thesis about vote buying in the philippines

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

"Vote Buying" in Philippine Elections

Opinions about vote buying

Related Papers

Raymund Serge Mique

New Mandala

Jonathan Corpus Ong

This report presents the findings of our research about the role of digital disinformation in the 2019 Philippine midterm election. Based on interviews with digital campaign strategists, content tracking of social media posts by candidates and digital influencers, and big data analysis of online conversations, we find that digital operations are becoming more prevalent, strategically obscured, and influential in shaping political conversations. This report discusses factors that have led to the shift from using mega- to micro-influencers in underground campaigns, the strategic uses of closed groups to evade content moderation, and the increased centrality of digital operations to overall political communications.

Julio Teehankee , Ador Torneo , Francis Isaac

This paper will review the implementation of the Automated Election System in the Philippines during the 2010 and 2013 elections. Specifically, it will adopt an “Electoral Risk Management” framework to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current automation of elections in the country. Moreover, it will propose the application of “Election Forensics” in addressing the controversies raised against automated elections. In particular, it will address the question: Was the 2013 automated election results predetermined or manipulated to reflect a 60-30-10 pattern? In the end, the paper will argue for a more systematic approach in assessing automated elections in the Philippines emphasizing a framework that will manage and/or mitigate the risks inherent in automated elections.

Malcolm Cook , Lorraine Salazar

Since poverty is often believed to be a root cause of clientelism, government policies to reduce poverty should also help to reduce clientelism. However, scholars studying clientelism are more likely to view social policy as a potential resource for clientelist politicians. This article examines this paradox in the Philippine context by offering a general framework to identify when social welfare policies are likely to reduce clientelism, and by applying this framework to the Philippines, focusing on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino conditional cash transfer programme, or Pantawid. I argue that the policies that are most likely to undercut clientelism are universal social protection policies that provide poor families with security, although these are the least acceptable to middle-class taxpayers. This is exemplified by the Philippines, which has tended to introduce social policies that increase the scope for clientelism by making discretionary allocation more likely, rather than policies that offer income security to the poor. The Pantawid programme attempts to overcome these problems by introducing a centralised targeting mechanism to identify beneficiaries and by guaranteeing the benefit to all eligible families, but like all conditional cash transfer programs falls short of guaranteed and universal social protection.

Journal of Democracy

Bjoern Dressel

Liberal democracy in the Philippines is under stress, and the midterm congressional elections on 13 May 2019 did little to temper fears of an imminent turn to illiberalism. Buoyed by the popularity of President Rodrigo Duterte, his allies have gained effective control of both houses of Congress as well as other major institutions. This article argues that the current efforts to undermine the Philippines' post-1987 constitutional order are unprecedented—and many of these efforts involve nominally legal means such as acts of Congress and threats of impeachment and broad constitutional change. Southeast Asia's oldest democracy is dying not only by coercion, but also by law.

This is a descriptive study on the voting preferences of selected voters in the City of Calapan for 2016 National and Local Elections. The researchers utilized a survey-questionnaire instituted to 1,050 randomly-selected registered voters from seven (7) barangays in the City of Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. The research was conducted from 1-6 March 2016, months before the conduct of national and local automated elections on 09 May 2016. The study found out various factors and sociological conditions that contribute to the preferences of the voters for various national and local positions. Keywords: Politics, Elections, Voting Preferences

Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Philippines

Julio Teehankee

This chapter discusses the strategies of elite reproduction in the Philippine legislature. It identifies the traditional, new, emerging clans in the post- Marcos House of Representatives. Specifically, it elaborates the mechanisms by which political clans acquire, sustain, and reproduce power. Moreover, the chapter also underscores the persistence of political dynasties and failed attempts to regulate them.

Cornelis Lay , Noor Rohman , Ridwan al-Makassary

Kasarinlan Vol. 30, No. 1

Hansley Juliano

Akbayan Citizen’s Action Party’s participation in the Aquino administration is fueling continuing tensions not only between and among its leaders and members but also between the party and its allied social movements. What does this reveal about the nature and dynamics of leftist group participation in Philippine politics? This study is a reappraisal of the contested democracy framework, nuancing it with the Goldstone-Desai framework on social movement consolidation. By reviewing Akbayan’s official party documents and archival studies of Philippine social movements, as well as interviewing key informants and engaging in participant observation, I recount how Akbayan’s alliance with the Liberal Party (LP), leading to its role as coalition partner of the administration of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, exhibits the limitations of formalizing coalition networks into a uniform political party. The leadership of the party, in their pursuit of electoral victory and bureaucratic appointments, appears to deviate from the aforementioned intent of their allied social movements to address the sociopolitical issues they carry. The anti-administration stance of Akbayan’s labor ally, the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), the less-optimistic views of the rural-poor organization Kilusang para sa Repormang Pansakahan at Katarungang Panlipunan (KATARUNGAN, Movement for Agrarian Reform and Social Justice), and the boltingout from Akbayan of their rural sector ally, the Pambansang Kilusan ng mga Samahang Magsasaka (PAKISAMA, National Confederation of Small Farmers’ and Fishers’ Organizations) are highly illustrative examples. The party leadership, their allied movements, and their members vary in the priority they give to government-based tactics to address such issues. This, in turn, explains the dissonances and tensions between the network of Akbayan, and why other leftist parties continue to pose real challenges to their efforts. These tensions could explain why, despite their constant presence in national politics, Akbayan’s capacity to effect change remains challenged in the context of a dynamically evolving status quo of patronage politics in the country to date.

RELATED PAPERS

IEEE Communications Letters

Hideaki Sakai

Remote Sensing

Sébastien Dandrifosse

Progress in Fractional Differentiation and Applications

Rabah Khaldi

johanny aguillón osma

Hector Vazquez

Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation

F. Franceschini

Journal of Biomechanics

Joao Victor Ribeiro

Revista Gama, Estudos Artísticos

Luiz Eduardo Robinson Achutti

Radiation Measurements

Luca Di Fino

PLOS Pathogens

Pavitra Roychoudhury

Physical Review Letters

Justin McIntyre

African Journal of Biotechnology

Bonny Ntare

La Revue de Médecine Interne

Rhizlane Berrady

Ivan Chorvát

Acta Musei Napocensis

sorin nemeti

Heraldisch Tijdschrift 23:3(2017)92-99

Ralf Hartemink

hjhds jyuttgf

Child Abuse Review

Christopher Trotter

Oğuz Boyları Sempozyumu Bildirisidir

Serap Sule Y A V U Z KALIN

Roberta Olson

Daniel Forsman

Muhamad Izza

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

By providing an email address. I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge that I have read the Privacy Policy .

Vote buying: not only in PH

Every election in the Philippines, vote-buying always comes up as a major concern, a chronic plague that perennially shakes our faith in the integrity of the electoral process and democracy itself. But as we lament—or contemplate—this predicament, it is insightful to consider that we are not alone in our suffering. In this essay I survey some vote-buying practices around the world and draw some insights that may be useful for our national experience.

Vote-buying is actually as old as democracy itself. Even in ancient Greece—the traditional birthplace of democracy—vote-buying was already practiced, and the same can be said of the Roman republic. (Interestingly, the Latin term for vote-buying, ambitus, has the same etymology as “ambition.”) Today it is a well-documented fact that the Mafia continues to undermine elections in Italy through vote-buying.

In the United Kingdom, vote-buying became rampant in the middle part of the 19th century, following the enactment of universal suffrage in 1832. Yale scholar Susan Stokes writes that in 1835, “14 pounds were paid per vote in a hotly-contested election” in one district. She adds that vote-buying was later mediated by electoral agents, who bribed voters in behalf of their politician-clients.

In the United States, too, vote-buying was common practice until the early 20th century. In 1887, one-fifth of New York voters received money for their votes; and in 1912, one-fourth of the voters of Adams County, Ohio, were bribed. As in the United Kingdom, vote-buying “machines” made a living out of elections, serving as the middlemen between candidates and voters.

Closer to home, vote-buying has also been reported in almost all of our Southeast Asian neighbors. In the 2012 elections in Thailand, one election observer reported that “the current rate in Chonburi starts at 300 baht (around $10) and goes up to as much as 3,000 baht ($100).” In Indonesia, vote-buying is known as politik uang (literally “money politics”) and a 2014 survey showed that four out of 10 Indonesians actually believe that it is acceptable for politicians to hand out cash and commodities like rice, oil and sugar as part of campaigning.

This brings us to the point that vote-buying does not involve money alone. In Taiwan, the custom of visitors giving something to their hosts collides (or coincides) with politicians’ campaigns, but in this context, gifts—not money—are given. In other cases, cash is given, but not to pay for votes, but for services such as acting as “canvassers” for parties, winning people’s loyalties (and votes) in what scholars call “indirect vote buying.”

Others have taken this idea further by asking whether making campaign promises to certain groups—i.e., a pledge to informal settlers that they will not be evicted—also constitutes a bribe. Does it? In some countries, election laws stipulate that bribes can come in the form of gifts or promises. But where to draw the line between electoral bribery and legitimate campaigning remains a challenge for many countries, including our own.

Having established the global prevalence of vote-buying, the point of this exercise is not to find comfort in having company in our misery. There are also many examples of democracies that have overcome vote-buying, and we can learn from their experiences.

One important lesson is that ballot secrecy plays a huge role in reducing votes. In the United States, law scholar Richard Hasen attributes the significant decline in vote-buying to the secrecy of the ballot— which only became customary in the 1880s through the 1890s—given the difficulty among vote-buyers in determining whether they got what they paid for. The same can be said in Argentina, where a 1912 law introducing secret balloting marked a significant decline in vote-buying. But in the Philippines, while ballots are supposed to be secret, operators continue to find ways to make sure they get their money’s worth—and examining these practices is key to understanding how vote-buying persists.

Electoral reforms in general have mixed results. When Thailand promulgated a new constitution in 1997 with provisions such as controls on campaign spending, the introduction of a party-list system, and an independent body to administer elections, vote-buying simply took more subtle forms. The Thai experience resonates with our own electoral system, where well-crafted laws are undermined by poor implementation.

On the other hand, specific interventions such as voter education campaigns can have an impact. For instance, leaflets in Sao Tome and Principe, an island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, urging voters to “vote with their conscience” were demonstrated to reduce vote-buying.

Interestingly, scholars also make the observation that vote-buying generally declines with the decrease of poverty and social inequity, and the growth of the middle class. One way of explaining this is that as people get richer, the marginal utility of a bribe decreases, and votes get more expensive. Doubtless, education, too, plays a role, as well as many other interconnected factors that come with socioeconomic development.

The cynic may ask: How can we achieve this kind of socioeconomic development if it’s our corrupt political system that’s holding us back? On the other hand, the modest gains in our economy—and the decline of electoral corruption in other countries—should offer hope that vote-buying, no matter how rampant, can actually be put to an end.

The challenge is for us to make this happen sooner than later.

Subscribe to our daily newsletter

Gideon Lasco is a physician and medical anthropologist. Visit his website on health, culture and society at www.gideonlasco.com.

Subscribe to our opinion columns

Disclaimer: Comments do not represent the views of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments which are inconsistent with our editorial standards. FULL DISCLAIMER

© copyright 1997-2024 inquirer.net | all rights reserved.

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. To find out more, please click this link.