State Weakness and Civil Society in the Philippines

Abstract

The current weakness of the Philippine state is largely a product of colonial rule. During the period of Spanish colonialism (1565-1898), power on the local level was exercised predominantly by the Catholic friars and ecomenderos, Spanish conquerors with control over vast estates of land and the right to collect tribute and recruit labour from among the local population (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, pp. 55; 66ff.; Hedman 2006a, pp. 25ff.). Within this system, datus, traditional rural elites, acted as village and town executives, leading to the emergence of "local strongman monopolies over coercion and taxation" (Sidel 1999, pp. 14f.). By the late nineteenth century, this type of indirect colonial rule, along with the integration of the Philippine economy into the world market, had led to the consolidation of a quasi-feudal native elite consisting of landed families who earned significant wealth through the export of cash crops and owned huge haciendas cultivated by dependent tenants (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, pp. 80ff.; Rivera 23-34; Sidel 1999). The Spanish-American War in 1898 saw the rise of the Katipunan, a local liberation movement against Spanish colonial rule, which drew its support mainly from the peasantry. Initially, the Katipunan aligned itself with the Americans in order to defeat the Spanish. However, the USA soon turned against the insurgency, fearing popular demands for a dismantling of the hacienda system and a collectivization of land. Shortly thereafter, increasing efforts by the USA to bring the Philippines under colonial rule