State and Society in the Philippines (review)

532Book Reviews State and Society in the Philippines. By Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005. Softcover: 351pp. One could mistake this volume simply as a history textbook about the Philippines. However, it is more than that. It is primarily about state formation and the dynamics of state-society relations that shaped the country's politics, economy, and history all the way from the Spanish colonial period well into the post-Marcos era. The book is divided into ten chapters that are rich in documentation and narratives (in boxes), as well as in-depth description and analyses of contexts and actors, which are quite essential in understanding the nuances of the Philippine state's evolution and state-society relations. The principal concern of the book's authors is to examine "the long history of institutional weakness in the Philippines" as well as the attempts to hurdle the state's "structural fragility and strengthen its bond with society" (pp. 2-3). They also want to stimulate thinking about why the Philippine state remains resilient despite its "weaknesses" (for example, inability to deal with armed rebellions, corruption, mismanagement, and tax collection) and why it has so far not ended up a failed state. Crawford Young's eight main attributes of a modern state served as the basic framework of the book's examination of the nature of the Philippine state and its interactions with various "social forces" defined by Joel Migdal as "powerful mechanisms of associative behaviour" (p. 9) in society. Chapter 2 of the book situates the Philippines as part of maritime Southeast Asia. The authors argue that, although pre-Spanish Philippines had less centralized polities compared with other parts of the region, it shared the same cultural and political attributes and ruling practices found in many early Southeast Asian states. In particular, small villages called barangays were connected through a web of rulers called datus that had kinship practices, religious traditions, and a system ofhierarchy and dependence, which formed part of early state formation even in the absence of larger "supra-barangay" political institutions (p. 38). Archeological, anthropological, and historical evidence and records were cited in the book to support the claim about early state formation, including the Laguna copperplate inscription found in 1986 that was carbon-dated to 900 ce (common era). The origins of the weak state in the archipelago were attributed by the authors to the (im)balance ofpower between the clerical and secular state officials during the Spanish colonial period. In particular, the secular administrators were weak in terms ofboth personnel and power, Book Reviews533 which made them dependent on the friars for the state's basic functions such as collecting tribute. In fact, for the first two centuries of Spanish colonization, the colonial state essentially lacked the administrative and military control of the archipelago even as it also had to deal with both upland retreat (a response to colonial intrusion by indigenous peoples who were labelled remontados) and rival state building in the Muslim south — in particular, Maguindanao and SuIu, which pursued their own commercial and diplomatic ties with the larger Islamic world of maritime Southeast Asia. The authors were quite successful in describing and explaining the changing nature and character of the state throughout different periods in Philippine history. During the high colonial period (1764-1898), the colonial state in Manila became more centralized as part of Spain's efforts to improve administrative performance in its colonies. This was done through better financial accountability in different levels of government, the separation of executive from judicial functions of the state, as well as putting an end to the arbitrary rule of the friars (p. 84). These reform efforts were primarily aimed at improving the conditions in the colony to prevent further social unrest. However, the authors argued that these reforms were underminedby the "autocratic imposition of new policy — a hazard of centrally imposed reform" (p. 87). The reforms initiated in Manila were also met with strong resistance from the friars, "[who] dominated local state and society alike" (p. 88). Meanwhile, state building during the early years of American rule sustained the "rationalizing and strengthening of the...