Cebu’s Subnational Politics: A Survey of Philippine Political Structure and Culture

Abstract

The paper is a survey of the Filipino Nation’s effort towards nation building. It highlights the socio-historical unfolding of the nationhood of the country -- Philippines. The paper answers the basic question on what paved the way to the formation of the Filipino Nation and why it remains to be a neo-colonial outpost to the US even in the 20th century. It also provides reasons on how and why Filipinos had shaped the kind of institutions that operate the present state as it is now.
Using Comparative Historical Analysis (CHA), the paper elaborately accounts on what turning points served as the watersheds of nationhood to Philippine political history. Likewise it employs historical institutionalism as well as the new institutional economics. It emphasizes on property rights, transaction costs, modes of governance, social norms, ideological values, enforcement mechanisms, and others that paved way to what Philippine politics and governance came to be as it is historically traced to its present formation.
The study engages scenarios on what it had been in the past and what it might be in the years to come given the path that it has tread from colonial times to to its neo-colonial position at present.