Philippine Democracy: Contradictions of Third World Redemocratization

Abstract

The basic argument of this paper is that the American-based model of "democracy" that has been made to prevail in the Philippines from the early days after US conquest is urgently in need of critical reexamination. In the larger context, the same is intended to apply to the theoretical literature on "redemocratization" that has sprung up in the aftermath of the overthrow of a number of military regimes and dictatorships in Latin America, as well as in the Philippines. The collapse of the Eastern European one-party states will certainly swell that literature, much of which is self-serving of US narrow definitions of democracy. These definitions have permitted it to bestow that label on the most outrageously repressive of regimes so long as they hold "elections" and remain loyal allies.