policy outcomes (Young, 2002: 3-4). Rather than displacing established
democratic institutions and representative democracy, democratic participation
seeks to reinforce them through a two-way relationship between society and
government (Gaventa, 2001 & Wilson, 2001 cited in Cuthill, 2003: 376). It is the
objective of this study to contribute to democratic consolidation in the
Philippines through the design and application of mechanisms of participatory
governance at the municipal level of local government, and, as people learn to
participate as active local citizens, establish a community that creates and
develops knowledge towards popular democratic empowerment. There are,
however, significant obstacles towards achieving this even at local government
level. The problem, therefore, is not only the design and establishment of
participatory institutions, but also the need to understand and overcome these
obstacles.
1.1 Research Questions
In relation to the problem described above, the following questions need
answers, and this dissertation seeks to answer them:
• How can democratic theory or philosophy be realised in practical
form in the context of the Philippine municipality?
• Why is a redefinition of municipal governance necessary to
actualise democratic ideals, and how does this redefinition take
place?
• What are the obstacles to the actualisation of democratic theory in
the Philippine context, and how can they be overcome?
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The purpose of this work is to construct a typological model of a learning
community based on participatory democracy at the municipal level of
Philippine local government. This model is expected to complement as well as
provide alternatives to municipal representative democracy. It allows people at
the local level to make representative institutions work better or enable them to
take direct action should representative institutions fail. As a democratising
nation, the Philippines has both representative and direct democratic institutions.
Because of prevailing social and political conditions, however, these institutions
are underdeveloped. This study is an attempt to contribute to democratic
development by starting from the bottom up.
1.2 Rationale for the Study
Participatory democracy means empowering people, not so much to
oppose established government, but rather to allow them to become stakeholders
involved in the determination of their destiny. It may mean the reinvention of
existing state institutions, but not their abolition (Wainwright, 2003: 41). Such
empowerment simply means allowing people to be involved in making decisions
that affect them, and in so doing, enable them to build knowledge, awareness
and a capacity for dealing with issues confronting their society (Gaventa &
Cornwall, 2002: 71). This would lead to the transformation of people’s attitudes
and values (Fals Borda, 2002: 32). This transformation is learning, a form of
social education that allows democracy to develop.
The bare essentials of a democratic system include at least (Young, 2002:
5):
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• The Rule of Law,
• Civil and Political Liberties and
• Free and Fair Elections.
These bare essentials do not include the normative and empirical measures of the
quality of a democratic system. The rule of law can be used to favour some
people over others, as those who make the law may legislate only for the
interests of particular groups in society. When this occurs, civil and political
liberties as well as free elections become a sham, disguising rule by oligarchy
with something that merely appears democratic but is not. A formal democracy
where people are conceptually equal, legally defined as citizens and able to vote
on the basis of one vote per person is merely a democracy on paper (Bello, 1999:
x). In practice democracy goes beyond these forms.
Democracy requires active citizens who are able to think and act
ethically in terms of what should be done, who should do it and how it should be
accomplished for the benefit of society. Such citizens think and act beyond
personal gain. Such citizens understand the principle that duties and obligations
go together with rights and liberties. Democracy then requires people and
institutions that work together to do what is required for the public good
(O’Neill, 2002: 30-32).
If democracy is defined simplistically as ‘rule by the people’, or more
particularly, ‘rule by citizens’, such citizens need to possess the competence to
rule (Soltan, 1999: 4). This competence is necessary if people are to have power
to decide over issues affecting their lives (Jenlink & Banathy, 2002: 480). Rule
implies power and power, taking from Foucault (1980) implies knowledge.
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Indeed, power and knowledge are intertwined (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2002: 70).
If democracy implies the active participation of its citizens in defining, making,
managing and implementing policy, this would require power, which is implicit
in active citizen participation. But the exercise of such participation would have
to be competence-based and predicated on knowledge. From this reasoning, one
can draw the implication that active citizenship, to participate effectively and
within ethical principles as cited by O’Neill (2002), needs the ability to build
knowledge and, consequently, competence. This is necessary for citizens to be
able to work both with democratic institutions and with themselves in deciding
or influencing key issues (Gaventa, 1999: 51). Building knowledge is learning.
Citizens who seek to make meaningful social changes can only manage to do so
if they work within an educative approach, which allows the inclusion of diverse
stakeholders together into the process of change (Max-Neef cited in Cuthill,
2003: 379). This ‘sweeping in’, to borrow a term from Churchman (cited in
McIntyre-Mills, 2003: 106, 356), should ideally produce a sense of collective
ownership of the process of change, its results, and build relationships of trust
and cooperation (Max-Neef, Freire, Fals-Borda and Rahman, and O’Sullivan
cited in Cuthill, 2003: 479).
Citizenship, when properly understood, is the most important unit of any
institution of direct democracy. Ancient Athenians understood citizenship as
something that involved active participation and engagement in the life of the
polity, not just living under its laws (Mansbridge, 1999: 293). This is an
important point in the light of the fact that ancient Athens was a direct
democracy dependent on citizen participation. The Romans carried it further.
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They defined citizenship as the capacity to have and be the subject of rights and
obligations under Rome and before fellow Romans. A Roman citizen had a
caput, a Latin legal term referring to the sum of a person’s legal capacities. It
should be noted that Philippine legal and civil principles have been derived
largely from Roman law (Coquia, 1987: 2-3, 22). Therefore, Roman legal theory
underpins the legal understanding of citizenship in the Philippines. Citizenship,
however, is more than a legal concept.
It also matters that Philippine society and politics are still dominated by
an oligarchy that restricts the practical exercise of democratic citizenship
(Tornquist, 2002: 32). Furthermore, Hispanic and American colonial influences
have grown deep roots in Philippine society and culture (Mulder, 1996: 185).
These influences, in turn, have had far reaching effects on the nature and
structure of Philippine politics (Sidel, 2004: 53). Thus, it is not possible to
understand these political realities without first understanding Filipino society
and culture. Only then can it be possible to argue that participatory democracy is
not only possible in the Philippines, it is in fact a pressing need.
The idea of creating a typology of democratic participatory governance
at the municipal level in the Philippines is based on the realisation that these
aforementioned issues will make it impractical to suggest democratic
transformation at higher levels of government. Indeed, by starting small and
local, democratic consolidation works from the bottom upwards. This
reinterprets Edgar (2001: xvii) who states, ‘…our national identity is always
based on our sense of place, our locality.’ Edgar speaks of Australia, though his
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premise makes just as much sense for the Philippines. Local progress makes
development possible at higher levels.
The municipality is legally and politically the primary means through
which basic services are delivered and managed for the large Filipino rural
populace (Local Government Code, 1991: Book III, Title 1, Chapter 1, Section
440). It is an essential and vital part of both government and governance. There
is a level of government below the municipality and there are levels above it, but
the municipal level of government in the Philippines is small enough for
participatory processes to take root, while large enough to include the
involvement of more people and groups of people than is possible in a smaller
setting. More people being involved mean greater social diversity. Diversity
among participants is an important element of democratic governance, as it
would allow for the broadest range of opportunities for public participation in
decision-making (Australian Local Government Association, 1993: 8). This
would allow participatory processes to have a bigger impact on policy making
and implementation. After all, participatory democracy must be inclusive by its
very definition, as democratic decision-making is a process by which different
people and social groups work out just solutions to collective problems together
(Young, 2002: 7).
The municipal level is also manageable enough to become a social
laboratory for developing competent citizenship, democratic participation and
community education towards practical democracy. It is here that obstacles to
democratic consolidation within the greater part of Philippine society can be
overcome. Designing a participatory model should start from a small-scale social
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environment, as it would be thoroughly difficult to establish deliberative,
participatory democracy in places where populations are large and geographic
areas immense. Evaluating the results of policy outcomes would be difficult in
larger settings. Social communication would be all but impossible. These are the
assumption when considering studies in participatory democracy in the
Philippine countryside. The municipality is of a size and population where
participatory mechanisms can be tested effectively. Anything smaller may have
too little impact, but anything larger would be too cumbersome to manage.
1.3 Dissertation Structure
This study begins with Chapter I, where the problem is identified and
related research questions and the rationale for writing on this area of concern
are presented. Chapter II continues with a review of lessons from the literature
on the issue of democracy, democratisation the issues confronting Philippine
democratic development. It also explores the concept of a learning community
(Senge, 1990: 14) in relation to participatory governance. Chapter III presents
the research approach and the framework around which this study is built.
Research findings are presented in chapter IV and conclusions and
recommendations are in Chapter V. The appendix extends the study and looks
beyond it. It proposes further research by the actual conduct of a field study
within an existing municipality in the rural Philippine countryside over a period
of two years. This last part is a research proposal that will attempt to prove in
practice what this dissertation lays down in theory.
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Chapter II: Lessons from the Literature – Community Learning through
Governance and Participation and the Environment of Philippine
Democratisation
Participatory democracy, learning communities (as derived from Senge,
1990: 14) and issues of democratisation begin as theoretical constructs. After
theory, they must find realisation in the real world of people and politics. The
problem is the inevitable difficulty of reconciling democratic theory with real
world practice. Wintrop (2000: 3) has differentiated between Democracy as
political theory, from Democracy as public philosophy, the latter being the
formal application of theory. Still, the term ‘Public Philosophy’ carries with it an
abstract meaning. One of the most pervasive problems of modern times is that of
making democracy as abstract philosophy into real and actual practice. Most
often, strong ideals are followed by weak realisation (Flyvbjerg, 1998: 4).
Nevertheless, it should be noted that popular participation in governance
is becoming a global trend. International political pressures have been forcing
governments to bring issues to public consultation, at the very least, even in
regimes that do not encourage such consultation (Peters, 2001: 61). This is not to
say that public consultation and participatory democracy are the same things,
though public consultation is one important element of participatory democracy.
Participatory democracy is also, among other things:
• Inclusive and deliberative (Young, 2002: 6),
• Predicated on trust and accountability (O’Neill, 2002: 1),
• Able to develop the best in people (Cuthill, 2003: 374) and
• Dependent on active and competent citizens (Soltan, 1999: 3).
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Public consultation is simply an instrument of deliberation and inclusion.
It begins the process of discourse, as understood in Habermas (1984) within
which people become collectively involved, but it does not end there. To make
participation develop the best in people, such consultation should go beyond
merely seeking out opinions, but rather become the spur for public dialogue
within a forum where all who are involved participate as equals.
2.1Participation and Governance as Learning
The closest we can get to attaining truth is through dialogue (McIntyre,
2004: 41), and contextual truth is the source of power through which people can
achieve collective results. The key issue of public participation is the distribution
of power (Stiefel & Wolfe, 1994: 4). This should not be interpreted as power in
the punitive sense, but rather the ability to create and develop. Power here is
seen in a constructive context, allowing people to understand themselves and the
issues surrounding them (Gaventa, 1999: 57). Dialogue is the link between truth
and power. Thus, dialogue is the basis of democratic governance, as it requires
democratic participation.
Dialogue begins as social communication. If people in a democracy are
to manage their society through inclusion and deliberation, this requires
coordinated action, from which comes the need for social communication
(Habermas, 1984: 274). To sustain a democracy, the people must become a
public entity, and this happens through deliberation (Mathews, 1994: 111).
Social communication is essentially an inclusive form of public deliberation.
Without it, people merely compose a mass of individuals or inhabitants, not a
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public, hence, not a democracy (Mathews, 1994: 111-112). Social
communication is based on a common language that is defined both literally and
figuratively. This language is designed to represent a set of values, knowledge,
terminology and processes within which citizens understand problems and link
them to possible solutions. It leads to emancipation when conducted within the
context of mutual understanding (Jackson, 2000: 32). This implies the ethical
equality of everyone participating in the discourse, since understanding cannot
arise out of relations of iniquity. Civic equality is the basis of practical direct
democracy (Habermas, 2005: 8). Such equality means that each participant has
an equal stake in the community’s decisions and choices (Mathews, 1994: 6).
From this social communication comes civic engagement where
problems are solved and lessons learned within an atmosphere where the
strength of the better argument prevails (Fishkin, 1999: 283). Furthermore, this
civic engagement allows people to take responsibility for others, since collective
decision-making broadens the individual participant’s conception of his or her
interests (Mansbridge, 1999: 292). People not only become responsible for
others, they also become responsible to themselves for the decisions they make.
Consequently, government authorities would not have to take the blame every
time something goes wrong.
This civic character develops people and makes them active citizens able
to make democracy work. The practice of participatory democratic governance
allows people to learn and become more competent in self-determination. In the
terms used by Gaventa and Valderrama (1999 & 2001, both cited in McIntyre,
2004: 39), citizens are transformed from being ‘users and choosers’ to being
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