COs’ CONTRIBUTION TO

SOCIETY AND POLITICS

Between the State and the Market (ed. By Ledivina Carino)
Goods and Services for Members
• Organizations have private achievements beyond the personal satisfactions
of their members; may produce economic and social goods and services
• 1. Provide services for themselves such as orientation seminars for incoming
officers; in-service training for members and volunteers; teach-ins on issues
of the day; day-care services for members to allow them to attend
capability-building seminars
• 2. Networks and coalitions help small localized groups overcome the
problem of scale; some may even be international organizations
• 3. Membership in networks allow small organizations to participate in
capability building programs, access funds, and get their voice heard
regionally and nationally
Continuation
• Goods and Services for the Market-i.e. Girl Scout den sells cookies;
Pos may weave handicrafts and souvenirs for tourists; other
organizations may produce books, journals, periodicals, i,.e.,
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has published several
books and journals of its expose’s and reports
• Goods and Services for Beneficiaries – produce goods for the use and
consumption of those outside their membership i.e., legal aid,
counselling and guidance to victims and families of heinous crimes,
etc
Voluntary Organizations/CSOs as Political
Organizations
1. Political Socialization- civic engagement; awaken active citizenship by getting people to know about,
accept, and get involved in their programs; time to “conscienticize” to get their members understand the
social realities of poverty, exclusion and inequality; community organizing and corporationempowerment
2. Political Recruitment – the entry of CSO leaders into appointive or elective positions; during time of
President Corazon Aquino, a number of NGO leaders were appointed to cabinet and sub-cabinet
positions
- Many leaders of CSOs got involved in local governance such as the case of Mayor Eduardo Dorotan of
Irosin , Sorsogon who founded the Lingap para sa kalusugan ng Sambayanan (LIKAS); awarded the Galing Pook
Award in 1994 for its integrated area development program
Another CSO leader who got elected as mayor was Ignacio Bunye who was the President of Kiwanis; as
mayor of Muntinlupa, he was awarded the Galing Pook Award for a program on management of human
settlements in 1996; the program was jointly undertaken with the Muntinlupa Development Foundation an
NGO, along with other people’s organizations who are involved in securing land tenure and development of
sites for housing
Roberto Pagdanganan, elected governor of Bulacan also came from the private sector. He was an
executive at the UNILEVER, a multinational
Corporation. He was also a recipient of Galing Pook Hall of Fame
Continuation
• 3. Political Communication – provision of significant poltical
information to people, eg., human rights, civic action, environmental
protection etc
• 4. Interest Articulation and Aggregation- putting together advocacies
representing several sectoral concerns; critical collaboration, a
partnership between the state and the civil society groups
• 5. Involvement in Political Output Functions
• 5.1 Rule Making – party-list system; NAPC; membership in special
bodies at the LGU level
Continuation
• 5.2 Rule Application
• 5.2.1 Delegation of regulation to civil society i.e., Integrated Bar of the
Philippines, a professional organization has been allowed to undertake
regulation of its members and has been legally allowed to to take part
in the selection of justices for the CA and the SC
• 5.2.2 An international state –civil society collaboration – i.e., NGOs
advocacies for environment, foreign debt reduction, and transparency
and responsiveness in Official Development Assistance (ODA)
• 5.3 “Fiscalizing” activities –
• 5.4 Adjudication Rule-filing of suits against government