"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
The statement itself is idealistic to the extreme, because government holds a monopoly of military power, in other words they have a duty towards society to prevent it from devolving into anarchy through the use of this power. As I stated above, government officials are still self-serving rational actors. Governments can be made accountable to the people, but they need not and will not be made "afraid" of its own people because it is not logical to do so. If governments were afraid of people, anarchy would ensue and a government which is not afraid would be established, toppling the old government.
If we were to use the terms defined above, we can summarize that:
Philippine politics is bogged down by both patronage and rent-seeking behavior, in the form of higher-up officials giving favors to their subordinates in exchange for being able to act in a manner of their choosing (often immoral) while in office. Using this method of analysis, it would not be far-fetched to imagine a pyramid starting from the office of the President stretching down to both barangay officials and privates in the military.
This is because development has been scarce in the rural areas, forcing society in these areas to adopt a feudal system of government and thus be susceptible to patronage politics (in exchange for votes) at the grassroots level. If political norms are to change, they have to begin with how people perceive politics, because democracy is ultimately whatever its own people want it to be.
The statement itself is idealistic to the extreme, because government holds a monopoly of military power, in other words they have a duty towards society to prevent it from devolving into anarchy through the use of this power. As I stated above, government officials are still self-serving rational actors. Governments can be made accountable to the people, but they need not and will not be made "afraid" of its own people because it is not logical to do so. If governments were afraid of people, anarchy would ensue and a government which is not afraid would be established, toppling the old government.
If we were to use the terms defined above, we can summarize that:
Philippine politics is bogged down by both patronage and rent-seeking behavior, in the form of higher-up officials giving favors to their subordinates in exchange for being able to act in a manner of their choosing (often immoral) while in office. Using this method of analysis, it would not be far-fetched to imagine a pyramid starting from the office of the President stretching down to both barangay officials and privates in the military.
This is because development has been scarce in the rural areas, forcing society in these areas to adopt a feudal system of government and thus be susceptible to patronage politics (in exchange for votes) at the grassroots level. If political norms are to change, they have to begin with how people perceive politics, because democracy is ultimately whatever its own people want it to be.
