Philippine Democracy Online

  Democracy is often celebrated when the people are allowed to choose their leaders. Every election becomes an occasion to affirm popular sovereignty, every victory is interpreted as a mandate, and every new administration promises to govern in the name of the people. Yet the question of democracy does not end when the ballots have been counted. It begins again when those who have been elected start exercising the power entrusted to them. For it is possible for a government to possess a popular mandate while remaining distant from the people, just as it is possible for political institutions to preserve their democratic appearance while reproducing the inequalities that prevent ordinary citizens from exercising meaningful influence over public life. The problem, therefore, is not simply whether the people can choose those who govern them. It is whether they can continue to question the power exercised in their name. This is where radical democracy becomes indispensable. Its signifi...

  Bending the Law or Betraying Justice? Ricoeur’s Practical Wisdom and Political Discretion in the Philippines By Francis Jeus Ibañez  It is easy to invoke justice when people are angry. It is much harder to determine what justice actually requires. In the Philippines, where allegations of corruption involving flood-control projects have intensified public frustration, the demand to recover allegedly misappropriated public funds is understandable. People want their money returned. They want those responsible held accountable. Above all, they want to believe that the law still means something in a society where political power can appear to protect those who possess it. But what happens when public officials argue that the law must be bent to achieve these demands? Can justice justify an exception to the law, or does the decision to make an exception risk undermining justice itself? This is not merely a question of legal interpretation. It is a question about political power an...

Christopher Ryan Maboloc’s Radical Democracy in the Time of Duterte has had an impact that goes beyond the question of whether one agrees with its interpretation of Rodrigo Duterte. Its most important contribution is that it forced Philippine political philosophy to reconsider where democracy is theorized from, whose political experience counts, and what Duterte’s rise meant for the country’s democratic order. Maboloc introduced a distinctly Mindanao-centered interpretation of Philippine politics. The book challenged the tendency to interpret Philippine politics primarily from Manila and the political experience of Luzon. Maboloc approaches Duterte as a Mindanawon political phenomenon, connecting his rise to the historical marginalization of Mindanao, the Bisaya experience, colonial centralization, and the exclusion of peripheral communities from national political power. A 2022 review by Waseda University’s Juichiro Tanabe specifically praised the book for showing that Duterte’s radic...