11
The Philippines
Julio C. Teehankee
Introduction
The Philippines had once been the showcase of Western-style democ-
racy in Asia. From 1946 to 1972, a formal two-party system func-
tioned to stabilize intraelite competition in the former American
colony. Two parties—the Nacionalista Party (NP) founded in 1907
and the Liberal Party (LP) founded in 1946—contested elections and
alternated in power by taking control of the presidency and both
chambers of the Philippine congress. However, despite their regular
political intramurals, the two parties were identical in their struc-
tures, social makeup, and policies. Both parties were controlled by
the educated and landed elite who did not seek mass membership,
only mass support.1
The Philippine two-party system was shattered when President
Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and established a
dominant one-party dictatorship for 14 years. Since the fall of the
Marcos dictatorship in 1986, a number of parties and coalitions were
organized and dissolved in successive local and national elections
under a nascent multiparty system. But only a handful of “relevant”
parties flourished. Hence, the absence of strong and credible political
parties continues to exact a prime democratic deficit on the Philippine
political system.
The standard approach to analyzing Filipino electoral and party
politics had been to view power relations within the context of the
patron-client factional (pcf) framework. 2 Popularized in the 1960s
T. Inoguchi et al. (eds.), Political Parties and Democracy
© Takashi Inoguchi and Jean Blondel 2012
188 Julio C. Teehankee
by Carl Lande in his work entitled “Leaders, Factions and Parties:
The Structure of Philippine Politics,” the pcf framework posited that
social relations in the Philippines were not structured by organized
interest groups or individuals who perceived themselves to be part
of a specific social class like in Western democracies. What existed
was a network of mutual aid relationships between pair of individu-
als that he called “dyadic ties.” The dyadic ties that are reflected in
the Philippine politics are vertical and unequal that bind prosperous
patrons who dispensed material goods and services and dependent
clients who recompensed with their support and loyalty.
These relationships formed the basis of local factionalism that con-
stituted the organizational base of national parties. The premartial
two-party system was anchored on the dominance of only two fac-
tions in local areas, which allowed for only two national parties. 3
However, the potency of the kinship system as an instrument of
patronage was largely believed to have diminished and replaced by
the emergence of the political machine.4 The onslaught of economic
transformation and modernity has largely depersonalized patron
relations in the rural areas. Thus, the reciprocal relationship between
leader and followers has become contractual in nature.
Political machines are specialized organizations set up for the pur-
pose of mobilizing and influencing voter outcome through the dis-
pensation of social, economic, or material benefits. These benefits are
essentially patronage in the form of jobs, services, favors, and money
distributed to voters and supporters. Patronage-driven parties built
around coalitions of political machines have become vehicles for raid-
ing the state and distributing political and economic largesse. In this
regard, Philippine state has been characterized as being “weak” or
“captured” in competing and diverse social interests since it enjoys
little autonomy from dominant social classes, political clans, power-
ful families, and other entrenched particularistic groups. 5
More than 100 years since the establishment of the first Filipino
political party in 1900 under the aegis of American colonialism, par-
ties in the Philippines continue to be candidate-centered coalitions
of provincial bosses, political machines, and local clans, anchored
on clientelistic, parochial, and personal inducements rather than on
issues, ideologies, and party platforms.
Indeed, there is some truth to the observation that “political clans
are the real political parties in the Philippines.”6 Some 160 families
have dominated the two chambers of the Philippine congress since
the 1900s. These families have had two or more members who have
