This book critically examines two indicators of Philippine democracy, namely, elections and political parties. It looks closely at the democratic principles and values of participation, authorization, representation, accountability, transparency, responsiveness, and solidarity as these coalesce into the Philippine electoral institutions. The assessment powerfully scrutinizes these universal principles of democracy as they are embedded in a complex web of politics and culture, which makes reforms challenging indeed. Democrats and scholars of democracy will find this book worthwhile.

Winner of the 2016 Outstanding Scholarly Work Award for the School of Humanities presented by Ateneo de Manila University This book is a pioneering study of Philippine democracy, one of the oldest in the Asian region, vis-à-vis Habermasian critical theory. Proceeding from a concise examination of the theory of law and democracy found in Habermas's Between Facts and Norms, Ranilo Balaguer Hermida explains how the law occupies the central role in both the legitimation of political power and the attainment of social integration. He then discusses how Habermas proposes to resolve the tension that exists in modern society between democratic norms and social facts, through the adoption of a lawmaking procedure whereby the informal sources of issues and opinions from the public sphere are allowed to develop and interact with the formal deliberations and decision processes inside the political system. He also explores certain provisions of the present Philippine Constitution that were expressly intended to restore democratic institutions and processes destroyed by decades of martial law, as well as the problems and hindrances that stand in the way of their full implementation.

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Region: South Asia, grade: A+, , language: English, abstract: This paper analyzes the remittances and democratization nexus, using the Republic of the Philippines as a case study. The onset of this paper is a riddle. A number of scholars stress the positive impact of remittances on a society and its democratization. The Philippines has successfully sought to gain more remittances through a state driven labor export scheme and has been for many years among the top receiving countries in the world. Despite those conditions deemed propitious to democratization, the Philippines show many democracy deficits. Several scholars have claimed that remittances impact positively on democratization. However, a range of democratization indicators for the Philippines, belie this assertion. This paper delves into various aspects of the democratization, migration and remittance dynamics. Firstly, it examines the scholarly work on remittances (always understood in a wider sense, as comprising social and financial remittances) and the democratization history in the Philippines. Secondly, it argues the methodology used for this paper. Thirdly, it evaluates and describes a selected number of particularities of the Philippine democratic system and its labor export scheme. It interprets the impact of remittances on democratization in the Philippines before drawing conclusions. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 5 Research Question and Thesis Statement 7 Objectives of the Study 7 Limitation of the Study 7 Definition of Key Terms 8 Chapter 1: Literature Review 10 Chapter 2: Research Methodology 16 Freedom in the World Index 18 Corruption Perception Index 19 Civic Society study 20 Press-Freedom Index 22 People under Threat Index 23 Chapter 3: Findings and Analysis 25 Assessment of the Philippine Democracy 25 Political system 26 Economic situation 31 GINI Index 35 The labor export scheme 36 Financial remittances 40 Civil Society 42 Press freedom 45 Peace and security 46 Social remittances 48 Summary of democratic assessment 51 Democratization impact of remittances in the Philippines 53 Conclusion and recommendations for further research 55 Bibliography 59