However, there are other ways of legitimizing the reign of leaders, such as through authoritarian rule and coercion and repression and revolutionary conquest of power," said political scientist Dr. Temario Rivera, CenPEG vice-chair who facilitated the discussions.
Rivera, a former chair of the University of the Philippines' political science department in Diliman, is currently associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo.
Largely because of American tutelage, many Filipinos have learned to rely heavily on elections to maintain government since the first elections under U.S. colonialism were held at the turn of the 20th century when new village leaders were chosen under a new political regime.
said there are examples of legitimated authority where leaders are not accountable to the people.
Among these are monarchies like Brunei, those in the Middle East, and in old England.
Legitimization was also done through revolutionary conquest of power in such countries as Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere that made themselves independent through their anti-tsarist and anti-colonial struggles.
In many of these countries, the revolutionary struggles were led by workers parties and people's armies guided by the socialist principle of proletarian dictatorship.
Western concepts of political legitimization, Rivera
said, propound that the best way to do it is through democratic rule when leaders are chosen and made accountable to the people through predictable political mechanisms.
In the Philippines, the presidency is a powerful institution, with its power of the purse and appointment, development funding, political networks that can force realignments, and legitimate state powers.
Local political clans have survived even the support of political parties, or have created their own political parties, such as the Garcias in Cebu or the Josons in Nueva Ecija, Rivera noted.
said one must distinguish between minimalist and maximalist conceptions of democratic rule.
The minimalist concept promotes a procedural definition of democracy through free, competitive elections and the guarantee of civil liberties.
The maximalist concept, however, insists on a more substantive definition that stresses empowerment of the people so they could be more effective in advancing their interests and achieve power, not just through elections and other procedures, but in actually achieving desired outcomes such as provision of socioeconomic and political relief, and actual participation in processes.
"That is the reason why in the Philippine Political Science Association
, we are more careful in using terms and we use a lot of qualifiers, such as oligarchic democracy (to refer to elite-oriented politics)," said Rivera
pointed out, however, that in some countries where socioeconomic goals were achieved, the party system has been weak.
Even activists, he
said, have to recognize that so-called liberal reforms are progressive enough to lead to an upgrading of social, political and economic standards, such as the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the writs of habeas corpus and habeas data, and the formation of the International Criminal Court.
"We should support these developments as they help (the people) objectively," he
Electoral procedures and civil liberties must be upheld for elections to be seen as credible, and for electoral results to be accepted by the competing elites and the people, he
said, amid observations that in the Philippines, many voters are not politically enlightened to help them distinguish among the political programs promoted by those seeking public office.
asserts that even in Western Europe, United States, Japan, and South Korea, democratization happened late as the process of nation building was promoted first.
In the Philippines, the weak state is shown by a highly politicized bureaucracy coupled by weak institutions of accountability, as exemplified by the Ombudsman, Commission on Audit
, Comission on Human Rights and the Civil Service Comission.
The weaker institutions have no capabilities to enforce even mundane state functions like peace and order, and taxation.
The saving grace of weak states in the modern world, however, is the big participation of civil society groups that provide services where the state fails.
, the electoral process in weak states is not an effective mechanism in choosing leaders who can effectively challenge status quo.