Philippine Political Culture Circa 2009
Is the Philippines ready for a Participatory Political Culture?
What is Political Culture?
The open source reference defines Political Culture as
“The orientation of the citizens of a nation toward politics, and their perceptions of political legitimacy and the traditions of political practice,” and the feelings expressed by individuals in the position of the elected offices that allow for the nurture of a political society.
(Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_culture)
Jeffrey Olick, Tatiana Omeltchenko, “Political Culture”, INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2ND EDITION, p. 300 write further:
| Although insights into political culture have been part of political reflection since classical antiquity, two developments in the context of the French Revolution laid the groundwork for modern understandings. First, when members of the Third Estate declared “We are the people,” they were overturning centuries of thought about political power, captured most succinctly by Louis XIV’s infamous definition of absolutism: “L’etat, c’est moi ” (“I am the State”). Henceforth, sovereignty was seen to reside in society rather than in the monarch and his divine rights. A century later, Max Weber turned this political claim into a scientific one when he defined legitimacy as that which is considered to be legitimate-not only by elites but by the population in general; to understand the political power of the state, social science must therefore attend to its reception and sources in society. Second, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau retheorized the social contract as one in which individual interests were taken up in an overarching “General Will” of the collectivity, he raised the question of how social solidarity could be maintained in the absence of recourse to divine right. His answer was “civil religion,” symbols and rituals that establish and dramatize the sense of collective belonging and purpose. A century later, Émile Durkheim took up these themes when he questioned whether modern, complex societies could generate sufficient solidarity to function in a stable manner. Durkheim’s interest in what he called collective effervescence (generated in and through communal rituals) and collective representations (embodied in symbols as well as more abstractly in “collective conscience”) extended Rousseau’s concerns and has underwritten contemporary analyses of political culture as the sets of symbols and meanings involved in securing and exercising political power.
Contemporary work on political culture, however, dates more directly to the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the United States. In the wake of World War II (1939-1945), social scientists were motivated to explain why some nations had turned to authoritarianism while others supported democratic institutions. Before and during the war, anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were proponents of a “culture and personality” approach, which asserted that members of different societies develop different modal personalities, which in turn can explain support for different kinds of political programs and institutions. In a somewhat different vein, the German exile philosopher Theodor Adorno and colleagues undertook a massive study during the war into what they called, in the title of their 1950 work, The Authoritarian Personality, continuing earlier research by critical theorists into the structure of authority in families, which they believed had led Germans to support authoritarian politics and social prejudice. In a similar vein, Harold Laswell described a set of personality traits shared by “democrats,” including an “open ego,” a combination of value-orientations, and generalized trust. Perhaps the most important work on political culture in this period was Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s 1963 The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, which combined Laswell’s description of the democratic personality with at least two strands of social science theory at the time. First, the predominant sociological theory in the United States was that of Talcott Parsons, who explained social order in terms of institutions that inculcated individuals with coherent sets of norms, values, and attitudes-what Parsons called culture- which in turn sustained those institutions through time. In contrast, the so-called behavioral revolution in political science argued that such accounts neglected extra-institutional variables as sources of social order (a concern that could be traced back to Montesquieu in the mid-eighteenth century, who sought external factors-in his case climate-to explain the different forms of law in history); in Parsons, moreover, critics charged that norms, values, and attitudes were more often simply assumed as necessary integrative features of social systems rather than measured empirically (hence the appeal to behaviorism, which in psychology held observability to be the only relevant criterion for science). The major point of Almond and Verba’s comparative study was to address the role of subjective values and attitudes of national populations in the stability of democratic regimes. This fit clearly within the behavioral revolution because it turned to extra-institutional variables (norms,values, and attitudes) to explain political outcomes. Nonetheless, the work was presented as a study of political culture, defined as the aggregate pattern of subjective political dispositions in the populace, thus incorporating and, indeed, operationalizing, the Parsonsian concept of culture. On the basis of extensive survey research, The Civic Culture theorized three basic orientations toward political institutions and outcomes: parochial, where politics is not differentiated as a distinct sphere of life and is of relatively little interest; subject, in which individuals are aware of the political system and its outcomes but are relatively passive; and participant, where citizens have a strong sense of their role in politics and responsibility for it. The Civic Culture rated five countries on these qualities, finding Italy and Mexico to be relatively parochial, Germany to be subject, and the United States and the United Kingdom to be participant political cultures. Subsequent work in this tradition by Ronald Ingelhart and others has shown that the effect of basic satisfaction with political life and high levels of interpersonal trust (what would later be called “social capital”) are analytically distinct from economic affluence, thus arguing forcefully that democracy depends on cultural as well as economic factors. Contemporary authors such as Samuel Huntington have extended this kind of argument about norms, values, and attitudes to the world stage, where they describe a “clash of civilizations” in terms of basic “cultural” differences understood in this way. In sum, political culture theory makes empirical sense out of the French Revolution’s claim that sovereignty derives from society rather than the state. One temptation with this recognition, however, is to assume that while states are about power, societies are about meaning and the reception of power. One solution, inspired by Michel Foucault, among others, has been to declare society the true locus of power. The problem is that this misses the ways in which states do indeed set agendas for societies. Recent analyses have thus returned to the political culture of the state (e.g., Bonnell 1997). But they do so without supposing that societies are mere recipients of such productions. In contrast to much work in political sociology, which has drawn a facile distinction between “merely” symbolic politics and “real” politics, recent political culture theory has thus demonstrated that social life is an ongoing reproductive process. New political culture analysts in particular have focused not only on how political acts succeed or fail to obtain some material advantage but also on how in doing so they produce, reproduce, or change identities. The struggle for position that constitutes politics, we now understand is always simultaneously strategic and constitutive: As Lynn Hunt has written, “Political symbols and rituals were not metaphors of power; they were the means and ends of power itself” (Hunt 1984, p. 54). Interpreting them and understanding how they are generated and how they work is thus of paramount importance. |
Types of Political Cullture
According to their level and type of political participation and the nature of people’s attitudes toward politics, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba outlined three pure types of political culture:
* Parochial - Where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central government, and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by the state. Distant and unaware of political phenomena. He has neither knowledge or interest in politics. In general congruent with a traditional political structure.
* Subject – Where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet he is on the “downward flow” side of the politics. In general congruent with a centralized authoritarian structure.
* Participant – Citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they are affected by it. The individual is oriented toward the system as a whole, to both the political and administrative structures and processes (to both the input and output aspects). In general congruent with a democratic political structure.
These three ‘pure’ types of political culture can combine to create the ‘civic culture’, which mixes the best elements of each.
Civicness, Culture, Society, and Governance
In their essay “What Insights can Multi-Country Surveys Provide about People and Societies?”, Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel write:
| We start from the trivial but significant premise that human societies are composed of people. This means that societies are driven by patterns of mass behavior. This behavior is rooted in people’s prevailing psychological orientations, including their beliefs, values and motivations. Hence, in order to understand how societies function and develop, one needs to understand how their traditions, institutions and regulations are anchored in their people’s beliefs, values and motivations. Survey research makes this possible.
Some additional considerations are useful in exploiting the potential of cross-national surveys. First, it is necessary to deal with representative surveys that measure the motivational and behavioral patterns of entire countries, if countries are the unit of analysis. Many of the most interesting variables, from democratic institutions to economic growth rates, exist at the national level, which means that representative national surveys are needed in order to analyze population-system linkages. Second, it is useful to focus on survey questions that tap deeply seated values, and beliefs, rather than opinions that fluctuate from day to day. Opinions are highly susceptible to the problem of “non-attitudes” (Converse, 1970), and this is particularly true of political opinions. Specific political issues are usually remote from people’s daily lives, and tend to evoke superficial opinions. Moreover, salient political issues generally depend on nation-specific and period-specific political agendas, which reduces their comparability over space and time. It is useful to design questions that tap relatively deep-rooted values, such as people’s beliefs about gender roles, religion, personal liberty, state authority, and peoples’ trust and tolerance towards others. Such social values not only have a higher comparative value across space and time; surprising as it may seem, they also tend to have more impact on important system-level variables than do political orientations. Social trust, for example, has a stronger impact on “good governance” than has political trust, though the latter would seem to be more directly relevant (Newton, 2001). Similarly, such attitudes as tolerance, trust, and emphasis on self-expression are a much stronger predictor of system-level democracy, than is overt support for democracy itself (Inglehart 2003). Growing evidence that the orientations of ordinary people are important for a society’s level of economic productivity, gender equality and democratic consolidation, had increased the relevance of survey data. Accordingly, economists, sociologists, psychologists and political scientists are increasingly using data from the World Values Surveys and other large cross-national surveys to analyze social and political change. Questions of civicness have become a common forum that integrates various disciplinary that share an interest in human progress and well being. The insight that the orientations of ordinary citizens matter, is central to the concept of “human development” (Sen, 1999), which integrates economic, social and political aspects of progress into a single people-centered concept of development (Welzel, Inglehart and Klingemann, 2003; Welzel, 2003). There is considerable debate about which civic orientations are most effective in leading people to behave in productive, cooperative and democratic ways, but the concept of civicness serves as a common point of reference. In the context of survey research, the theoretically most far-reaching type of analyses is done in studies relating aggregate survey data to societal level phenomena. Knack and Keefer (1997), for example, use aggregate measures of social trust to explain economic growth. Inglehart (1997) has explored the linkage between civic norms and the longevity of democratic institutions. Another example is shown in Figure 1, which demonstrates the relationship between individual-level self-expression values and “good governance”– a composite indicator of “voice and accountability” developed by the World Bank. This indicator summarizes various measures of the extent to which people can select, replace and monitor governments (Kaufman, Kraay and Mastruzzi, 2003). Our indicator of self-expression values is taken from the earliest available survey among the second to fourth wave of the World Values Survey (1990-2000). This measure reflects the percentages of people who (1) emphasize freedom and participation, (2) tolerate sexual liberty, (3) sign petitions, (3) trust other people and report high life satisfaction. As Figure 1 demonstrates, there is a strong linear relationship between mass emphasis on self-expression values in a society, and the extent to which their respective political systems provide open and accountable institutions. The relationship can be interpreted in various ways, but theoretical considerations suggest that the linkage between open and accountable institutions and mass-level self-expression values reflects the impact of values on institutions rather than the reverse. For, while self-expression values inherently lead people to demand open and accountable institutions, there is no reason why the presence of such institutions would tend to create these values. Moreover, in Figure 1, self-expression values are measured prior to open and accountable institutions. Thus, the relationship does not reflect the impact of institutions on values, unless both self-expression values and open and accountable institutions have a third common cause, such as economic development or prior democracy. However, even controlling for prior measures of democratic institutions and economic development, the effect of self-expression values remains significant: when one controls for per capita GDP in 1995 and the number of years a society has spent under democracy, mass-level self-expression values still have a significantly positive effect on open and accountable institutions (partial r = .48, significant at the .001-level). Regardless of whether mass-level self-expression values create or reflect open and accountable institutions, the fact that these two phenomena are so strongly related to each other is an important finding, which has two implications. The fact that a society’s institutional performance is strongly linked with mass-level value orientations measured by completely independent methods, helps validate the survey evidence: despite the undeniable difficulties of cross-cultural survey research, it is extremely unlikely that one would find such strong linkages if the survey data were contaminated by massive measurement error. Second, the finding that ordinary people’s value orientations shape or reflect a society’s basic institutional traits, points to the existence of a population-system linkage that ties genuine system characteristics, such as the quality of democratic institutions, to the central tendencies of given populations. Analyzing such population-system linkages is crucial to understanding how societies operate and develop. The thesis that political institutions are rooted in ordinary people’s value orientations is far from new– it is the central claim of civic culture theory. |
Challenges to Civic Culture Theory
In a paper written by a research colloquia presented at the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Department of Politics and Society, University of California, Irvine, November 1995. Almond discusses the development of the “Civic Culture” study and his views of political culture research since this landmark study. Almond notes:
| It is cited in the concluding chapter of the Civic Culture as the source of our hypothesis that more stable democracies have a “mixed political culture”. We got from Harry Eckstein the idea that a democratic political system requires a blending of apparent contradictions, “balanced disparities” as he called them, if it is to function effectively. On the one hand, a democratic government must govern; it must have power and leadership and make decisions. On the other hand, it must be responsible to its citizens. For if democracy means anything, it means that in some way governmental elites must respond to the desires and demands of citizens. The need to maintain this balance between governmental power and governmental responsiveness, as well as the need to maintain other balances that derive from the power/responsiveness balance–balances between consensus and cleavage, between affectivity and affective neutrality–explains the way in which the more mixed patterns of political attitudes associated with the civic culture are appropriate for a democratic system. Verba and I found confirmation of Eckstein’s “balanced disparity” theory in our analysis of British and American attitudes, contrasted with those of Germany, Italy, and Mexico.
We were also influenced by Harry Eckstein’s congruence theory of political authority, the argument that political stability was enhanced if non-political authority patterns–particularly in groups closest to the state–were similar or congruent. Thus we had found in our data that there was a stronger relationship between civic competence and adult participation in workplace decisions, than between civic competence and earlier participation by the child in family decisionmaking. There was a 30th anniversary “retrospective” on the Civic Culture study at the 1994 meetings of the American Political Science Association. Among the commentators was Robert Putnam of Harvard who concluded his remarks with the observation that the civic culture theory reminded him of “Goldilocks”. In the story of “Goldilocks And The Three Bears,” the young heroine, possessed of even more than ordinary feminine curiosity, ventures into the house of the three bears and proceeds to explore its furnishings and contents. In sequence she tries out the three chairs at the dining table, the three plates of porridge, and the three beds. In each case she finds the Papa and the Mama versions not to her liking, and settles on the baby bear’s chair, plate of porridge, and bed as more appropriate for her–as being “just right”. As you may recall she is ultimately discovered fast asleep in bed by the baby bear. Not to leave the reader in suspense, Goldilocks escapes from the bears by leaping through a window. At the time I did not fully grasp what Putnam meant by the Goldilocks metaphor. Was it his way of putting a common criticism of the Civic Culture study that it was conservative, smugly Anglo-American, and morally indifferent? That while its “balanced disparity” theory of political stability enabled a democracy to run cool and avoid intense and sustained conflict and breakdown, it also meant the postponement and moderation of political action intended to achieve social justice. Or was Putnam speaking from his current preoccupation with what he calls declining American social capital, the attrition of the American propensity for forming voluntary associations and in general the evidence of decline in the vibrancy of American civil society (1995)? Was it this that made the celebration of political coolness in the Civic Culture study seem particularly smug to Bob Putnam? As a Goldilocks theory the Civic Culture theory was saying that to run well a democratic polity had to avoid becoming overheated on the one hand or apathetic or indifferent on the other- -that it had to combine obedience and respect for authority with initiative and participation, and not too much of the one or of the other; that not all groups, interests and issues would ignite simultaneously, but that different groups, issues, and sectors of the electorate would become mobilized at different times, thus regulating the pressure on the political system. Putnam’s Goldilocks metaphor is really an equilibrium theory, comparable to the economic theory of the market, a situation in which sellers and buyers reach a price at which the market is “cleared”. We were specifying in civic culture theory a set of conditions under which political markets would clear when the price of responsive public policy was “just right”. The model of effective democratization which has come out of what Samuel Huntington has called the “third wave” of democratization has much in common with Putnam’s Goldilocks model and tends to confirm the Civic Culture theory. Students of contemporary democratization have discovered in Nancy Bermeo’s (1990, p. 360) words, that effective democratization rests on “the patience of the poor”. In the same sense more than half a century ago the German Jewish exile, Adolf Lowe reflecting on British and German political experience, commented that we pay 4 the price of liberty by foregoing integral political demands and final resolutions, settling for half or a quarter of a loaf, or simply keeping options open in hope of some future improvement (1935). I would argue this morning that the theories of democratic transition of the last decade with their step-by-step, hard-liner, soft-liner, gradualist–maximalist bargaining process was foreshadowed in the Civic Culture study and in Harry Eckstein’s theories more than three decades ago. Civic Culture theory is a democratic equilibrium theory, a theory that democratic stability tends to be sustained when processes and propensities are in balance–when the heat of political conflict does not exceed or fall below a given temperature range. I am prepared to accept Putnam’s characterization of the Civic Culture theory as a Goldilock’s theory. justice.The Cold War sustained and legitimized the subject role in the political cultures of the advanced democracies. You needed government in order to be secure, and politics had to be kept under control to avoid division, and in order not to risk the loss of vigilance. ** What happens when this bipolarity and delicate balance collapses through the resignation of one of the parties? Let me spell out the possible implications for political culture of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the disappearance of the Cold War as the organizing principle of international relations. Theories have been around for quite some time as to how international politics effects domestic politics in general terms. What this suggests is that we can work causally from the international environment to domestic institutions and attitudes, and observe how they combine with, filter, or magnify these international tendencies. Or we can begin with technological change and observe how the rise of the tertiary sector and the information and communication revolutions have interacted with international structural changes to transform political culture. What I am stressing is that in our efforts to explain political cultural change, we need to be monitoring both the international and the domestic structure and the ways in which these several processes interact. We have tended to take the international structure for granted, and the “subject part” of political culture as a given. It has taken the Gingrich revolution to show that there are tendencies in American political culture, which, in the absence of a clear cut international threat, are prepared to go quite far in disassembling the national state. The collapse of communism and the discrediting of macrosocialism has shifted the center of political gravity to the right, thus weakening support for a welfare net no longer justified by national security. Thus, the balanced mix of the Civic Culture of loyal subject and consensual participatory elements celebrated in our book of 1963, begins to give way to an alienated subject combined with a form of participation weakened and demoralized by populism, extremism, and apathy. Students of the emerging political cultures of the modern democracies are going to have to ask anew what democratic equilibria are possible given these structural changes, now that the Civic Culture has had its day. *** |
Conclusions that lead to more questions
Seems like the zeitgeist in Lolo Jose’ times wasn’t so far off when he said, “Like people, like government”.
Clearly there is a need to have an “upgraded” version of the Civic Culture Theory (one framework is the IEMP 4 networks theory by Michael Mann). However, the theory has done much in establishing the direct linkage between culture and governance.
Using the Civic Culture Theory as a frame of reference, based on the description of each type of political culture, in my opinion the Philippines’ political culture – is that of a SUBJECT.
- FILIPINOS “are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet he is on the “downward flow” side of the politics. In general congruent with a centralized authoritarian structure.”
Will the the upcoming 2010 elections reflect a shift in political culture?
What can be done to affect a shift?
Moving past the Civic Culture framework, how will the diaspora affect domestic politics in general terms?
The primary question really is, should this type of political culture be conserved or should Philippine society exert efforts to move towards a participatory political culture?
Popularity: 8% [?]
Participatory equals accountability. Filipinos are too immature for such.
Tell me in all honesty if the so-called Great Book Blockade could have been one of participatory? But lay the proof.
It was participatory in that the people spoke through the only means available to them. Their “elected” representatives do not appear to speak very effectively for them. It is akin to the US Boston Tea Party, which protested “taxation without representation”. Only a few people were at the harbor that day, throwing tea into the bay. But an entire nation spoke . . . through that act of brave participation.
Joe
It was an act of civicness that is participatory in nature. People took responsibility to analyze the issues, follow up, and demand that government resolve the issue.
Which would be a great contrast to a Subject’s attitude – “utos ni boss, ganyan talaga ang gobyerno, wala tayong magawa, what can one person do”
i’m confused about the practical difference between subject and participant.
what is an example of participant? how do we know the philippines is subject?
GabbyD:
Copy-paste reply, reposting a portion for clarity – and we drill down.
* Parochial – Where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central government, and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by the state. Distant and unaware of political phenomena. He has neither knowledge or interest in politics. In general congruent with a traditional political structure.
* Subject – Where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet he is on the “downward flow” side of the politics. In general congruent with a centralized authoritarian structure.
* Participant - Citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they are affected by it. The individual is oriented toward the system as a whole, to both the political and administrative structures and processes (to both the input and output aspects). In general congruent with a democratic political structure.
* ——————-
from – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_culture
Participatory Culture
Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers).
The increasing access to the Internet has come to play an integral part in the expansion of participatory culture because it increasingly enables people to work collaboratively; generate and disseminate news, ideas, and creative works; and connect with people who share similar goals and interests (see affinity groups). The potential of participatory culture for civic engagement and creative expression has been investigated by media scholar Henry Jenkins. In 2005, Jenkins co-authored a White Paper entitled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. This paper describes a participatory culture as one:
1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).
****
Participatory Democracy
Unlike previous mass media, electronic networks allow people to directly interact with the information with which they are presented. Consequently, citizens can have ‘real-time’ conversations with each others, regardless of geographical constraints. In addition, people with similar interests or goals can go to ‘virtual’ spaces to meet like-minded individuals and discuss issues of interest. In some cases, citizens can even converse with their political representatives about legislation on which they have an opinion.
This type of interaction adheres to the “ritual view of communication, directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs (Carey 18).” Ritual communication brings people together in a manner reminiscent of Athenian democracy or the old New England town meetings, where each citizen was provided with an equal right to speak.
The ritualistic capability for expression increases the participatory nature of democracy in cyberspace while undermining old hierarchies. Individuals play a more direct role in their own governance, through “the power of citizen-to-citizen (lateral) communications” which benefit both themselves and their community:
“Community building power comes from the living database that the participants create and use together informally as they help each other solve problems, one to one and many to many. The web of human relationships that can grow along with the database is where the potential for cultural and political change can be found.” (Rheingold 249)
Rheingold’s explanation of how communication between citizens can result in the production of an empowered community and the possibility for political action, echoes Habermas notion of the public sphere, in which individuals respect and take interest in each other’s opinions while also looking out for the good of the community as whole.
But electronic networks such as the Big Sky Telegraph and the Blacksburg Electronic Village allow for democratic participation across geographical boundaries as well as within local areas. Virtual communities created on-line can serve as alternatives to or reinforcements of actual physical communities in their functions as public spheres. By utilizing the transcendence and speed of electronic technology these communities can also spur political action by citizens, especially on the grassroots level.
******
Four consequences of participation
In Porto Alegre, a much described exemplar of participatory processes, fifteen years of trial and error has produced at least four consequences that have wide relevance, fully justifying the international attention that this unassuming little city has attracted.
Transparency: one of the key features of the crisis facing democracy is the way in which powerful private interests (corrupt local businesses or powerful multinational corporations with their extensive lobbying power) have inveigled themselves into the hidden areas between elected politicians and the state apparatus. In Porto Alegre in the late 1980s corruption was rife. By opening up the process of implementation to citizens PB effectively smoked out many hidden alliances of this kind.
Parliamentary democracy wasn’t invented to monitor a large state apparatus. It has developed means of doing so, through special committees of various kinds, but all these mechanisms – Select Committees, Special Investigations, Inquiries and so on – work from the outside, often after implementation. Participatory process, on the other hand, involves opening up policy implementation process at all stages to the day to day involvement by the people affected by the policies. As I write, the political process at all levels of government in Brazil, is being captured by the large multinationals through massive lobbying and assiduous, well-financed networking. In the face of this, participatory processes at many different levels could make a real difference. For example, workers (and local communities in the surrounding area) could have rights of monitoring or, at least consulting, on works in hand by corporations in receipt of public funds or carrying out public contracts.
Redistribution: over its fifteen year history, the PB has led to a significant redistribution of resources from the high income areas of the city to the poor areas. The basic reason, applicable to other contexts, is that the poor are actively involved in the process of resource allocation, and that this process weights the decision-making in favour of those with greatest need for public services and infrastructure. A further, related factor is that taxation became less unpopular amongst the middle classes. By a virtuous circle, as the way in which public money was spent became more open and legitimate, the well-off (beyond the few very rich families who still own a good proportion of the city’s land) no longer minded paying their taxes: they saw them going to useful purposes and were glad to personally participate in this.
Services: the social efficiency of Porto Alegre’s educational , medical, transport and sanitation services improved significantly compared with cities without PB. The participatory processes being pioneered here allowed practical ‘people-based’ knowledge to be shared, debated, combined with technical knowledge and built into the policy process.
Increased bargaining power with the private sector: multinational investors like retailers came under scrutiny through participatory process and then yielded concessions on employment, the environment and the protection of local small businesses. It seems that when elected government genuinely shares power with an independent process of democratic popular participation, the overall power of democratic public institutions vis a vis market pressures and international bodies such as the World Bank is enhanced.
In Brazil the search for stronger forms of democracy has made most headway at a municipal level – at least as far as new lasting institutions are concerned. Many have argued, unsuccessfully for now, for developing and applying the same basic principles at a national level. The story of this attempt is for another day. The important point is that extending popular participation to a national level is not simply a matter of good government – exposing corruption, challenging bureaucratic empires, keeping close to the real needs of the people – it is also, in the words of Olívio Dutra when he was governor of the state of Rio Grande Do Sul, about ‘raising political consciousness about economic power at every level’. The sharing of power by elected government and popular participatory processes challenges the orthodox perception that when economic decisions are made by federal government or international bodies like the IMF, they are always, and always bound to be, immutably constrained. Such power sharing creates a democratic but autonomous counter power to elected leaders who otherwise become prisoners of established, experienced and sometimes hostile state institutions. At its best, the counter power of participatory democracy can keep politicians’ electoral mandate alive as a sustained presence within day to day government. In that sense it supports leaders to carry out their election promises, since they are backed by more vigorous democratic connections than simply an election victory, which in any case the institutions of the corporate market treat with contempt. Popular participation is less easy to dismiss because it carries possibilities of mobilisation and action which politicians cannot ignore, and which could damage the legitimacy of the international institutions which undermine socialist governments’ electoral mandates. In fact it is possible that in the world of the global market place, participatory democracy has become a necessary condition of electoral democracy. An extension of participatory democracy would not, by any means, have provided the whole answer for the Lula government but it would have created fertile soil for solutions and strategies. It would also have provided a basis for the mobilisation of international pressure in support of Lula’s struggle with the IMF.
oh, porto allegre. k
interesting stuff on participatory budgeting in port alegre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting
this can be done, since many (but not all) local govt services have been devolved. very interesting indeed…
It is very doable. And it works, too.
imho, the nagging challenge is how to nurture, promote, and adopt the practice.
Phase I can be at the LGU Level – down to the barangay, district, and city level
Phase II can can be at a nationwide-level.
so what is an example of a participant democracy in the world? does the US match the criteria?
GabbyD:
The study findings on a survey of five countries(US, UK, Germany, Italy, and Mexico) is that the political culture in the US, UK, and UK is Participative.
***
The study was based on crossnational surveys conducted in five countries — Germany, Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Information was obtained from 955 respondents in Germany, 995 respondents in Italy, 1,008 respondents in Mexico, 963 respondents in the United Kingdom, and 970 respondents in the United States. The interviews focused on the respondents’ basic political attitudes with emphasis on political partisanship, political socialization, and attitudes toward specific institutions as well as the political system and culture as a whole. Specific information was collected on respondents’ political awareness and feelings of political efficacy and attitudes toward bureaucracy, police, political parties, campaigning, and various levels of government, as well as toward institutions such as school, family, and place of work. The number and types of organizations to which the respondents belonged were also recorded. Demographic data cover age, sex, race, marital status, number of children, religious preference, income, and socioeconomic status.
In the study, the US, UK, and Germany showed a political culture aka civic culture that was more Participatory in nature.
Italy and Mexico’s results showed a greater tendency toward a Parochial Civic Culture.
any links to this study?
try this – http://books.google.com/books?id=J93o05MH3v8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=civic+culture
The outlying provinces are parochial. There will be no election in 2010 because COMELEC will not get it properly plugged in. Participative is the best culture. You get there via a people-power internet movement, with a well-ordered framework for selecting a preferred candidate, then relentless promotion of that candidate and . . . er, critiquing . . . of other candidates.
Joe
great blog bong…
I am in the belief that the Philippines majority remains to be Parochial
Keyword:
1. live enough ( waiting for the guava fruit)
2. remotely aware of the presence of central government: true because many juan dela cruzes do not understand the function of the three branches, the rule of law, taxation and complexity of financing the growth of a country. Basically, juan de la cruz does not understand being productive and paying is a mandatory/ statutory duty that is required to finance the growth and infrastructure of the country.
3. traditional political structure: many juan dela cruzes do not understand the negative consequences of political dynasty, conflict of interest between public and private thus the traditional structure can be interpreted by the highly educated ( middle) as an abuse of power.
However, the middle class can be – Subject .
Yes, we bloggers understand what it means. So does Juan dela cruz think the way we think? the answer is NO… To bridge the gap between parochial and the subject, the middle class must actively participate and must protect majority. Since the middle class is a minority in numbers, it is therefore weak to influence policymaking unless the middle class speak in behalf of the majority thru the MEDIA. It is easier said than done but I cannot criticize the poor.
Here at FV , we can be in the “downward flow”?
correction:
2. remotely aware of the presence of central government: true because many juan dela cruzes do not understand the function of the three branches OF GOVERNMENT AND HOW IT WORKS ( theory and practice is beyond juan dela cruz brains) , the rule of law, taxation and THE complexity of financing the growth of a country. Basically, juan de la cruz does not understand being productive and paying TXES is a mandatory/ statutory duty that is required to finance the growth and infrastructure of the country.
leytenian:
you have a point there. I was initially inclined to conclude that the Philippines political culture is Parochial. However, I assert that awareness of the presence of government and understanding the function of government are two different things. majority are aware of the presence of government – the Presidency, LGUs, barangay officials, legislators, agencies – but, have gotten cynical and passive, – and has not posed any dissent – which, indicates a political culture of a Subject.
there seems to be a nascent participatory political culture in FV – an evolution from being a Subject to one of Participant – reminiscent of the Great Book Blockade
Bong,
I understand where you coming from but you and me can be thinking way too far ahead of majority. Let’s go back in time for a bit and leave ourselves behind and put our plate to the table of juan dela cruz. Basing from my conversations with 30 doctors during the ASCO convention, I am sensing that the people only understand the basic theory but the application and the role of barangay kapitan has never been understood by the ordinary Juan dela cruz. Worst, the barangay kapitan may also need some guidance on how to implement their roles to the community. How much more if Juan dela cruz will think ahead of what’s the actual role of a president, his mayor and his congressmen, it will be painfully too complicated for him to understand.
I’m not criticizing but I am pointing out what might be REAL.
leytenian:
at the minimum, we agree that it is not participatory.
exactly, the “basic theory” would be awareness of government – Juan de la Cruz is aware, but he does not understand how it works.
I know there’s car, I know I can ride in it, I know it is fast, but I don’t know how it works. so, if something conks out, I have to call roadside assistance. Thus, I am Subject to the availability of the local providers contacted by roadside assistance.
If I were participatory, I will have knowledge about how the car works, I can pop the hood, check the cables/etc and call roadside assistance with a preliminary diagnosis. There will be an interaction with roadside attendance as to what things to check for.
imho, the mere introduction of awareness has ruled out Parochial as a choice.
I know a woman, last name Dela Cruz, as fate would have it. She comes from a fishing village, somewhat remote. The fishing village has maybe 25 homes, grass and wood. One water spigot and a spring serve the water needs of the village. The men fish an overworked bay or help with the coconut harvests. The women cook, mind the kids, and do the laundry. The Barangay Kapitan has the biggest house, but there isn’t much for him to do, because there is no money for him to apply. Some people don’t have electricity, most don’t have TV’s, so they can’t catch the news or Wowowee. A lot of the kids are illegitimate and some are not registered on NSO’s database. The people get sick, they turn to voodoo care and herbs because there is no doctor, no medicine.
They don’t know anything about national or regional politics, and they don’t care. They only know they can get some pesos if they vote for the Kapitan again, and as the Kapitan instructs on other candidates.
They DO care about how to get tomorrow’s rice and, on a good day, some vegetables and a little meat.
You have articulated a compromise stance with Leytenian that participatory is the way to go . . .
I fear, however, you will have a hard time getting these good folks to participate, and they make up a large percentage of the total population. I think provincial they be, and provincial they stay . . . under the good Kapitan’s peso-wing.
Joe
Joe:
There are many communities in the Philippines which started off that way.
With the entry of non-state players (NGOs), communities are provided the tools which empower them to chart their own direction. Micro-lending along the lines of Grameen for instance. For instance – this federation – of NGOs – http://www.mincode.org/ which focuses on indigenous people’s issues.
That implies sections of society which are participatory in nature will have to reach out to the parochial sections and get the isolated communities engaged thru activities that starts with dialogue, consensus building, planning and programming, implementation, evaluation, and improvement.
That would be nice to see, in practice. Take a bag of rice along for the meetings, and you will get their participation.
Joe
Joe:
Here’s another group – http://www.mahintana.org/
I know the executive director personally. We know each other all the way back to our college days. He was in the active non violence camp and I was in the liberation theology camp :lol:
And, yes, if its a Pinoy gathering, you better have food. Personally, I am more inclined to attend when food is served, doesn’t mean I have to agree with the presentors – as my mooching guru Daffy Duck would have me do.
There’s a network of nonprofits out there that would be interested in the community you speak of. Though, I presume you are aware that nearly all the communities need some intervention of some sort, and one has to resort to triage.
To govern the country, it must be practicing collective effort, togetherness and TEAMWORK. In Management, it is very basic to say:
In short, the blog itself is the broader defnition of accountability and responsibility of public administration. Understanding our history, attitudes and values are key indicators of MANAGING PEOPLE.
Accountability and Responsibility can also be define as