Social Capital

Monday, December 01, 2008

10:29 AM na!

SOCIAL CAPITAL addresses the state of civic engagement and social trust in liberal democracies.
Thrust: Successful and healthy democracies and economies are those possessing dense webs of community participation

Robert Putnam: most influential with regard to social capital and civic responsibility
Social capital is part of a wider 'Tocquevillean turn', a revival of intellectual interest in the theme of civil society.

Two Arguments:
1. Historicity of Social Capital as a political discourse
i. the tendency to situate Putnam and social capital theory as neo-Tocquevillian fails to appreciate the novelty and the
historical specificity of this concept in terms of the way it imagines politics.
1) Political Imagination as a means of capturing the historical presuppositions and assumptions that are
embedded in different concepts and approaches.
2) Political Culture and Social Capital are of different kinds of political imagination.
2. Social capital in terms of a Foucauldian genealogy of the social (Foucauld)

WHAT IS SOCIAL CAPITAL?

Alejandro Portes: Social Capital has become a salient theoretical concept within the field of sociology, thanks largely to the work
of James Coleman and Pierre Bourdieu.
Social Capital is the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other
social structures (Sociology)
Social Capital is a ‘feature of communities and nations’ (Political Science)
Robert Putnam: Social capital refers to:
1. features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by
facilitating coordinated actions
2. Resources that these collectives have at hand to overcome the 'dilemmas of collective action'
Social capital is closer to the rational choice tradition.
1. Assumes a self-maximizing individual for whom associative activity can be an investment. (Key presupposition!)
Who are rich in social capital?
Societies possessing dense networks and cultures of voluntary association manifested in groups for sport, religion, etc. They
sustain trust and an ethos of reciprocity and cooperation.
SOCIAL CAPITAL THESIS: Issues will be more addressed in their own settings because public policies will be able to tap into
supportive 'norms and networks of civic engagement' embedded in communities.

‘stock of social capital has been shrinking for more than a quarter of a century'
1. the growth of the welfare state
2. changes in family and occupational structure
3. shifting patterns of residential life, suburbanization
4. the malign influence of television viewing
A Cause and Effect. ‘It leads to positive outcomes, such as economic development and less crime, and its existence is
inferred from the same outcomes’

Theda Skocpol: Argues that Putnam's approach assumes that ‘spontaneous social association is primary while government and
politics are derivative’ .
Politics and state structures are consequences and reflections of a prior civil society.
Strong, cohesive societies possessing dense networks of association are the preconditions for successful
government

Margaret Levi: Putnam is 'resolutely society-centered' and ‘Government institutions are the dependent variables’
Political participation, activism, engagement do not just stem naturalistically from the soil of civil society.
Rather, they are also shaped by the way that politics is itself conducted.

POLITICAL IMAGINATION

Two Aspects:
1. Meta-narrative - set of assumptions or rules that are unspoken. They lie behind day-to-day discussions or narratives.
Somers and Gibson: 'Taking a look at the historicity of apparently presuppositional categories of social thought …
involves asking how the historical construction and transformations of a concept shaped and continues to shape its
logical dimensions and its social meanings’
2. Spatial and Symbolic
Ways in which social capital theory imagines political space
Social capital theory is interesting in that it combines the very contemporary language of networks, with the much
older register of community.

Comparison is a powerful tool for highlighting political and other types of social imagination, for exposing tacit assumptions
that are otherwise not. This will not just reveal some of the historical and cultural assumptions embedded in social capital

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 that are otherwise not. This will not just reveal some of the historical and cultural assumptions embedded in social capital
theory’s approach to politics. Given that both books have acquired the status of landmarks in the history of empirical
political analysis, comparison will tell us something about shifts within the field of political sociology as well

THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION OF SOCIAL CULTURE

Almond and Verba: Sought to identify the social attributes that were conducive to stable liberal-democratic government
Realm of civil society and association
Emulating Western political systems is not enough
‘What must be learned about democracy is a matter of attitude and feeling, and this is harder to learn’
the development of a stable and effective government depends upon more than the structures of
government and politics: it depends upon the orientations that people have to the political process – upon the
political culture.

Civic Culture: kind of political culture that was most supportive for liberal democracy
'mixed' political culture; societies combined modern social values stressing participation, rationalism and citizenship
with older values of obedience, duty and respect for authority.

Civic / Political Culture:

1. Macropolitical - Studies the political behaviour of individuals and groups but it assumes the national political system as its
overall framework.
2. Behaviour of associations and actors is assessed in terms of their relationship with a formal structure of political authority.
(This is what social capital lacks.)
3. Defined as the specifically political orientations – attitudes toward the political system and its various parts, and attitudes
toward the role of the self in the system (Self-evident and natural)
4. organized by the idea of a political system and a society understood as a national community.
5. Political Socialization described the mechanism and the process by which individuals are connected to the system, and by
which the political/civic culture is reproduced.
6. Transmitted by a complex process that includes training in many social institutions and political system.
7. What is equally if not more significant is the structure of the political culture and public opinion.
8. Deference and respect for ruling elites are found side-by-side with patterns of rational-activism and participation
9. underpinning political culture theory is the presupposition of the polity understood as a system.
10. Political culture research investigates the attitudes, opinions and values that individuals and groups hold about the system.
It projects a socio-psychological model of politics: the reproduction of this system depends upon the processes of political
socialization that shape the population’s attitudes and values.

Shared attitudes and expectations hold the national community together. Trust!
Instability - happens when there is a polarization of attitudes.
Failing polity: one which ceases to be properly national and integrated.
Secondary Associations: Trade unions, churches, community organization.
Through them the individual is able to relate himself effectively and meaningfully to the political system.

Political culture mediates the contradictions and tensions inherent.

Image of Politics: Macropolitical system(Problematic of Stability!)

Hierarchical nature of the space of politics:
Democratic governance involves the tense combination of two ‘functions’
1. Power: Democratic government must govern
2. Responsiveness: Government must be responsible to its citizens

THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION OF SOCIAL CAPITAL

Social Capital:
1. Accepts certain rational choice postulates
2. It concentrates on the meso-politics of communities and groups, and how they shape institutional performance.
3. Not centered upon the idea of a system
4. It is not concerned about the social unity or integrity of the polity, understood as a people sharing a common set of symbols,
beliefs, values, expectations and goals.
5. Framed by a different problematic, a different political rationality from political culture researh.
Political rationality: developed by Rose and Miller from Foucault, it draws our attention to the fact that political
discourses have a characteristically moral form.
captures the relative and historically variable nature of seemingly self-evident and universally valid political aims
and objectives
6. it might be understood as the extension of the normative discourse of performance into this hitherto sheltered realm.
7. Social capital theory can be said to communicate with wider social norms and values, and at the same time, translate them.

Putnam: interested in understanding the performance of democratic institutions.

'Institutions are devices for achieving purposes, not just for achieving agreement. We want government to do things,
not just decide things – to educate children, pay pensioners, stop crime, create jobs, hold down prices, encourage family
values, and so on’

Performance: It needs to be seen as embedded in a discursive matrix, structured by the techniques and norms of auditing and
accounting, which today aspires to subject everything – from government departments to football clubs – to the seemingly

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accounting, which today aspires to subject everything – from government departments to football clubs – to the seemingly
objective criteria of performance.

THE DILEMMAS OF COLLECTIVE ACTION

Portes: Putnam sees social capital as a property of communities and nations.

Putnam: Prisoner's dilemma is his ontological starting position
Prisoner's dilemma: story of individuals who fail to reap the mutual benefits of cooperation because they cannot trust
one another.

Where there is social capital, cooperation for mutual benefit is facilitated. Performance links with social capital!
Social capital is not a most recent term for 'social solidarity'.

Rational Choice Theory's Basic Postulate: The actor posited as an inherently selfish and competitive individual.
Cooperation: An activity that is not natural, but fraught with dilemmas

Social capital:
1. Accounts for the possibility and the pattern of cooperation.
i. Implies a learning mechanism that is more economic
ii. Actors are not socialized but instead they learn from previous experiences that cooperative activity has tangible
material and economic benefits.

how it is that social capital enhances the performance of democratic government that we begin to grasp the political
imagination of social capital, and how it embodies a different set of assumptions from political culture.

Two mechanisms at work:

1. Citizens' relationship to formal political authority
Through participation in associations and communities, people acquire a certain public mindedness.
A civic community is built up in which people trust one another, regard one another as citizens, and sustain a whole set of
expectations about the responsibilities of political leaders. In turn, leaders are civic-minded and responsive to their
communities. Similar with Civic Culture (mediator)!
Differences:
1. Social capital is more no their skills and actions. Political culture is on the attitudes and values of the citizenry.
2. The subject is of social capital is an actor. The subject of political culture is the passive recipient of processes of
political socialization.
2. Image of the polity as a much more horizontal space of multiply communities. (Self-governance)
Entirely absent from political culture!
Political culture's image of politics is a system defined by the poles of elites and the governed.
Government is no longer the monopoly of the elites.
Associations build trust between otherwise suspicious and self-interested actors. The more trust is accumulated and
embedded in these social institutions, the greater the potential for future cooperation.
Differences:
1. Political culture conceptualizes secondary associations as instruments and relays of socialization. They connect the
public to the political system.
2. In social capital theory, secondary associations are the sites of self-governing activity.
Gone are the:
1. Macropolitical outlook
Social capital lubricates and facilitates collective action.
2. Image of a political-governmental machine
Governance is much less centered, less hierarchical. (Has power effects)

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND GOVERNMENT

Political culture: images of the system; Social capital: performance

Common interest in civic engagement, different political rationalities

Social capital not only as a way of representing social and political space, but in terms of its possible constitutive effects. It is about
how social capital discourse seeks to make the social field calculable and amenable to practices of government.

Critics: Putnam treats government institutions and state structures as derivative features of social capital.

State and societies are 'causal agents' treated as a universally valid framework for understanding politics.

Foucault: State/society distinction not timeless but itself internal to, and connected with a certain exercise of power.
‘Instead of making the distinction between state and civil society into a historical universal that allows us to examine all the
concrete systems, we can try to see it as a form of schematization characteristic of a particular technology of government’

The social capital literature naturalizes its object: it assumes that association, trust, networks and civility are things ‘already there’,
waiting to be quantified.

As an organized knowledge,
1. What role does it play, or aspire to play, in the constitution of society as a governable domain?
2. How does it render society and its problems in new ways?

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 2. How does it render society and its problems in new ways?
3. How does social capital point towards mutations in existing modes of government?
4. How can we see social capital in terms of a governmental project, one that makes these phenomena into both targets
and instruments for governing social and political problems in new, or modified ways?

FROM BIOPOLITICS TO ETHOPOLITICS?

Nikolas Rose: Suggested a distinction between 'biopolitics' and 'ethopolitics' to help us situate the type of mutation in political
power of which social capital is a symptom and trajectory.
Biopolitics: refers to a shift in power regimes in which power becomes tied up less singularly with the defense of territory
and begins to fix on 'population'.
Historical transformation in ways of exercising power
Humans are governed as a group of living beings which presents to political authority all biological problems.
Birth-rate, Distribution of income, Employment, etc. are targeted
Ethopolitics: What does it explain about social capital as a new knowledge and problematization of human affairs?
‘to characterize ways in which [particular] features of human individual and collective existence – sentiments,
values, beliefs – have come to provide the “medium” within which the self-government of the autonomous
individual can be connected up with the imperatives of good government’
Civility, level of trust in society, intensity of community feeling, extent of voluntary endeavor are more
important

Social capital is interesting because it seems to involve the conjunction or interplay of two seemingly heterogeneous and
contrary registers – the language of community and trust, with the quantitative thrust of modern economic analysis.

Social capital:
1. marries the ethical appeal of other discourses of community, civility and civil society, with the prestige of social
scientific rigor and operationalizability
2. brings the ambition of positivity and calculability to ethopolitical discourses.
3. Offers a quantitative rendering of the ethical field, all the better to enhance its governability
4. Purports to make trust and civility measurable
5. Seems to have broached divisions within the social sciences

'social capital is a godsend – a way, at last, of engaging economists in a serious dialogue about the social world, backed up
by empirically-verifiable hypotheses’

Social capital is continuous with biopolitics in one important sense: Governmentality has stressed that the forms of liberal
power that most define liberal-democratic regimes, are characteristically indirect.

Instead, it operates in relation to spaces and objects that are imagined as having their own determinacy and irreducibility.
Liberal government is conducted in the name of the economy, in the name of society, with respect to public opinion or
public health.

Social capital embodies a new way of imagining a space of processes and dynamics that are irreducible to the scope of
political power, but simultaneously there to be tapped and harnessed to governmental projects.
Stocks of social capital, such as trust, norms, and networks, tend to be self-reinforcing and cumulative. Successful
collaboration in one endeavor builds connections and trust – social assets that facilitate future collaboration in other,
unrelated tasks. As with conventional capital, those who have social capital tend to accumulate more – them as has, gets.

It is by casting processes of cooperation and network building as capital accumulation that this discourse seeks to convince
us rhetorically that society is a largely self-governing space, possessing its own dynamics. It is by presenting these processes
as those of investment and profit that we are persuaded to sanction only a limited role for public policy interventions.

INVESTING IN COMMUNITY?

Social capital aspires to redefine the relationship between the social and the economic.
Post-war welfare states: social and economic were distinct enterprises.
Donzelot: A managed national economy was to promote the social at the same time that social policy was seen to have positive
effects for the economy.

Social capital involves a capitalization of the social. Blurs the social/economic division
Civility, association, cooperation and other social values are reaffirmed because social capital enhances the benefits of investment
in physical and human capital.

Social capital enjoins us to perceive cooperation, trust and community as instruments for improving the performance and
competitiveness of societies. It is an academic systematization and a rationalization of a way of viewing society that has taken
shape in a more diffuse way.

Why invest in communities?

The commitment – financial, temporal, ethical – we make to them is rewarded, paid back with interest in that we obviate many of
the things that attend the breakdown of communities – drug addiction, crime, violence, political alienation. In this way
communities are inflected with an economic rationality.

DIVIDING PRACTICES

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DIVIDING PRACTICES

Social capital as organized political knowedge:

It divides and classifies populations according to its own internal norms.
It establishes a new problem space in terms of which new conceptions and accounts of the poor and the marginal can now
be expressed.

Part of the problem facing blacks in the inner city is that they lack ‘connections’ in the most literal sense. Job-seekers in the
ghetto have little access, for example, to conventional job referral networks. … Racial and class inequalities in access to social
capital, if properly measured, may be as great as inequalities in financial and human capital, and no less portentous.

Middle class: likely to develop wide and diverse networks of friends and to mobilize them for new endeavors
participate most actively in the widest range of formal associations, joining new ones to advance more recently
developed objectives.

Political culture theory presented life as hierarchical, and set within an overarching framework in which the ruling elite and the
governed constitute two poles.
Social capital (with its imagery of communities, networks and associations) embodies a very consensual political imagination.
Civility and association can exercise their own forms of power.

CONCLUSION

Political texts are associated with particular political imaginations.

Uncover the normative assumptions, spaces and values that they presuppose

Civic Culture: 1960s political imagination.

Governance in the West was an activity that was monopolized by governments. (Well-centered activity)
Political apathy and inaction could be functional supports for this political system
Political institutions are assessed in terms of the levels of legitimacy they enjoy in the eye of their publics

Social Capital: assumes a world in which governance is no longer supposed to be the monopoly of the political structure
Governance is dispersed in civic associations, partnerships and communities
Presupposes a more active political and social subject. They assume responsibilities for dealing with social problems
Political institutions are assessed in terms of their performance (Perform better when embedded in dense networks of
association)

Performance: not a property of institutions but as a contemporary governmental norm

Putnam: how social capital can be introduced into discussions of democratic governance.

Social capital might inform contemporary governmentality.

Has an obvious affinity with other discourses that reshape the space of government (social exlusion, cohesion and
communitarianism)
It connects very old themes of civic responsibility with modern forms of economic analysis
Seeks to make the social and the individual calculable in terms of their assertiveness (civility)
Discourse and practice of government

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The Arroyo Imbroglio in the Philippines
Monday, December 29, 2008
11:13 AM na!

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo: had the longest tenure in the presidential palace

: assumed presidency in January 2001, reelected in 2004
Arroyo Administration: found political legitimacy to be elusive
: assumption of office through extraconstitutional means provided a weak initial mandate
Arroyo's travails:
1. Uprising by the urban poor (May Day 2001)
2. Botched military mutiny in July 2003
3. Corruption scandals involving the first family
4. Allegations of presidential involvement in fixing the 2004 elections
5. Failed coup-attempt-cum-popular-uprising in February 2006 that led to the declaration of emergency rule
6. Concerted attacks on the press
7. Alarming spike in extrajudicial killings
8. Impeachment attempts in 2005, 2006 and 2007
9. Two major bribery scandals in late 2007
i. Chief election officer
ii. Brazen cash payouts from the Palace to congresspersons and governors
10. November 2007 bombing at the House of Representatives

As the Philippines suffers one political crisis after another, its longstanding democratic structures become increasingly
imperiled. (p. 142)
No country in Asia has more experience with democratic institutions than the Philippines.

Several key elements of Philippine democracy that can be traced to the US colonial era:
1. Patronage-infested political parties that rely heavily on pork-barrel public-works projects run through national
legislators
William Howard Taft: Policy of attraction - woo the landlord class away from the revolutionary struggle and toward
collaboration with the US
- Transformed the economic elite of the Spanish-colonial era into a political
economic elite
2. The colonial political system ensured exclusion of the masses and control by a national oligarchy nurtured by US rule
3. Provincial basis of national politics
4. Strong presidency of the modern Philippines began with the emergence of the Philippine Commonwealth

Trends of the 1950s and 1960s

1. Expansion of suffrage
2. Emergence of charismatic appeals
3. Prominence for the media
4. Expansion of civil society
5. Enhanced presidential mobilization of the army and community-development agencies
6. Increasing cost of elections

Benedict Anderson: the genius of cacique democracy was its capacity to rotate power at the top without effective
participation of those below.

Effects to civil society:

1. Growth of vibrant civil society organizations
2. New breed of investigative journalists
3. High voter turnouts
4. Extensive civic involvement

Underlying problems in returning to democratic structures:

1. Military (Proof: coup attempts)
2. Insurgents that continued in many parts of the archipelago
3. Restoration of the power of the old local clans
4. Expansion of political parties

At times, it seems as common for candidates to put up parties as it is for parties to put up candidates.

Nathan Quimpo's description of contemporary Philippine political parties:

Convenient vehicles of patronage that an be set up, merged with others, split, reconstituted, regurgitated,
resurrected, renamed, repackaged, recycled, refurbished, buffed up or flushed down the toilet anytime.

Corazon Aquino: Elite restorationist - rebuilt the elite-dominated democratic structures undermined by her authoritarian

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Corazon Aquino: Elite restorationist - rebuilt the elite-dominated democratic structures undermined by her authoritarian
predecessor
Fidel Ramos: Military reformer - considerable success in bringing about economic reform through deft manipulation of old-
style patronage politics
Joseph Estrada: Populist self-aggrandizer - strong following among the masses and redistributed wealth in favor of his
family and friends
Gloria Arroyo: Great compromiser - willing to accommodate anyone able to help her retain the presidency

AN ELECTION SCANDAL AND ITS AFTERMATH

Philippine electoral process is alive but not well

Arroyo's first three years were dogged by questions of legitimacy even though the SC had given its imprimatur to her
ascension.

Mid-2005, accusations came that her husband and son were taking monthly payments from gambling lords. (May 2005)
June 2005: Garci tapes
June 27: National telecast apology

ISAFP: Intelligent Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines

Monitored election-related conversations

July 8 2005: Resignation of ten members of the cabinet

Calls for resignation by former allies

SONA 2005: "Our political system has degenerated to such an extent that it's very difficult to live within the system with
hands totally untainted." -Emphasized systemic rather than personal accountability
Start the great debate on charter change
Possibility of shifting the country's political structures from presidential to parliamentary and from unitary to
federal

Hello Garci crisis highlighted the legitimacy deficit not only of an individual leader but also of an entire political system.

An impeachment attempt would not muster the necessary support of one-third of the members of the House of
Representatives.
- Consistent with historical patterns in Philippine politics:
The power of the PORK BARREL enables presidents to make or break the speaker, who in turn must deliver the
loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the House.

Other factors that assisted GMA's fight for survival:

1. Death of FPJ deprived the opposition of an obvious figure around whom it could rally
2. People power fatigue
3. Concerns over the possibility that Noli de Castro might come to power
4. Loyalty of key generals

A TENDENCY TOWARD AUTHORITARIANISM

February 2006: Proclamation 1017 (illegal)

Coronel: "That morning in February saw the meeting of the two most powerful narratives of recent Philippine
history, the declaration of martial law in 1972 and 1986 popular uprising. What Filipinos got in 2006 were pale
versions of both."

Arroyo's dependence on the military led to the June2006 declaration of an 'all-out war' against the NPA.

Amnesty International: As senior officials and military officers labeled members of the legal left 'enemies of the state,' and
failed to condemn the killings consistently at all levels of government, fears grew that elements within the armed forces
might interpret this as a tacit signal that political killings were a legitimate part of the anti-insurgency campaign.

UN special rapporteur: It intimidates vast numbers of civil society actors, it severely undermines the political discourse
which is central to a resolution of the problems confronting this country/

Reporters without Borders: After Iraq, the Philippines is the most dangerous country for journalists.

Out of 32 journalists killed between 1991 and 2006, only two cases have led to convictions.

2006: FG Arroyo filed defamation suits seeking a total of $1.4 million in damages against 43 journalists.

Killings + Legal charges = Attack on one of the major bulwarks of Philippine democracy

2006: people's initiative (fell short of constitutional requirements)

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2006: people's initiative (fell short of constitutional requirements)
Constituent Assembly: failure!

ELECTION INTRIGUE

The Philippine ballot is probably one of the most archaic in the world.

COMELEC: disenfranchisement may have run as high as two million voters.

Governon Andal Ampatuan: commanded a substantial paramilitary force and has a reputation for using violence against
his political enemies

Ranking of candidates depended on how much they would pay up

Violence is a useful tool for gaining political power.

Election-related killings:
2001: 111
2004: 148
2007: 121

Joel Rocamora: Elections provide the formal expression of local political contests that have historically been mainly
about who controls the resources from the central government, and the illegal economic activity … the contest over
control of these activities gives a premium to leaders with skills in manipulation illegality and the uses of violence

National Police and the Philippine armed forces are unable to safeguard the electoral process, far more disturbing is when
their coercive power is deployed in favor of one candidate over another.

New People's Army used its coercive capacity for:

1. entrepreneurial and political ends
2. extorting permit-to-campaign fees in the areas that it controls
3. occasionally hiring itself out for intraelite

The analysis focused on:

1. Challenges of democratic process, (free, fair and safe elections)
Capacity of a political system to provide the citizenry with the opportunity for democratic outcomes, notably
clear choices among contending views and programs
Involve citizens in their own governance!

Philippine democracy privileges personalities and patronage over parties and platforms.

Electoral victory = High-cost politics

Accountability of candidates is to those who have financed the past campaign effort and to those who might be called
upon for assistance during the next elections.

De Venecia: It's the drug lords and the gambling lords … who finance the candidates. So from Day One, they become
corrupt. So the whole political process is rotten.

PROSPECTS FOR POLITICAL REFORM AND CHARTER CHANGE

Longer stretch of life after Marcos than life under Marcos

Overall satisfaction ratings:

Ramos: 46-70%
Estrada: 42-60%
Arroyo: 33-54%

Arroyo's approval ratings:

-33% (May 2005)
-3% (June 2007)

Major bright spots for Arroyo:

1. Very respectable economic-growth rates
2. Recent progress negotiations with the major Muslim secessionist group in Mindanao

69% expected vote buying

53% anticipated cheating

COMELEC was among the four agencies that the public rated as "very bad" in terms of "sincerity in fighting corruption"

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COMELEC was among the four agencies that the public rated as "very bad" in terms of "sincerity in fighting corruption"

Decline of important political institutions:

1. House of Representatives
2. Judiciary
3. Office of the Ombudsman
4. Military

SUGGESTIONS:
1. Reform democratic institutions.
Presidential to parliamentary
Unitary to federal
Problem: Bigger change, greater risk of unintended consequences
2. Incremental reforms (BETTER!)
Fostering of stronger and more programmatic political parties
i. Preprinted ballots
ii. Consolidated ticket for the election of presidents and vice-president
iii. Option for straight-party voting
3. Electoral ambitions
i. Scrap the current system in which senators are elected from one nationwide district
ii. Abolish the current party-list system
4. Electoral administration
i. COMELEC must be restructured from top to bottom to develop the capacity to maintain accurate lists of voters
and execute an accurate and expeditious vote count.

Democratic institutions in the Philippines continue to be under major stress.

Given the current weakness of political institutions, it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of a coup.

The Philippines' democratic structures are currently weak and lacking in legitimacy.

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VOCABULARY
Monday, December 29, 2008
11:21 AM na!

Aggrandize: to make somebody or something seem bigger or better than is actually the case, especially through
exaggerated praise
Amid: used to indicate the circumstances or events around or accompanying something
Botch: to do something very badly out of clumsiness or lack of care
Brazen: showing or expressing boldness and a complete lack of shame
Breach: a failure to obey, keep, or preserve something such as a law, trust, or promise
Bulwark: somebody or something that gives protection or support
Cacique: political leader: especially in Latin America or Spain, a local political boss
Defamation: attack somebody or somebody's reputation, character, or good name by making slanderous or libelous
statements
Disenfranchise: to deprive a person or organization of a privilege, immunity, or legal right, especially the right to vote
Disgruntled: to make somebody feel dissatisfied and irritated
Elusive: difficult to find or catch
Entrenched: firmly established and unlikely to change
Exuberance: growing in great abundance or profusion
Fledgling: inexperienced because still learning or just starting to do something
Gargantuan: tremendously large in amount, number, or size
Hampered: to restrict the free movement or progress of somebody or something
Imbroglio: a confusing, messy, or complicated situation, especially one that involves disagreement or intrigue
Imperil: to put something or somebody in danger
Imprimatur: authority to do, say, or especially print something
Insurgency: somebody who is appointed to investigate a subject and deliver a report on it
Mandate: the authority bestowed on a government or other organization by an electoral victory, effectively
authorizing it to carry out the policies for which it campaigned
Moratorium: a period during which a person, usually a debtor, has the right to postpone meeting an obligation
Nascent: in the process of emerging, being born, or starting to develop
Programmatic: following a plan or program
Protracted: lasting or drawn out for a long time
Putsch: a sudden planned attempt to overthrow a government using military force
Qualm: a sudden feeling of uncertainty or apprehension, especially a misgiving about an action or conduct
Quash: to declare formally, especially in a court of law, that something such as an indictment or a subpoena is not valid
Rebuke: a reprimand or expression of criticism or disapproval
Refurbish: to bring something back to a cleaner, brighter, or more functional state
Regurgitate: to repeat or reproduce what has been heard, read, or taught, in a purely mechanical way, with no
evidence of personal thought or understanding
Revamp: to improve the appearance, condition, or structure of something by making sometimes superficial changes
Rivet: to fix or direct the attention completely
Sedition: actions or words intended to provoke or incite rebellion against government authority, or actual rebellion
against government authority
Travail: work, especially work that involves hard physical effort over a long period
Vitality: abundant physical and mental energy, usually combined with a wholehearted and joyous approach to
situations and activities

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