Philippines

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When will this country quickly get out of "predatory governance" ? (www.instagram.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by asunaspersonalasst to c/philippines

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Like, we been suffering from it for god know how many fuccing decades nakakapikon na todamax.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Let me see if I've got it correctly. Predatory governance is a thing because politicians are more interested in their political survival. Even if political survival hinges on them doing their jobs, they will do the absolute minimum in order for them to "do more" when reelected...

Did I get that correctly?

This sounds like a pitch for a "benevolent dictator overlord". "Give me infinite power and infinite time and I can fix the country!"

But that's the path a lot of our neighboring states went through. Minus the benevolent part.

And I've been thinking. Was there any country that kept their democracy, didn't exploit another one, and yet developed their economy enough to get from the "third world" to the "first world"?

[–] asunaspersonalasst 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This sounds like a pitch for a “benevolent dictator overlord”.

No it does not lol, look at her other posts. Mostly educational. Mga commenters lang nagkakatalo.

And I’ve been thinking. Was there any country that kept their democracy, didn’t exploit another one, and yet developed their economy enough to get from the “third world” to the “first world”?

There might be a few, na di pa natin nadidiskubre, but probably not that perfect achievement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ah, what I was referring to as a pitch for a benevolent dictator overlord is the part after the ellipsis in my paraphrase:

Predatory governance is a thing because politicians are more interested in their political survival. Even if political survival hinges on them doing their jobs, they will do their absolute minimum for them to ‘do more’ when reelected. Therefore, if we give our politicians infinite power and infinite time to sort out the mess we're in, without having to think of their political prospects, then maybe, just maybe, someone can take us out of this mess.

The implication that someone could use this fact as a pitch is what I was pointing out.

There's other ways we can get out of this mess, but my mind inevitably wandered off to possible examples we can use, which led me to the question in the last sentence.

My thinking is that we need to lift up our people out of poverty, out of needing to rely on the government aid programs, out of needing to rely on politicians for their sudden big expenses (pa-ospital, pa-libing, etc). Basically, if people are in a good enough situation, then maybe we won't be prey to this predatory government we have. But maybe I've got things the wrong way around: without a predatory government, people can be in a good condition.... Or maybe we're stuck in a vicious spiral.

Anyways, I haven't really looked at the instagram reel closely, and maybe I should. But it's Instagram, so I am not at all comfortable with it. There's also a link given in the post: https://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/files/wcfia/files/898_jr_predatory.pdf but even without reading it, I'm leaning towards "yes, we have a predatory government," but my question would be "how can we get rid of it and install a government that functions for the good of the people, and not for the good of its people?"

Edit:

I've managed to watch the entire reel (it resets whenever I try to alt-tab away from it, or even moving tabs to a different window, but it's a me problem). I am not sure if I got everything it meant to say though.

Another edit:

I've scanned the paper, mostly focusing on the discussion of the results and the takeaways from the model. I think I've been wrong: the predatory government model, as the paper puts it, is limited to autocracies and dictatorships. The Marcos Sr. regime was also given as an example. Moreover, the paper's final sentence goes like this:

Predatory states seem to only arise in non-democracies and it seems likely that the types of institutional transitions that occur with democratization inhibit in the use of such socially undesirable strategies as the ones I have modelled.

Of course, there's another discussion on whether or not the Philippines is a democracy, and in what sense.