Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines

“For example, Sidel (1999) argues that American colonial institutional legacies — which caused the subordination of underdeveloped state apparatus and the monopoly of the local economy — allow local bosses in the Philippines to form their political dynasties that are relatively insulated from…”

“Manila’s informal settlements swelled, grew, and expanded particularly because of an ongoing rural crisis with roots in colonial and postcolonial land ownership, dominated by landed elites and large haciendas, subsequently turned political families (Sidel 1999).”

“Sidel (1999) builds on the idea of ‘command and coercion’ and highlights ‘bossism’ as”

“For example, the Philippines local bosses and clans are able to possess enormous economic power and assume ‘quasi-military and quasi-judicial functions in their localities’ (Hutchcroft, 1998: 43; see also Gutierrez et al., 1992; McCoy, 1993; Sidel, 1999).”

“In his study of local politics in Cavite, Sidel (1999) argues that the position of mayor is a major prize, the benefits associated with it being “the awarding of building permits, the passage of municipal zoning ordinances, the use of government-owned land, the allocation of public works, the…”

“This article aims to contribute to the empirics of party politics at the local level in the Philippines.”

“Such research could build on and link with analyses of the role of coercion in Philippine politics (Sidel 1999; Kreuzer 2012).”

“The modus operandi for local politicians is relying on their dense network of brokers at the grassroots level, mainly, leaders from the barangays (ward or village) and puroks (neighborhood) (Schmidt et al., 1977; Sidel, 1999).”

“To summarize, there has been a substantial amount of literature written about social capital and patron-client relationships and how they play out in the Filipino context (Doronila, 1985; Lande, 1964; Sidel, 1999; Quimpo, 2005).”

“Primitive accumulation in this form obviously facilitated the emergence and entrenchment of enduring forms of fused local economic and political power, often in dynastic form, in localities across the Philippines (Sidel 1999).”

“…framework continues to be relevant for understanding some aspects of Philippine politics (Kerkvliet 1995), several studies criticise it for failing to account for widespread use of repressive and coercive means by elites (Fegan 1994; Gutierrez, Torrente, and Narca 1992; McCoy 1994; Sidel 1999).”

“On the other hand, from the perspectives of institutionalists, it may be explained by the problem of structural arrangements in the government embedded in the history and/or socio-economical contexts of the country (Sidel, 1999; 2004; Hutchcroft, 2000).”

“Indeed, various derogatory descriptive phrases have been used in the literature to describe the post-1986 Philippine democracy: “cacique democracy” (Anderson, 1988), “oligarchic democracy” (Kingsbury, 2001), “low intensity democracy” (Gills & Rocamora, 1993), “elite democracy” (Bello & Gershman, 1990), and the dominan…”

“Political processes in hybrid regimes and developing countries are frequently characterized by the local despotism of several powerful local bosses whom the state cannot directly control (Sidel 1999).”

“34 Ahram 2011; Almond 2021; Blok 1974; Gallant 1999; Gutiérrez Sanín 2019; Marten 2012; Migdal 2001; Sidel 1999; Volkov 2002.”

“The scourge of money politics attests to the powerful anti-liberal forces that emerge in democratic transitions and which have as their basis what might be seen as primitive forms of capital grabbing (Sidel 1999).”

“The entrenchment of patronage politics can be traced to the US colonial regime (Sidel 1999, 18) whereby “U.S. policymakers pursued a policy of ‘attraction’ seeking profitable trade and stable government through political alliances with the educated, landholding Filipino elites . . . ”.”

“(Hutchcroft 2000; Sidel 1999).”

“These informal and irregular qualities are often held to be symptomatic of patrimonialism, clientelism, authoritarianism, sultanism and bossism (Lande, 1965 ; Thompson, 1995 ; Hutchcroft, 1998 ; Sidel, 1999 ), and explicable with reference to these frameworks.”

“Patron-client approaches, that could be attributed to Lande (1965), a class of powerful oligarchs, formulated by Hutchcroft (1997) and the proliferation of local and national bosses, traceable to Sidel (1999) have gained foothold as dominant paradigms in Philippine politics.”

“…attributed Filipino political 2 Other crops, such as sugar, have received more attention (e.g. Billig, 2003; Hawes, 1987; Pepinsky, 8 outcomes to patron-client relationships, money politics, and political machines (Hedman and Sidel, 2000; Hutchcroft, 1991; Landè, 1965; Scott, 1969; Sidel, 1999).”

“The American imperial government bought up the church lands, but in the end most of those lands ended up under the control of big local landowners or American corporations, rather than being made available to tenant farmers (Constantino, 1975: 297–299; Mahajani, 1971: 283–286; Sidel, 1999).”

“…of some criticisms on Duterte’s brand of populism as ‘fascism’ (Bello, 2017) and ‘return of national boss rule’ (Quimpo, 2017), drawn from the works of Sidel (1999) and Kreuzer (2016), due to the massive ‘extra-judicial killings’ of drug addicts and drug lords and ‘human rights violations’,…”

“These forces assumed substantive hegemony over the state and maintained their support through ‘‘machine politics’’ and violence (Sidel, 1999).”

“The American regime is often depicted as tremendously altering the Philippine state and political economy (Anderson, 1988, pp. 10–13; Constantino & Constantino, 1978, p. 320; McCoy, 1993, p. 11; Sidel, 1999, p. 4).”

“Only 37 congress members had no electoral record prior to 1971 (Sidel 1999 , pp.”

“6 Mojares (1993) and Sidel (1999) are partial exceptions: although they do not frame their studies speci fi cally in terms of government – business relations, they each detail how the Osmeña political machine in Cebu City served as an effective broker for local business interests.”

“35 Sidel 1999; Tadem and Tadem 2016. empowered, particularly those with Duterte and Mindanao connections.”

“…Philippine politics in terms of clientelist networks and portray violence as the symptoms of the breakdown of patron–client ties,” he shows that “coercion has persistently and systematically intruded upon electoral competition, economic exploitation, and social relations” (Sidel, 1999, p. 145).”

“…Nathan Quimpo (2005) that Philippine socio-political history toooftenhasbeenmisrepresented as a top-downnarrative of elites, bosses, or strongmen (see Anderson 1988; Sidel 1999) and that the manner in which agency ‘from below’ has been constitutive of this history has too often been underrated.”

“Violence of this sort, either threatened or enacted, is central to how bosses cultivate their authority (Michelutti et al., 2018; Sidel, 1999).”

“In 1986, the Cavite Export Processing Zone (CEPZ), the province’s rst special economic zone, was opened.”

“Available information, albeit limited, reveals that Filipinos’ perceptions of the police and courts could vary due to their organizational structures, goals, and primary responsibilities (Sidel, 1999).”

“13McCoy 1994; Schmidt et al. 1977; Sidel 1999.”

“Class and status in Western PhiliPPines Fishing Communities Much social science of the political and economic development of the Philippines has highlighted relations of power and hierarchy (Kerkvliet, 1990; Sidel, 1999).”

“between a state apparatus and the electoral system is difficult (Anderson, 1988; Sidel, 1999).”

“The state apparatus is continually captured by socio-economic elites, who then use the state bureaucracy to forward their narrow self-interests (Hutchcroft 1998; Sidel 1999 ).”