Civil Society in the Philippines: Theoretical, Methodological and Policy Debates by Gerard Clarke (review)

Gerard Clarke uses a quantitative approach in understanding nongovernment organizations and people’s organizations in Civil Society in the Philippines: Theoretical, Methodological, and Policy Debates. Chapter one discusses the theoretical framework, especially the various conceptualizations of the term civil society vis-à-vis the ideas of democracy and equality. Clarke continues the theoretical discussions in chapter two as he turns to an analysis of civil society in light of new quantitative approaches in the social sciences. The empirical part begins in chapter three, where the author gives an introduction to Philippine civil society as it progressed from colonial rule to the period after the 1986 People Power. The emphasis of this chapter is how legislation and government policy formed civil society, complemented by an assessment of key episodes in state–civil society relations in recent years, such as the PEACe Bonds issue, the National Anti-Poverty Commission, and the violent repression of civil society groups from 1998 to 2010. Chapter four is devoted to a statistical analysis of Philippine civil society to understand its institutional core, major activities, spatial distribution, and financial resources. An in-depth historical narrative of the development of Philippine civil society is featured in chapters five and six: with the former looking back at the social origins of civil society from the dawn of Spanish colonialism to the end of formal US colonialism, while the latter views its postwar consolidation. Clarke’s point of departure is Samuel Huntington’s political modernization thesis; Clarke puts forward his notion of the “modernization of civil society” in “new or maturing democracies” that denotes both “an expansion in the size and scope of civil society vis-à-vis the state and the market” and “a deepening of the social roots of civil society, so that it reaches a larger section of the population” (xviii).