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Southern Tagalog Voting, 1946–1963: Political Behavior in a

Philippine Region. By Carl H. Lande with the assistance of
Shirley Advincula, Augusto Ferreros and James Frane. Northern
Illinois University Center for Southeast Asian Studies Special
Report No. 7, August 1973. Distributed by The Cellar Book Shop,
18090 Wyoming, Detroit, Michigan. Pp. vii, 159. Introduction,
Preface, Figures, Tables, Appendixes, Index. Price: US\$6.00.

Jose V. Abueva

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 6 / Special Issue 02 / September 1975, pp 222 - 224
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463400017495, Published online: 07 April 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022463400017495

How to cite this article:

Jose V. Abueva (1975). Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 6, pp 222-224 doi:10.1017/
S0022463400017495

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222 Book reviews
Southern Tagalog Voting, 1946-1963: Political Behavior in a Philippine Region.
By CARL H. LANDE with the assistance of Shirley Advincula, Augusto Ferreros
and James Frane. Northern Illinois University Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Special Report No. 7, August 1973. Distributed by The Cellar Book Shop, 18090
Wyoming, Detroit, Michigan. Pp. vii, 159. Introduction, Preface, Figures, Tables,
Appendixes, Index. Price: US$6.00.

This monograph is a sequel to the author's insightful Leaders, Factions and

Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics as a scholarly production, but not
chronologically. It is a sequel also in the methodological sense of using electoral
and census data and a variety of statistical techniques to further test hypotheses
derived from the observations and insights generated by the earlier investigation.
In Carl Lande's own words the study under review is made up of four parts: (1) "a
discussion of the distinctive characteristics of Philippine electoral politics and of
the problems involved in their study"; (2) "an analysis of aggregate voting and
census data from the towns of the nine southern Tagalog provinces"; (3) "an analysis
of 1,745 actual ballots cast in ten sample precincts of the province of Laguna";
and (4) "a set of conclusions". It is important to note that the study utilizes empirical
data available up to a full decade prior to the declaration of martial law by President
Ferdinand E. Marcos. This momentous event radically altered the political system
that Lande analyzed and drew conclusions on.
Against the time and setting of the study, several of its merits are evident. It
is a theory-oriented empirical study that tests explicit hypotheses by a variety of
statistical and other analytical techniques: including factor analysis, regression
analysis, simple correlations, cluster analysis, similarity matrices, histograms, and
dendograms, and using 26 maps and 20 tables. It builds upon previous studies
and conventional wisdom on Philippine politics and relates its assumptions and
analysis to comparable voting studies in the United States. By confining the investi-
gation to one region, he succeeds in being both intensive in his data and extensive
in the kinds of correlations among factors and variables he is able to examine.
Undoubtedly, whatever the inherent shortcomings of factor analysis, this trawl-
fishing technique yielded numerous correlations that would not have been otherwise
possible. Although the findings on many of them are far from conclusive, given
the samples and the weakness of several of the correlations, the leads are significant
or at least interesting. Unavoidably, too, the volume of factors and variables and
their correlations, and the plethora of tables and figures needed for their presentation,
made the study ponderous and formidable and its text sometimes obscure. The
study is definitely addressed to the quantitative analyst, not to the politician or
layman.
In the concluding part, Lande asserts "tentatively", that most of his hypotheses
were validated by the evidence he had presented. The major hypotheses were
the following:
1. In general, links between candidates and between candidates and voters
are quite weak in the Philippines. These links become markedly weaker as the
number of candidates increases.
2. Shared political party affiliation serves as a weak link in the Philippines,
unless augmented by other ties.
3. Personal alliances between candidates and local political leaders or individual
voters serve as relatively strong links, and are heavily relied upon to mobilize voter
support. Many of these alliances cut across party lines.
4. Election contests are competitive to a relatively high degree. Few winners
are elected by very large pluralities and few are re-elected repeatedly.
5. Variations in the patterns of voting for local offices, and to a lesser degree
Book reviews 223
for higher offices, are extreme, differing markedly from town to neighbouring
town and within towns from one election year to the next.
6. Socio-economic variables have relatively low explanatory power with respect
to aggregate political behavior in general, and political party preferences in parti-
cular. This is the case especially in local-level politics.
7. Linguistic-regional and local loyalties are among the major determinants
of individual voting decisions in the Philippines in national and subnational elections,
respectively. Language group and local loyalties are most marked in the most
rural, most isolated and least modern localities.
8. Violence, actual, threatened or anticipated, is a fairly common occurrence
at elections in the Philippines. It is most likely to be used to influence the outcomes
of elections for subnational offices.
Space allows only a few cryptic comments on these tentatively validated hypo-
theses. Numbers (1), (2), (7) and (8) should have been qualified by reference to
the regional sample instead of generalizing to the country as a whole. Without
a clear standard of comparison the averred weakness or strength of links in numbers
(1), (2) and (3) is difficult to appreciate. Number (4) might be qualified in the im-
portant sense that competition is reserved for the wealthiest few who comprise
the political elite and is largely devoid of policy issues. Here is where lack of quali-
tative analysis makes the conclusion misleading. The methodology precluded the
use of other variables with potentially greater explanatory power, such as theolo-
gopoly of substantial wealth by candidates and their abuse of authority and power,
with or short of violence. Thus, number (6) should have been qualified so as to
refer specifically to the census socio-economic variables utilized in the study and
not to any or all socio-economic variables which the absence of the qualification
would erroneously imply.
In fairness, it should probably be assumed that Lande had these qualifications
in mind although he did not bother to make them explicit in the concluding text.
With these caveats and his explanations in various parts of the whole text, Lande
has come up with a fairly substantial amount theretofore unverified findings.
By the decision and action of one man, supported crucially by the Armed Forces
of the Philippines, the political system that Lande writes about is no more. While
Lande discusses such factors as national party influence, national party stability,
local competition and party strength in various elections which were characteristic
of pre-martial law days, the Philippines political system is one that is now admitted
to be authoritarian even by its foremost leader, in which referenda without candidates
has replaced elections at all levels, all governmental powers devolve on the President,
and all local officials are to be chosen by him alone. But despite its publication
almost one year after this metamorphosis, neither the introduction by Professor
Donn V. Hart nor the preface by Lande, and nowhere in the text itself, is the out-
standing political change ever mentioned. Moreover, Lande did not seem to care
to edit the following statements which he must have written before September 21,
1972: "the two Philippine parties [the Nacionalista Party and the Liberal Party]
have found themselves in a state of close competition since 1946. And there is no
reason to expect this state of affairs to change in the foreseeable future" [underlining
mine]. This lapse, and some others mentioned above, contrasts with Lande's meti-
culous statistical analysis and painstaking presentation in mathematical and graphic
forms.
Guided by a paradigm that emphasizes environmental or contextual deter-
minants in explaining political behavior, it is difficult for a political scientist to
appreciate or anticipate the vastly more crucial acts of ambitious, determined and
skillful leaders strategically placed in the political system that alter the course
of human events and in fact change the very nature of the political system. As
224 Book reviews
Professor Glenn Paige reminds us, political leadership is potentially as creative
as is science, art, music, literature, and poetry, and is potentially capable of an enor-
mous amount of involvement in human life. In rapidly changing societies of the
contemporary world such potential may seem as likely to be used as to be unrealized.
It is unfair to discount the value of Lande's study in relation to subsequent events
and by his choice of problem and methodology. But while we are considering
the larger context of political studies focussed on a developing country, it is pertinent
to raise issues of relevance and significance which ought to concern political scientists.
For example, is it enough to analyze the structure and dynamics of electoral behavior
functionally unrelated to the satisfaction of societal needs and wants, to the avowed
goals of greater equality and enhancing the common welfare and of national develop-
ment?
What is the meaning of competitive election of the very few who are wealthy
and powerful, by the votes of the great majority who are poor, dependent, vulnerable
and manipulable, and whose circumstances in life had not improved through the
many elections in which they had participated? It may be hypothesized that the
increasingly dominant role of wealth and election spending, or the so-called buy
and sell of votes and offices, accompanied by the misuse of public resources by
incumbent administrations and perceived rampant corruption in many spheres
of life, contributed in large measure to the calculation that an authoritarian after-
native would not be an unwelcome change to many Filipinos.

The Ford Foundation Jose V. Abueva

Professor Abueva wrote this review in his individual capacity as a scholar and
not as a staff member of The Ford Foundation.

Origins of the Philippine Republic. Extracts from the Diaries and Records of Francis
Burton Harrison. By FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON. Edited and annotated
by Michael P. Onorato. Cornell University, Department of Asian Studies, South-
east Asia Program Data Paper: No. 95, 1974. Pp. x, 248. Foreword, Editor's
Note, Index. Price: US$6.50.

As the title indicates, the book under review is a body of extracts from the diaries
and records of Francis Burton Harrison which he kept while serving as an adviser
to President Manuel L. Quezon during the first years of the Philippine Common-
wealth and during the war-time government in exile in the United States. It was
first published in 1949 by the author himself and, in its present form, republished
by the Southeast Asia Program of Cornell University under the editorship of Pro-
fessor Michael P. Onorato. Divided into two parts, Part I includes the entries
he made from the time he arrived in the Philippines in October, 1935, together
with his wife, an English woman, until their departure in the early part of 1937,
and also the records of his brief revisit to Manila in 1938; Part II records his services
when he became once more an adviser to Quezon when the Commonwealth Govern-
ment was in exile in the United States.
Like most diaries, the book is a personal account of the scenarios and events
the author had observed and participated in, as well as his reflections on them.
It gives us Harrison's reminiscences of his governor-generalship in the Philippines
from 1913-1921, a picture of the Manila Americans and prominent Filipinos
many of whom he had known before his return, a description of the life in Manila