Politics and Governance

CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

Raymund Jose G. Quilop, Chapter 1: Nation-State Formation in the Philippines, Philippine Politics
and Governance: An Introduction, edited by Noel M. Morada and Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, 2006.

1. Nation is a unit of culture.

2. Nation refers to “a large group whose members believe they belong together on the basis
of a shared identity as a people.”

3. State is a political unit.

4. A state is a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one

government.

5. Nation-state is an alignment between a political unit (state) and the unit of culture (nation).

6. There are nations without a state.

7. There are states where the sense of being a nation of those living in the territory is weak.

8. A nation is supposed to be the foundation of a state.

9. The state is supposed to contribute toward the consolidation of a nation.

10. According to Raymund Jose G. Quilop, the nation has not been the foundation of the Philippine
state.

11. According to Raymund Jose G. Quilop, the Philippine state failed to consolidate a sense
of being a nation for the people living within its territory.

12. In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983),
Benedict Anderson argued that a nation is an imagined community.

13. As Anderson puts it, a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds
of each lives the image of their communion."

14. Like any social group, a nation is a product of the group’s need to have cohesion.

15. Like any social group, a nation is a product of the individual member’s desire to belong.

16. In order to survive, conformity is encouraged and deviance is discouraged.

17. The relationship is mutually beneficial if the group’s demand for conformity is met
by the member’s desire to assimilate.

18. A nation is either ethnic nation or territorial nation.

19. Ethnic nation is defined in terms of ethnicity.

20. Belonging to an ethnic nation is associated with sharing standard cultural features
such as language, religion, customs, common ancestry, and shared history.

21. Territorial nation is something that “emerged from a predefined territory.”

22. Belonging to a territorial nation is based a common national identity, regardless of their ethnic,
linguistic, religious, cultural and other differences.

23. Territorial nation is when various ethnic groups comprise a nation, where “members
of interacting ethnic groups . . . live together symbiotically, if not harmoniously.”

24. Ethnic diversity does not necessarily lead to conflict.

Politics and Governance
CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

Raymund Jose G. Quilop, Chapter 1: Nation-State Formation in the Philippines, Philippine Politics
and Governance: An Introduction, edited by Noel M. Morada and Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, 2006.

25. Conflict emerges when members of an ethnic group reject their identity as members
of the nation and demand that they be recognized as a separate people.

26. In The State in Modern Society: New Directions in Political Sociology (1986), Roger King defined
a state as “a more impersonal and public system of rule over a territorially circumscribed
societies.”

27. Effective states are characterized as having autonomy and capacity.

28. According to Richard Doner, autonomy of the state refers to the ability of the political leaders
to formulate and pursue goals that are “not simply reflective of the demands or particularistic
interests of social groups or classes in society.”

29. For Richard Doner, in order to be effective, states need to be insulated from societal pressures.

30. Richard Doner defined capacity as the means at the disposal of the state to implement official
goals over actual or potential opposition of powerful social groups or in the face of recalcitrant
socioeconomic circumstances.

31. For Richard Doner, capacity requires the presence of an extensive and internally coherent
bureaucratic apparatus.

32. According to Mehran Kamrava, states in western countries with advanced capitalist system
have “considerable powers to regulate, penetrate and organize society.”

33. For Mehran Kamrava, states in some countries in the east, particularly those formerly colonized
by the Western states may not be “autonomous or sufficiently strong enough to survive
or function effectively.”

34. Mehran Kamrava labelled states in some countries in the east as “weak states”.

35. According to Raymund Quilop, nationhood ought to be the basis of forming states.

36. For Raymund Quilop, the people’s sense of nationalism is supposed to help contribute to state
formation.

37. Raymund Quilop observed that for most countries in Asia, including the Philippines,
states preceded the consolidation of national identities.

38. Western colonizers established governments to facilitate governance of newfound territories

and diverse ethnolinguistic groups.

39. According to Raymund Quilop, one of the factors why it is difficult for several ethnolinguistic
groups to imagine themselves as part of a Filipino nation because they were forcibly governed
as one nation by a Western colonizer.

40. This is contrary to the findings of Teodoro Agoncillo (History of the Filipino People, 1960)
and Renato Constantino (A Past Revisited, 1975) who argued that the sporadic rebellions
of various ethnoliguistic groups against the Spanish colonial government since 1565 gradually
evolved into a national movement in 1890s when they collectively identified Spain as a common
enemy and aspired national independence as a common goal.

41. According to Raymund Quilop, another factor that makes it difficult for people living
in the territory of the Philippine archipelago to imagine themselves as part of the Filipino nation
is the way the dominant ethnic majority condescendingly view the minority groups.

42. “Indios” became “Filipinos” only during the last years of the Spanish regime.

43. “Filipinos” was a term reserved to refer to the insulares or Spaniards born in the Philippines.
Politics and Governance
CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

Raymund Jose G. Quilop, Chapter 1: Nation-State Formation in the Philippines, Philippine Politics
and Governance: An Introduction, edited by Noel M. Morada and Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, 2006.

44. During the postcolonial period, Raymund Quilop observed that majority Christians look down on
the minorities as “non-Filipinos.”

45. For Raymund QUilop, Filipinos are bounded territorially rather than by culture or ideology.

46. The Philippines is a territorial nation and not an ethnic nation.

47. Ideally, national consciousness should be the basis of state formation, where the state can help
bring about a nation or cultural homogeneity through integrative mechanisms.

48. The colonial state in the Philippines prepared the ground for the emergence of a nation by forging
the unity of disparate ethnic groups into administrative units.

49. The modern notion of a state as a central body with a monopoly of coercive authority only
emerged during the Spanish colonial period when the western islands of the archipelago was
claimed as Las Filipinas in 1543.

50. Before the establishment of the Spanish colonial state, the unit of government across the
archipelago was the barangay.

51. The barangay chief exercised legislative, executive, judicial, and military powers, where customs
and traditions limited these powers.

52. There was no central government that regulated the numerous barangays.

53. Spain established public administration over the islands with a highly hierarchical yet centralized
government.

54. Spain established various levels government, namely municipalities (pueblos), cities
(ayuntamientos), provinces (alcaldias), with a central government composed of a governor, a
tribunal (audencia), and treasury officials.

55. The municipalities were led by gobernadorcillos, cities by cabildos, settled provinces by alcaldes
mayors, and the frontier provinces by corregidores.

56. Filipinos had minimal participation usually holding minor posts such as that of cabeza
de barangay and gobernadorcillo.

57. According to Teodoro Agoncillo, Spanish friars had a major role in running the civil government
that the colonial government was a frailocracy.

58. The Americans modernized the Philippine state by introducing a liberal democratic form
of government.

59. Under the Americans, the Philippine state power was divided into the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches, with each branch exercising a “check and balance” on the other.

60. Elections were held both at the national and local levels.

61. According to Joseph Ralston Haden, the Americans established a strong and independent
local government system.

62. In contrast to the Spanish colonial government, the Filipinization of the government
was the trend during the American colonial period.

63. Separation of the church and the state was promoted, effectively reducing the degree
of the church’s influence in the affairs of the state.

64. The 1935 Philippine Constitution is almost the exact replica of the US Constitution.
Politics and Governance
CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

Raymund Jose G. Quilop, Chapter 1: Nation-State Formation in the Philippines, Philippine Politics
and Governance: An Introduction, edited by Noel M. Morada and Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, 2006.

65. Except for the use of electoral college in electing presidents and the bicameral legislature,
the Philippines had unicameral assemblies on several occasions.

66. Raymund Quilop blamed the colonial period for the alleged failure of Philippine state to cultivate
a sense of national belongingness to ethnic groups.

67. Raymund Quilop explained that the reduccion resulted in a dichotomy between the majority
baptized Christians and the cultural minorities who rejected Spanish domination.

68. Raymund Quilop insisted that as an instrument for nation-building, the state needs to be
autonomous and must have the capacity to implement nation-building programs and projects.

69. For Raymund Quilop, the Philippine postcolonial state neither has the autonomy nor the capacity
for nation-building.

70. Raymund Quilop branded the Philippine state weak state due to being a colonial state.

71. Raymund Quilop observed that the Philippine state failed to unify the Philippine archipelago
with diverse cultures under a central authority and forge a common identity.

72. For Raymund Quilop, the Philippine state is dominated by elite politics with weak social control.

73. According to Raymund Quilop, the Spanish colonizers created an elite-dominated politics by
strengthening the powers of the local elites to help them control the people.

74. The elites created during the Spanish colonial period continued to hold considerable power even
during the American period.

75. In spite of the Filipinization during the American period, the government continued to be
dominated by elites with Spanish blood who were willing to embrace American colonialism
to secure their interests.

76. According to Raymund Quilop, throughout the postwar period, a national oligarchy defined
the nature and direction of electoral politics.

77. Raymund Quilop observed that landlords and political figures used the state as instrument
for pursuing their personal interests.

78. To ensure their political survival, state leaders tend to accommodate local leaders and weaken
the state as an institution for governance.

79. Instead of some rational mechanisms, bargaining between local leaders and state leaders
to accommodate each other determined the final allocation of resources.

80. According to Raymund Quilop, the state has become dependent on the local stability that strong
men can guarantee, thereby making it captive to these social forces.

81. Raymund Quilop observed that the weakening of state’s social control led to elites maximizing
their control on society and resulted in less participation for the rest of society.

82. Civil society groups arose to allow individuals to take collective action for their interests.

83. Raymund Quilop concluded that the state is unable to mediate in the conflict of interests
between civil society groups and the state since its political leaders have vested interests
as members of the elite class.