Jeb Michael L. Peña Prof. Luisito V.

Dela Cruz
2-BPL PUBAD 101

CACQI on POLITICAL DYNASTIES IN THE PHILIPPINES: An Anarchy of Families, State

and Families in the Philippines by Alfred W. McCoy

“The Philippines has a long history of strong families assuring social survival when the nation-
state is weak. Instead of treating the Philippine past solely as the interaction of state, private
institutions, and popular movements, historians might well analyze its political history through
the paradigm of elite families.” (McCoy 1994). The proliferating issue of ‘Abusive Political
Dynasties’ on the field of Philippine Public Administration in the country since then, are still on
the hot discussions and debate between top public administration scholars, political scientist and
the subjected political families as well. Despite the never-ending talks about discourse, on the
pros and cons of political power circulating to certain families affecting the Philippine
Governance, abolishing corruption brought by these political clans are still obscure to happen
and seems come to nothing.
The main argument of the author implies the usage of ‘critical theory’ of social science focused
on the scope of Politics and Governance, Empiricism, Rhetoric, and Engaged theory in relation
to the said field. Rather curiously, there is also a critique of modernization theory's attempt to
place the Philippines at the traditional pole of a continuum that puts the United States at the apex
of development. The fact is, the article in the end appears to toe the line the data is organized
along the problematic of family as the intermediate level between individual and state. It
responds to the crying need for detailed empirical studies of political families and their
exemplary leaders, in order to offset the tendency of most Filipino accounts to be “more
hagiography than history”. The volume seeks to undermine the heroic claims or pretensions of
nationalist historiography by focusing on the familism, localism, oligarchy, corruption, and
violence that underlie Filipino political behavior. To the certain extent, it is the kinship network
that is mobilized in politics and feeds into the “paradoxical relationship between weak state and
strong society” that one finds rampant in the third world societies like the Philippines.

The questions that the article failed to take in hand are problematizing the state to beg the
questions about what would a strong state look like in the Philippines and what segments of
society are represented by the current "weak" state. These would, perhaps include: the extraction
of a higher level of taxation and the use of these revenues for social welfare spending, education,
and health care; the opening of the economy to international investment and trade; the
enforcement of a universal standard of justice for rich and poor alike; and the elimination of
corruption and other forms of patrimonialism from the government itself. It can surmise that the
article missed out the idea of a strong state would be modeled after the Weberian ideal-typical,
rational, bureaucratic state; the result of which would be a model of development very western in
its orientation.

The central point of the article is to explicate the role of political families and to redress the
weaknesses of analytical frameworks which underestimate the role of the family as a unit of
analysis by the usage of Critical Theory. The creation of “rational bureaucratic” American
colonial state had turned the Philippine Republic as a “neo-patrimonialism.” The case in this
volume is repleting how the state has been manipulated by the elite to protect and advance their
interests at the expense of the lower and middle classes which constitute the majority. The power
of the state has been used to divide the lower classes, the power of the state has been used to
propagate an ideology that elections pitting one faction of the elite against another are the
essence of democracy, yet this would be inimical to the interests of the elite political. If a state
avoids doing the things which are inimical to the elite, is it necessarily weak? Conversely, it does
not require a crude, instrumentalist notion of the state to presume that the elite political families
benefit nicely from the Philippine state as it is now constituted and as it has been constituted for
most of the last century. The article is negating to argue that the state in the Philippines has been
weak if the goal is bureaucratic rationality and economic development, but that if the goal is the
defense of elite privilege, if the goal is to protect the interests of the top Philippine families, then
the state has, in fact, been quite strong.

In conclusion, An Anarchy of Families illustrates the symbiosis between weak Philippine state
and dominant political families. It delved into the pervasive influence of the modern dynasties
that have led the Philippines during the past century. It presents how the power of the country’s
family-based oligarchy both derives from and contributes to a weak Philippine state. From
provincial warlords to modern managers, prominent Filipino leaders have fused family, politics,
and business to compromise public institutions and amass private wealth a historic pattern that
persists up to the present day. Emphasizing that the scholarly landscape in Philippine politics
seemingly discarded the substantial influence of elite familial clans in the politico-historical
development of the state. The article also posits the idea of Administrations come and go but
families remain to transmit skills, contact and capital across generations and the Philippine
executive, as an institution, compromised the integrity of bureaucracy and allowed privatization
of public resources. Raising its four basic points should be explicit. First, that the elite family
oligarchies are ultimately significant in shaping Philippine political history. Second, the inter-
relations between these elite families are also considerable in influencing the political landscape
in the Philippines. Third, as a result of these dynamic relationships among these family networks,
factionalism emerged in political battlefield. More specifically, the article also expatiated the
prevalence of political violence as exhibited in the stories of the subjected political clans that it
originated from the breakdown of central authority and the emergence of guerilla movements
that paved the way for the propagation of arms and private armies that subsequently introduced
local warlordism. Such political violence has been recurrent during elections, disputes on land
and ethnic-related issues or even business expansions in certain localities. It contended that the
use of political violence is crucial for an elite family’s emergence to political and national
‘eminence’. Fourth, there had been an interaction between rent-seeking families and the weak
Philippine state.

The problem of an ‘identity mishaps and Political Disorientation’ in Philippine Governance can
served as an implication, and be realized, observed in Philippine society today. In face of the
continuous effort to transverse the field of public administration and governance in, we are still
ignorant to perceived and use our own political and historical accounts about politics which lead
to disorientation and unfamiliarity of voters to wisely choose for a standard political candidate,
making a way to littered the political family in positions. The dependency and influence in the
colonization nevertheless makes us identify ourselves, thus it just so affects us to renounce our
own identity in various immense ways and aspects. Creating a notion of self-reliance with
devising our own political theories and accounts lead a gateway for strong political identity
recognition and independence, to be the utmost key in reforming and breaking the rotten system
of our country.