift

• We need to put on new lenses --- so we can begin seeing the problem in a new way

• Stop the culture talk • focus on key "actionable" elements:

knowledge and skills, habits and dispositions• "practice makes perfect"

The new paradigm

A case in point

The absence of a public sphere

Our incapacity to: • Situate ourselves within a larger society ---

beyond friends and family;• Imagine a society of anonymous others• Think of and act for the interest of an abstract

public

The absence of a public sphere

Making sense of public life: • the habitual extension of the ethos of

intimacy to the larger society of anonymous others

• Our preference for private solutions to obviously public problems

Implications for politics

• Incapable of addressing public issues as public issues;

• People not likely to treat elections, or any other democratic exercise, as opportunities for discerning the common good;

• Candidates are routinely seen in personal terms

Traditional politics

• People are seized by the overpowering charisma of would-be saviors;

• Seduced by the glamour of celebrities; • Drawn into the patronage networks operated

by cynical machine politicians• Failure of governance

Our goal

• Acquire the appropriate ethical “software” to make our institutions work as designed;

• The software: Citizenship;• Citizenship = participation (versus mere

presence);• Participation: Situating ourselves within the

larger society of anonymous others;• Knowledge, skills, habits, dispositions

Bringing it all together:

• Ultimately, it is based on the mental habit of recognizing common interests “and choosing to look for collective rather than individual benefits” (Cox 1995, online, 5/7). In everyday life, this would mean activities that bring about an “enlarged interest, a wider human sympathy, a sense of active responsibility for oneself, the skills needed to work with others toward goods that can only be obtained through collective action, and the powers of sympathetic understanding needed to build bridges of persuasive words to those with whom one must act” (Galston on Tocqueville and Mill, 2004).

Where we stand: The Philippines is not a failed democracy

• The Philippines is not a failed democracy, it is rather a democracy in the making, a work in progress

• Filipinos can take comfort in --- and be inspired --- by the fact that the mature democracies existing today are the painstaking work of several generations

• There may be a lack of fit between the ethical demands of republican institutions and our political culture, but this is a reason to change culture, not to lose heart and slide into autocratic rule

Our strategy

• Identify or create everyday opportunities where people may learn to ride the bicycle of citizenship;

• Because “practice makes perfect”

Example 1 Would not requiring people to REGULARLY

clean their places of work (and not just their homes) make them better custodians of the public spaces?

Example 2

• Would not creating REGULAR opportunities for people to DIRECTLY help determine local government projects make them better stakeholders of their communities?

Example 3

• Would not giving young people opportunities to IDENTIFY community problems and PROPOSE REAL SOLUTIONS to these problems help them become real citizens?

KEY QUESTIONS FOR ASIAN HISTORY:

• If Philippine democracy is a work in progress, what about democracy in other countries (for example, in Southeast Asia)? In what respect can we also see other Asian (or Southeast Asian) democracies as works in progress? What challenges are these democracies facing or have faced? How similar or different are the experiences of these other Asian (or Southeast Asian) countries?

Maraming salamat!