What is Politics?

Title: What is Politics?

Author: Andrew Heywood

● Politics, in its broadest sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend
the general rules under which they live.
● Two points of Politics: Conflict and Cooperation, Power

● 4 definitions of Politics

Politics as Arena Politics as Process

Art of the Government Public affairs Compromise and Power

consensus

Old institutionalism Public life Previous conceptions Politics is simply

of politics refer to anywhere and
spaces; this conception everywhere that has
of politics refer to the power.
process itself

Concerns of the state, Broader conception of In playing the “game”, Leftwich: politics is
formal institutions, where politics can be resolution is everywhere because
public office found: activities where compromise or human interaction at
consensus; the solution all levels of social
to conflicting activities have the
conceptions of what potential for conflict
“the rules of the game”
should look like

Executive, Legislative, people change the This view is the This conception of
Judiciary ‘rules’ of their lives broadest as there can politics covers all
be conflict everywhere previous conceptions.

Power is found, Such activities can be Politics is the antidote

decided, distributed in seen in other places in to violence and
the formal processes of society as well, not just coercion
government; state- in government
bound activities processes. Such
processes are
connected with

others. (ex. Lobbying,

stakeholders,
consensus building)

While valid, this view is Politics can also be Crick: Politics is the
 restrictive by today’s observed in civil society dispersal power
standards organizations: identify (remember the pizza);
goals, consolidate politics is the process
goals, build support. of sharing power

Politics can be found in

what we consider to be
public affairs

because it is in this
area that people
change the ‘rules’ of
their lives

Title: What is Political?

Author: Mark Warren

● Politics [is] the subset of social relations characterized by conflict over goods in the face of
pressure to associate for collective action where at least one part to the conflict seeks
collectively binding decisions and seeks to sanction decisions by means of power.”

Title: What is Politics?

Author: Giovanni Sartori

● Politics as human activity

- Aristotle: man is a political animal. Nonpolitical man is a defective being, an idion (idiot);
nonpolitical humans are inferior; but this is confined to the Polis.
- Aquinas: “it is the very nature of man to live in a society of many”
- Machiavelli: politics is different from morality and religion.
- Hobbes: politics is the power to impose and manipulate belief (nomenclature)

History of the Philippine State

Title: American Colonization
Author: Kathleen Nadeau
The seeds of American Colonial Rule
• Monroe Doctrine empowered the Americans to aid in Cuba’s fight for Spanish Independence; Spanish
defeat forced the sale of former Spanish Colonies, Philippines included
• Primary goal: to destroy the revolutionary government that fought forPhilippine independence
• Method: “not as invaders or conquerors but as friends” to “civilize” and ”Christianize” the oppressed
Filipinos; to prepare the Filipinos for autonomous and self-rule
• End goal: Economic reasons.
“to bear in mind that the government which they are establishing is designed not for our satisfaction nor
for the expression of our theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of
the Philippine islands, and the measures adopted should be made to conform with their customs, their
habits and even their prejudices, to the fullest extent consistent with the accomplishment of the
indispensable requisite of just and effective government.” --US President McKinley
American Colonization under McKinley
• Establishment of local governments in the Philippines; William Howard Taft as the first civil governor
• Taft established municipal governments which afforded such units some level of autonomy
• Infrastructure projects: Roads, Water Supply, Irrigation, Hospitals, etc.)
• The creation of the 2nd Philippine Commission, the precursor
Philippine Commission
to the Philippine Legislature (empowered by the Philippine
Organic Act) • As the pre-cursor to the legislature,
• The Federalist Party was born on December 23, 1900, with the Philippine Commission was the
the goal of “peaceful compromise with the U.S. government” upper house and the Philippine
Assembly was the lower house
• No genuine land reform was achieved under Taft American (bicameral system)
Colonization under McKinley
• Filipinos were encouraged to join
• October 16, 1907: opening of the legislature at Manila politics: Suffrage was extended to
• Schools were opened with American soldiers becoming Filipinos but very restricted
teachers; Education was Americanized and sanitized the
• The highest political position available
colonial government of the Americans
to Filipinos was Speaker, second to the
• Pro-Philippine Independence governor-general
• Filipinization policy: to shift positions of power to Filipinos • Philippine Politics at the time was
• Philippine independence was assured as soon as a stable one-party; politicians came from the
government could be established. same wealthy, educated, upper class;
ideologies of politicians were similar;
• Criticisms: the lack of Americans in politics had negative patronage is what kept politics moving
effects in the Philippines
• Philippine independence was enacted on March 24, 1934, as
Tydings-McDuffe Act was enacted, ensuring Philippine independence on 1946

Title: Leaders, Factions, and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics

Author: Carl Lande
Origins of current political problems in the Philippines
• Colonial rule created an elite-dominated society in the Philippines; the same is true even after
colonization.
• American colonial rule prioritized state building over nation building.
• Political parties that resulted from this were: identical; weak; no ideological differences.
• The development and modernization that the Americans ushered in did not break existing political
culture, but empowered the elites that benefited from this system.
• Clientelism: vertical-dyadic ties of kinship

Political Culture
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Clientelism
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Political Parties
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Beyond Clientelism
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Philippine Politics: Post-Marcos Era

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Political Systems
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Decentralization
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Bureaucracy
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Corruption
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