POLITICAL

SYSTEM
POLITICAL SYSTEM
A political system refers to the section of the society which deals with matters and
issues related to distribution of resources and conflict resolution. The system
comprises of institutions, organizations, rules, principles, and behaviours related to
conflict resolution, ie court system, executive, parliament, behaviours like voting.

A political system in any persistent pattern of human relationship that involves

power, rule and authority. It is a collectivity of political institutions (government),
associations (political parties) and organizations performing roles based on a set of
norms and goals (like maintaining internal order, regulating foreign relations, etc.).
Sociologically, the term ‘political system’ refers to the social institution which
relies on a recognized set of procedures for implementing and achieving the
political goals of a community or society.
FUNCTIONS OF POLITICAL SYSTEM
Almond and Coleman (1960) have described the following three main functions of a political
system:

• To maintain integration of society by determining norms.

• To adapt and change elements of social, economic,
religious systems necessary for achieving collective
(political) goals.
• To protect the integrity of the political system from
outside threats.
THEY HAVE GROUPED THESE FUNCTIONS INTO TWO
CATEGORIES:

• Input functions—political socialization, interest

articulation, interest aggregation, and political
communication; and
• Output functions—rule making, rule appli­cation and
rule adjudication.
EISENSTADT (1966) HAS CLASSIFIED THE FUNCTIONS
OF A POLITICAL SYSTEM AS:

• Legislative (having the power to make laws),

• decision-making (the action or process of making decisions,
especially important ones), and
• Administrative (relating to the running of a business,
organization, etc.).
The sociological interest in political systems is figuring out who holds power
within the relationship of the government and its people and how the
government’s power is used.

THERE ARE THREE TYPES OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS

THAT SOCIOLOGISTS CONSIDER:
• Authoritarianism
• Monarchy
• Democracy
AUTHORITARIANISM
In authoritarian governments, the people have no power or representation
and it is characterized by absolute or blind obedience to formal authority, as
against individual freedom and related to the expectation of unquestioning
obedience. The elite leaders handle all economic, military, and foreign
relations. A prime example of authoritarianism is a dictatorship.

Totalitarianism is the most extreme form of authoritarianism because it

controls all aspects of life including the communication between citizens,
media censorship, and threatens by the means of terror.
MONARCHY
A monarchy is a government controlled by a king or queen determined by a
predisposed line of sovereignty. In other words, it can be seen as an undivided
rule or absolute sovereignty by a single person. In the modern world there are
two types of monarchies, absolute monarchies and constitutional monarchies. An
absolute monarchy works like a dictatorship in that the king has complete rule
over his country. A constitutional monarchy gives the royal family limited powers
and usually works in accordance with an elected body of officials. Social
revolutions of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century overthrew the majority of existing
monarchies in favor of more democratic governments and a rising middle class,
as well as of authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union.
DEMOCRACY
A democracy is a form of government in which the citizens create and
vote for laws directly, or indirectly via representatives (democratic
republic). The idea of democracy stems back from ancient Greece and
the profound works of ancient academics. However, the presence of
democracy does not always mean citizen’s wishes will be equally
represented. For example, in many democratic countries immigrants,
and racial and ethnic minorities, do not receive the same rights as the
majority citizens.
VIDEO
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICAL
SYSTEM AND ECONOMICS
Politics focuses on the proper (or improper) exercise of coercive power
within a society. Economics focuses on how people within a society
specialize in certain tasks and then exchange the fruits of their labors with
those of others—and this process involves patterns of the use of coercive
power to do work, whether tilling soil or mining or manufacturing products,
et cetera. The latter involves the flow of wealth, whereas the former involves
the flow of power. Both are more part of the “outer” world of concrete things
and actions, rather than the “inner” world of abstract ideas and words.
ECONOMICS AFFECTS POLITICS

Eras of rapid economic transformation normally coincide

with eras of political crisis, in which political systems are
virtually re-founded and then stabilize for a few more
generations. And a society’s level of economic development
can affect matters like urbanization, the popularity of various
issues, the relative power of various special-interest groups,
et cetera.
POLITICS AFFECTS ECONOMICS
Taxing anything always results in less of it, and corrupt businesspeople may sometimes
usurp political power to unjustly benefit themselves economically at the expense of
others. Also, political systems may be either “top-downward” ones in which oligarchs
arrogate unlimited authority to reign arbitrarily over both everyone and everything, or
else “bottom-upward” ones in which free citizens contractually delegate limited power
to their public officers to help defend their equal God-given rights against others’
aggression—and the latter systems normally defend free markets, which enables
economies to enjoy greater innovation, efficiency, effectiveness, prosperity, abundance,
and progress, whereas the former systems normally engage in centralized command-
and-control over economies, which typically influences those economies to retrogress
instead. In the latter case, economics becomes virtually synonymous with politics; but,
in the former case, the two remain mostly separate, with the political system intervening
only to help defend rights and otherwise remaining uninvolved.
In theory, economics could be non-political. An ideal economist
should ignore any political bias or prejudice to give neutral, unbiased
information and recommendations on how to improve the economic
performance of a country. Elected politicians could then weigh up this
economic information and decide.

In practice there is a strong relationship between economics and

politics because the performance of the economy is one of the key
political battlegrounds. Many economic issues are inherently political
because they lend themselves to different opinions.
A country’s economic situation is driven by
political policies that govern the land.

Policies can directly or indirectly impact economics.

POLICIES THAT DIRECTLY IMPACT ECONOMICS
INCLUDE:

• Fiscal Policy: Policies that relate to government spending or taxation. Since the
economy is measured as GDP = Consumer Spending + Investment +
Government expenditure + Net Exports, changes to fiscal policy directly effect
GDP.
• Monetary Policy: Policies that relate to the money supply. The government can
increase or decrease the money supply by buying or selling government bonds.
By increasing the money supply, the interest rate for loans will decrease,
encouraging companies to invest more. This can lead to lower unemployment
rates in the short run
Note: Monetary Policy is not as effective in the long run since market will adapt to new money supply.
POLICIES THAT INDIRECTLY IMPACTS ECONOMICS
INCLUDE:

• Foreign Policy: Foreign policies have varying degrees of impact on economics.

Most impactful ones might involve tariff rates or sanctions since they directly
relate to exports.
• Environmental Policy: Regulations and taxes relating to pollution and other
environmental impacts often increase the cost of production and decrease the
overall supply of the market.
• Infrastructure: Public projects such as roads and utilities can drastically
improve a country’s economic situation since such infrastructure provides so
much utility to all sorts of consumers and producers.
PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SYSTEM
The Philippines’ political system takes place in an organized structure of a
presidential, representative, and democratic republic wherein the president is
both the head of government and the head of state within a multi-party system.
This system has three co-dependent branches: the executive branch (the law-
enforcing body), the legislative branch (the law-making body), and the judicial
branch (the law-interpreting body). Below are the full details on the three
branches with their corresponding Philippine government officials.
1. EXECUTIVE
Executive power is implemented by the government under the leadership of the president. The
President functions as both the head of state, the head of government and the Commander-in-
Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The president is elected by popular vote to a term
of 6 years. The president, then, appoints and may fire his/her cabinet members whom he/she
officiates over. The executive seat of government is managed officially from Malacañang Palace
which is also the official residence of the president which is in the capital City of Manila. The
President may no longer run for re-election, unless he or she becomes president through
constitutional succession and has served for no more than 4 years as president.

The second highest official, Vice-President. The vice-president is second in line to succession
should the president resign, been impeached or die in office. The vice-president is usually a
member of the president's cabinet but not always. If there is a vacancy in the position of Vice
President, the President will appoint any member of Congress which is usually a party member
as new Vice President. The appointment will be validated by a three-fourths vote of Congress
voting separately.
2. LEGISLATIVE
THE BICAMERAL PHILIPPINE LEGISLATURE WHEREIN MEMBERS OF BOTH ARE ELECTED BY POPULAR VOTE, THE TWO CHAMBER
CONGRESS, CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING:

•Senate
•House of Representative
• SENATE
Senate or Senado or upper chamber consists of 24 seats wherein one-
half are elected every three years and members elected at large by
popular vote to serve six-year terms. They can be reelected but they
are no longer eligible to run for a third consecutive term. The Senate
is elected at large.
• HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE
House of Representatives or Kapulungan ng mga Kinatawan or lower chamber consists of 212 members
representing districts plus 24 sectoral party-list members and members elected by popular vote to serve three-
year terms. The Constitution prohibits the House of Representatives from having more than 250 members.
206 are elected from the single-member districts. The remainder of the House seats are elected for sectoral
representatives elected at large through a complex "party list" system, hinging on the party receiving at least
2% to 6% of the national vote total. The district and sectoral representatives are elected with a term of three
years. They can be re - elected but they are no longer qualified to run for a fourth consecutive term. The
House of Representatives may decide on to pass a resolution for a vacancy of a legislative seat that will pave
way for a special election. The winner of the special election will serve the unfinished term of the previous
district representative and will be considered as one elective term. The same rule applies in the Senate
however it will only apply if the seat is vacated before the regular legislative election.
3. JUDICIAL
The judiciary branch of the government is headed by the Supreme
Court, which has a Chief Justice as its head and 14 Associate Justices,
all selected by the president on the recommendation of the Judicial
and Bar Council and they shall serve until 70 years of age. Court of
Appeals which is Sandigan-bayan is a special court for hearing
corruption cases of government officials.
• The Philippines is a republic with a presidential form of government
wherein power is equally divided among its three branches:
executive, legislative, and judicial.
• One basic corollary in a presidential system of government is the
principle of separation of powers wherein legislation belongs to
Congress, execution to the Executive, and settlement of legal
controversies to the Judiciary.
ECONOMY OF THE PHILIPPINES
The economy of the Philippines is the world's 36th largest economy
by nominal GDP according to the 2019 estimate of the International
Monetary Fund's statistics, it is the 13th largest economy in Asia, and
the 3rd largest economy in the ASEAN after Indonesia and Thailand.
The Philippines is one of the emerging markets and is the sixth richest
in Southeast Asia by GDP per capita values, after the regional
countries of Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
The Philippines is primarily considered a newly industrialized country,
which has an economy in transition from one based on agriculture to one
based more on services and manufacturing. As of 2017, GDP by
purchasing power parity was estimated to be at $1.980 trillion.

Primary exports include semiconductors and electronic products,

transport equipment, garments, copper products, petroleum products,
coconut oil, and fruits.  It is currently one of Asia's fastest growing
economies. However, major problems remain, mainly having to do with
alleviating the wide income and growth disparities between the country's
different regions and socioeconomic classes, reducing corruption, and
investing in the infrastructure necessary to ensure future growth.
The Philippine economy is projected to be the 5th largest in Asia and 16th
biggest in the world by 2050. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers,
it estimates that it will be the 12th to 14th richest economy in the world
by 2060. While this opposes other reports from HSBC Holdings PLC,
that by the year 2050, the Philippines will have been stated to surpass the
economy of Indonesia due to its yearly higher GDP growth rate of 6.5%
(Second, after China). However, the economic statistics may still vary
depending on the performance of the government every year.
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