If we are to look at the history of the Philippines, we can see that there have been precedents and attempts towards a federal government. Looking through our pre-colonial history, we can see that we were composed of small polities named barangays. Since Spain’s conquest, the type of government dominant in the Philippines has been a unitary one, ruled from the capital of colonial Philippines until today, the so called “Imperial Manila”. Centuries have passed since then and so it simply is no wonder that there would be calls for decentralization and an interest towards federalism to many people. Such notions may just be a natural progress of society, or a sensible choice and idea to a people that have been ruled and exploited by the elites for centuries. But whatever the case is, there have been numerous cases and attempts towards federalization already as seen throughout our Filipino history. In fact, the precedent of the Philippine Colonial government can be also seen resembling some areas of federalization, specifically, the numerous barangays of pre-colonial Philippines. To note, Hutchcroft, (2017) states that these historical precedents are important in efforts for reforms towards federalism, stating it as one of the three basic principles for political reform. Continuing, the advent of the Spanish subjugated and made all these barangays as mostly autonomous polities, but swearing allegiance and tributes to the Spanish Crown. The efforts of the Spanish though have undermined the aforementioned precedent, dividing and turning these barangays against each other through their strategy of “divide and conquer”. It also didn’t help that the Spanish rule have and cooperation with the Spanish administrators and friars have tremendously helped these rulers now known as cabeza de barangay, ruling as little kings of their land. This has affected the solidarity among the barangays, which Cyr (2014) states to be the foundation for a successful federalism. The various barangays have been cultivated to hate other barangays as their enemy and to form an identity different from other barangays. This “distinction” of identity is seen not only in the conquered barangays, which would ironically be their common identity in revolt against Spain, but this distinction or separation of identity was also present in the southern barangays in Mindanao that resisted and were unconquered by the Spanish. The works of Rizal though have been instrumental in reigniting the solidarity among these barangays, which along with the help of the illustrados, have resulted in the formation of the Malolos Constitution. This was one of the most substantial attempts towards federalization if it would have succeeded.
While the Spanish colonization has resulted in the formation of the Philippine state, its legacy is akin to a vicious circle that still persists until today, reinforced during the colonial rule of the Americans. Due to the misconception of the Americans then of the Spanish rule being an “overcentralized” rule, a view still persisting until today but contested by some, the following reforms of the Americans were focused on decentralization (Hutchcroft, 2000). It is further stated in Hutchcroft’s paper that the political necessity to pacify the islands, beliefs and ideologies that the American’s possessed greatly influenced the decentralization effort. One example of this is the right to suffrage that was extended to the land-holding elites only for a long time. Further down the line, the American administrators rule was characterized by further decentralization and compromises with local politicians, powers misused by the local politicians as what it eventually led to was local authoritarianism. The amount of powers decentralized to the local politicians and their political advantage allowed for the formation and preservation of political dynasties. This was followed by further attempts to decentralize by opening national elections. This is of great significance to Philippine politics. Local politicians and political dynasties saw this as further opportunity to advance their own interests and political power through the use of their local power. It was also during this period that patronage politics flourished. While there are many valid analyses as to how patronage politics manifested and has stayed strong, with one analysis regarding the Filipino culture being the most prominent, there is also the perspective of Hutchcroft claiming it stemmed from the US’ efforts in “the particular configuration of the U.S.-crafted colonial polity”, rather than the result from “tradition” or culture (Hutchcroft, 2000). These were the main contributing factors to the formation of aan image of a national oligarchy. While there were still attempts by the American administrators to centralize, it was ultimately insufficient, and the American period saw not the removal or curbing of the elites, but instead the further legalization and consolidation of their powers that would allow them to maintain their rule for decades to come. The political system in the Philippines eventually developed, though not strictly in a good direction, with frameworks like Anarchy of Families (Mccoy, 1993), Bossism (Sidel, 1997), and Patron-client framework being the most influential in viewing contemporary Philippine politics. Later in the paper, the researcher would be mainly using the Bossism framework to analyze federalism’s potential grave effects on Philippine development and shifting of frameworks used to view Philippine politics. It is imperative, however, to first examine and analyze other viewpoints so as to avoid reinforcing of biases and cross-referencing of facts.
First and foremost, federalism is decentralization from national to local governments. If we are to tackle the age old problem that is “Imperial Manila”, it would seem that decentralization would be the solution for it once and for all. Mendoza (2017) however, disagrees with such notions, but does still support federalism. Mendoza clarifies that even with the Local Government Code of 1991, which is a monumental legislature towards decentralization, still did little to curb the “Imperial Manila”. Mendoza proposes instead that the enactment of federalism shouldn’t be treated as a silver bullet to all our political ills, but instead as an opportunity to greatly affect and reform our systems within, akin to the Marcos regime essentially a “reset button” to the country. One of the issues that should be tackled in this period of reform should also be the problem of political dynasties and their lacking accountability. Not only is there a problem regarding governance when dynasties are involved, but these political dynasties are also a problem in the legislature. In fact, Yusingco and Yusingco(2018) have pointed out this issue specifically. Not only does the strong presence of political dynasties in the Houses pose a strong impediment for laws to address their problem, but can even impede reforms on a constitutional level. Even in researches, there is still a divide as to whether federalism can bring economic growth, with researches backed with data stating that federalism can bring economic prosperity, and some claiming it only leads to further inequality and average poverty from all the observed countries (Hatfield, 2006; Uy, 2018)
II. Theory
The political landscape of the Philippines after the American Colonization was viewed for a long time to be explained and dominated by patron-clientelism framework (PCF). Mccoy’s (1993) theory of anarchy of families also offer a glimpse of Philippine politics, and may even see a greater relevance as seen in the trend of increasing political dynasties. While it may seem that Philippine politics is greatly dominated by personal factors as seen in the frameworks of Mccoy and the PCF, there is often the ignored “impersonal and non-clientelist” means that politicians employ during elections. Of course this is not to discredit personalistic features in politics, but there is also a need to see the impersonal things that are clearly present in Philippine politics, especially since most of the opinion pieces and literature have been citing mostly such personalistic features like political dynasties. The Bossism framework by Sidel is a great framework that focuses on such.
As discussed earlier, local politicians are no stranger to using autocratic means, due in part to the vast powers granted to them and lacking accountability to the people. They truly are no different to kings in their own domain. It is simply common to see the usage of violence, vote-buying, and coercion in local elections, most prominently in areas farther from Manila or non-urban areas. Access to these impersonal means however, are mostly reliant on access to state instruments. These local politicians, with methods akin to bosses, were only able to win and gain access to government instruments through powerbrokers from the national government, in exchange for their support in national elections. This is the relation between the local and national government, acting as bosses through the use of state instruments. This is, from my understanding, Sidel’s framework of Bossism. It is also imperative that while using this framework to view Philippine politics, to keep in mind Sidel’s interpretation of the State as an instrument. This is important as viewing the state as such removes the notion that the state is a “weak state”, rather ours is a strong, but fragmented state. In its function as an extractive tool or institution, it is very much efficient. Such extractive function though is not only limited to the granting of monopolies, regulatory laws, land grabbing, and extraction of natural resources, but also to the extraction of the state itself as a resource. Such nature of fragmentation is also important to address as solidarity, one of the basic principles of federalism, is evidently lacking due in part to the division created by the Spanish and by our geography itself. Politicians, local or national, are only interested in furthering their own localities like stationary bandits only for the purpose of exploiting it more in the long term (Olson, 1993).
Sidel’s bossism framework also explains bosses and how political dynasties are established and maintained, which will be discussed later as to what federalism’s significance is in relation to these. Not all bosses necessarily employ violence, but grant monopolies to themselves and others to obtain support from local elites, and attempt to obtain propriety wealth. Most of the cases however, majority use an abundance of violence and coercion, resulting to these bosses also being called as “warlords”. These two are the most prominent types of bossism and the types examined in Sidel’s paper. These bosses that establish themselves mostly embrace this warlord identity. Their offspring or successor however, are educated and is prepared for politics that do not rely only on violence and coercive forces as a warlord does. Successive wins in election rely on the support of the superordinate power brokers, granting local bosses the previously discussed state apparatuses. It is also through this that these power brokers essentially hold control and support from local bosses. Thus the only alternative for these bosses to remove themselves from this state of uncertainty at the whims, victory, and decision of power brokers is to obtain power for themselves, wealth in this case, that is outside the control of the government. This is called propriety wealth, and without sufficient propriety wealth, even the longest standing political dynasties can still be toppled and simply replaced with another boss.
The researcher has picked the theory of Sidel’s bossism as this framework is not only one of the frameworks that can offer a detailed description of Philippine politics, but also due to the assumed effects of Federalism that will change the dynamics of this framework the most. The shift in power between the national or federal, and local government, as stated earlier, is the most important aspect of federalism. Viewing this matter through the lens of Bossism offers not only a different perspective from the PCF dominated views, but also examine the impersonal features of Philippine politics which arguably will be strengthened the most in a transition towards a federal government.
2021-7-16-1626455065