Democracy as Disorder: Institutionalized Sources of Democratic Ambivalence Among the Upper and Middle Class in Manila

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Weak Institutions ◽  
Metro Manila ◽  
People’S Attitudes

Abstract Scholars contend that weak institutions as manifest in corruption and bad governance are driving people towards illiberal forms of democracy. This explanation is underspecified. It does not make clear why people are turning towards authoritarian rule instead of working to strengthen democratic institutions. It cannot explain why we are seeing, specifically, a turn to the politics of discipline in countries like the Philippines. We need a better grasp of how weak institutions are experienced and how this experience shapes people’s attitudes towards democracy. Drawing upon several years of ethnographic research, I depict the experience of democracy of the upper and middle class in Metro Manila. For informants, the problem of democracy is not that institutions are weak but that valued institutions are actively contradicted by disvalued ones. They describe an experience of disorder, identifying four major sources: corruption, rule-bending, clientelism, and informal settlement. A view of democracy as disorder prompts calls for “disciplining” it. These findings lead us to reframe the issue. Whereas a weak institutions’ framework emphasizes the gap between valued rules and regressive norms, I emphasize their contradiction as shaping perceptions of disorder. Contradiction is experienced as a moral dilemma, a conflict between how things are done and how they should be done. This experience is informed by a normative sensibility rooted in upper- and middle-class position. The framework provides a better account of democratic backsliding: socially embedded, broader in scope, and closer to experience.

scholarly journals Reclaiming On-Site Upgrading as a Viable Resilience Strategy-Viabilities and Scenarios through the Lens of Disaster-Prone Informal Settlements in Metro Manila

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10600
Author(s):  
Juan Du ◽  
Stefan Greiving
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
National Level ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Community Resilience ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Disaster Mitigation ◽  
City Development ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Metro Manila

The Philippines is argued as the only Southeast Asian country where informal settlers’ communities have been self-organized and produced discernible impacts on the country’s urban policies. As one of the high risk countries, fifty percent of the country’s informal settlements are located in danger and disaster-prone areas. However, informal settlement upgrading has not reached its significance in disaster mitigation and community resilience building. At the national level, on-site upgrading is not established in disaster risk management or climate change adaptation strategies, which explains the lack of strategic approaches for local implementation. Metro Manila serves as a suitable backdrop in this sense to study informal settlement upgrading under the condition of high risk and rapid urbanization with a high civil society engagement. This study investigates the underlined reasons why upgrading strategically falls short in addressing disaster mitigation and community resilience building. Theoretically, it questions what on-site upgrading is about. Empirically, two hazard-prone informal settlement communities within Metro Manila are examined with their different risk profiles, community development needs and resilience priorities. The core issues of upgrading are, therefore, differentiated at the settlement level with communities’ innate socio-economic and eco-spatial features over time. Meanwhile, the paper heightens the necessity of tackling on-site upgrading at the settlement level and articulating settlements’ spatial correlations with the city development, so as to sustain upgrading outcomes. In addition, this study attempts at setting up a range of scenarios conditioned with COVID pandemic fallout. It endeavors to provide another facet of how to deal with adaptation and resilience. This includes the urgent strategy shift in the housing sector and its financial sustainability, innovative mechanisms to manage uncertainty and risks, lessons for post-COVID planning, etc.

scholarly journals “Unforgotten” informal communities and the COVID-19 pandemic: Sitio San Roque under Metro Manila’s lockdown

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christianne France Collantes
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
Metro Manila ◽  
Informal Communities

Purpose This paper aims to offer Sitio San Roque, an informal settlement in the Philippines as a case study to explore long-term "forgetful" urban development planning in the Philippines, and the renewed visibility of the urban poor under COVID-19 lockdown. It connects scholarship on informality to issues of housing and political rights in Metro Manila to further investigate how vulnerable communities in the Global South are faring in the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This is an exploration of Sitio San Roque, an informal settler community in Metropolitan "Metro" Manila, Philippines. This paper refers to recent journalistic reports pertaining to the community's ongoing evictions and arrests while under Metro Manila's "enhanced community quarantine." Furthermore, it converses with literature from disciplines including health-care policy, urban studies and recent studies on COVID-19 and vulnerable communities to critically discuss the plight of the urban poor in the pandemic-stricken Metro Manila. Findings The urban poor and members of informal communities such as Sitio San Roque are especially vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 because of precarious livelihoods and housing instability. The creation of informality in Metro Manila can be traced to political tensions, economic agendas and development planning since the time of Marcos' administration and also to global restructuring during the 1990s. However, also important to note is that under Metro Manila's lockdown, informal settlers are further disenfranchised and stigmatized via ongoing demolitions and evictions, as well as by processes of policing and criminalization by the state. The use of military and police personnel as a way to enforce lockdown in the metropolis further impedes on the rights of informal settlers and the urban poor. Originality/value Recent scholarship and reports discuss the challenges for informal communities and the urban poor in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to their housing conditions and loss of economic stability. This paper contributes to a critical understanding of these issues by adding the dimensions of political and housing rights. It refers to the case study of members of Sitio San Roque, who have experienced continuous threats of demolitions and arrests by state police for protesting the lack of government aid under lockdown. Both military approaches of governance and housing informality work in tandem to expose the vulnerabilities of the urban poor in Metro Manila's pandemic. Finally, this paper extends on urban studies scholar Gavin Shatkin's concept of “forgetful planning” (2004) by applying his discussions to the current context. Informal settlers have long been “forgotten” by the state's development plans, but are now remembered and deemed more visible in Metro Manila's ECQ.

scholarly journals Strong Demands and Weak Institutions: The Origins and Evolution of the Democratic Deficit in the Philippines

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Hutchcroft ◽  
Joel Rocamora
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poor ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Weak Institutions ◽  
The People ◽  
The One

No country in Asia has more experience with democratic institutions than the Philippines. Over more than a century—from the representational structures of the Malolos republic of 1898 to the political tutelage of American colonial rule, from thecaciquedemocracy of the postwar republic to the restoration of democracy in the People Power uprising of 1986—Filipinos know both the promise of democracy and the problems of making democratic structures work for the benefit of all. Some 100 years after the introduction of national-level democratic institutions to the Philippines, the sense of frustration over the character of the country's democracy is arguably more apparent than ever before. On the one hand, the downfall of President Joseph Estrada in January 2001 revealed the capacity of many elements of civil society to demand accountability and fairness from their leaders; on the other hand, the popular uprisings of April and May 2001—involving thousands of urban poor supporters of Estrada—highlighted the continuing failure of democratic structures to respond to the needs of the poor and excluded. Philippine democracy is, indeed, in a state of crisis.

Some Dilemmas of Political Consumerism

2018 ◽  
pp. 720-740
Author(s):  
Sarah Webb ◽  
Anna Cristina Pertierra
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Environmentally Friendly ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Rural Poor ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Palawan Island ◽  
Class Distinction

In the Philippines, socioeconomic relations that result from deeply uneven market engagements have long made consumption a moral affair. Ecoconscious lifestyles and consumer practices remain largely the domain of elite and middle-class Filipinos, and as such, engagement with sustainable and environmentally friendly consumption may be seen not only as a marker of class distinction but also as a critique of urban and rural poor livelihood practices deemed to be environmentally detrimental. Focusing on a case study from Palawan Island, the chapter discusses some dilemmas that have arisen as the application of “eco” to tourism practices has become widespread and attractive to middle-class Filipinos with steadily growing spending power. The relevance of class to considering dilemmas of political consumerism is not unique to the Philippines, and these issues provide an opportunity to critically reflect on who benefits from political consumerism.

scholarly journals Between field and home: notes from the balcony

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110205
Author(s):  
Shruti Ragavan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Dairy Farms ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Village ◽  
The City

Balconies, windows and terraces have come to be identified as spaces with newfound meaning over the past year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and concomitant lockdowns. There was not only a marked increase in the use of these spaces, but more importantly a difference in the very nature of this use since March 2020. It is keeping this latter point in mind, that I make an attempt to understand the spatial mobilities afforded by the balcony in the area of ethnographic research. The street overlooking my balcony, situated amidst an urban village in the city of Delhi – one of my field sites, is composed of middle and lower-middle class residents, dairy farms and farmers, bovines and other nonhumans. In this note, through ethnographic observations, I reflect upon the balcony as constituting that liminal space between ‘field’ and ‘home’, as well as, as a spatial framing device which conditions and affects our observations and interactions. This is explored by examining two elements – the gendered nature of the space, and the notion of ‘distance and proximity’, through personal narratives of engaging-with the field, and subjects-objects of study in the city.

scholarly journals Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the first 500 confirmed COVID-19 inpatients in a tertiary infectious disease referral hospital in Manila, Philippines

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristal An Agrupis ◽  
Chris Smith ◽  
Shuichi Suzuki ◽  
Annavi Marie Villanueva ◽  
Koya Ariyoshi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Clinical Characteristics ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Underlying Disease ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Referral Hospital ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
Metro Manila ◽  
Related Mortality

Abstract Background The Philippines has been one of the most affected COVID-19 countries in the Western Pacific region, but there are limited data on COVID-19-related mortality and associated factors from this setting. We aimed to describe the epidemiological and clinical characteristics and associations with mortality among COVID-19-confirmed individuals admitted to an infectious diseases referral hospital in Metro Manila. Main text This was a single-centre retrospective analysis including the first 500 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 individuals admitted to San Lazaro Hospital, Metro Manila, Philippines, from January to October 2020. We extracted clinical data and examined epidemiological and clinical characteristics and factors associated with in-hospital mortality. Of the 500 individuals, 133 (26.6%) were healthcare workers (HCW) and 367 (73.4%) were non-HCW, with HCW more likely presenting with milder symptoms. Non-HCW admissions were more likely to have at least one underlying disease (51.6% vs. 40.0%; p = 0.002), with hypertension (35.4%), diabetes (17.4%), and tuberculosis (8.2%) being the most common. Sixty-one (12.2%) died, comprising 1 HCW and 60 non-HCW (0.7% vs. 16.3%; p < 0.001). Among the non-HCW, no death occurred for the 0–10 years age group, but deaths were recorded across all other age groups. Compared to those who recovered, individuals who died were more likely to be older (p < 0.001), male (p = 0.015), report difficulty of breathing (p < 0.001), be HIV positive (p = 0.008), be intubated (p < 0.001), categorised as severe or critical (p < 0.001), have a shorter mean hospital stay (p < 0.001), or have an additional diagnosis of pneumonia (p < 0.001) or ARDS (p < 0.001). Conclusion Our analysis reflected significant differences in characteristics, symptomatology, and outcomes between healthcare and non-healthcare workers. Despite the unique mix of cohorts, our results support the country’s national guideline on COVID-19 vaccination which prioritises healthcare workers, the elderly, and people with comorbidities and immunodeficiency states.

Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge, Philippines – a new 32 km sea crossing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sammy Yip ◽  
Steve Kite ◽  
Paresh Vishnoi ◽  
Vikas Venkatesha
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Feasibility Study ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Preliminary Design ◽  
The Road ◽  
Metro Manila ◽  
To Come ◽  
Optimum Solution

<p>Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge (BCIB) in the Philippines is a proposed 32km sea-crossing which will connect Bataan to Cavite, to unlock opportunity for economic growth and expansion outside Metro Manila. A Feasibility Study was carried out to plan the road link, which would involve two major navigation bridges, long marine viaducts, and interchange connections. This paper outlines the Feasibility Study and the preliminary design of the crossing, and highlights how the bridge options were assessed in order to come up with an optimum solution.</p>

Overcoming and Penalizing Precarity: Narratives of Drug Personalities Arrested in the Philippine War on Drugs

2022 ◽  
pp. 089692052110702
Author(s):  
Filomin C. Gutierrez
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Drug Problem ◽  
Productive Work ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Metro Manila

The article problematizes state penality as a mechanism of repression of precarious workers through a war on drugs in the Philippines. The narratives of 27 arrested ‘drug personalities’ in Metro Manila tell of how methamphetamine energizes bodies and motivates minds for productive work. Bidding to be classified as willing and able workers and family men, the study’s participants orient to a moral stratification that pits the ‘moral versus immoral’ and the ‘hardworking versus lazy’. Qualifying their drug use as strategic and calculated, they uphold the neoliberal values of individual choice and accountability. Their support for the anti-drug campaign stems from their recognition of a drug problem and the socioemotional toll of the dysfunctions of living in the slums. While trade liberalization facilitates methamphetamine inflow, a war on drugs fuels an authoritarian populism. As the state reaffirms symbolic mission to protect its citizens, it blames precarity to a problem population.

Was it worth the trouble? Limited competition and citizen well-being under authoritarian rule

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Andrea Cassani
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Electoral Authoritarianism ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

The last part of 20th century saw the collapse of a dramatic number of dictatorships. Rather than democracy, several of these transitions brought regimes where limited political competition coexists with persistently authoritarian practices. The diffusion of this form of authoritarianism in the developing world raises several questions about its broader consequences. Most importantly, does political change short of democratization matter for ordinary citizens? Recent research demonstrates that nominally democratic institutions, even in the absence of people empowerment, can result in better living conditions. The paper adds to this debate by formulating and testing new hypotheses. I compare electoral authoritarianism with democracy and full dictatorship, including specific subtypes of the latter, and focus on both policy outputs and outcomes.

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