WHAT WOULD AN ANTI-DYNASTY LAW ACTUALLY CHANGE?
Breaking a family monopoly is not the same as fixing politics
By Karl M. Garcia
There is a tempting assumption behind the debate over an anti-political dynasty law:
Pass the law, remove the dynasties, and Philippine politics will become healthier.
It is understandable.
It is also incomplete.
An anti-dynasty law could change something important: who is legally allowed to compete for elected office at the same time or in succession within a defined family relationship.
But it cannot, by itself, change human nature.
Absolute power will still be dangerous.
Greed will still exist.
Patronage will still exist.
People will still look the other way when it benefits them.
Money will still influence elections.
Businesses will still seek access to government.
Political operators will still find ways around restrictions.
And voters will still sometimes choose familiar names because familiarity, personal relationships, family networks and perceived ability to deliver local benefits matter.
So the real question is not whether an anti-dynasty law will magically clean up Philippine politics.
It will not.
The better question is:
What problem would it actually solve—and what problems would remain?
THE PROBLEM IS CONCENTRATED POWER
The 1987 Constitution already says that the State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service and prohibit political dynasties “as may be defined by law.”
Almost four decades later, Congress has still not completed that constitutional mandate. Recent policy research continues to document the persistence of dynastic politics. A 2026 Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department study estimated that 54.5 percent of elected officials who succeeded in the 2025 midterm elections had potential dynastic links, while noting that the relationship between dynasties and poverty remains empirically mixed.
That distinction matters.
The argument for regulating dynasties does not have to be that every member of a political family is corrupt or incompetent.
That would be both unfair and impossible to prove.
The institutional concern is different:
What happens when political competition becomes structurally concentrated within a small number of families?
A family that controls the mayoralty, congressional seat, governorship and other elected positions simultaneously possesses more than a recognizable surname.
It can accumulate networks.
It can accumulate campaign machinery.
It can develop relationships with businesses and local organizations.
It can influence appointments and public resources.
It can build name recognition over several election cycles.
And it can make political competition progressively more difficult for outsiders.
Research has associated dynastic concentration with reduced political competition and, in some studies, poorer socioeconomic outcomes. But the evidence is not uniform enough to claim that eliminating dynasties automatically eliminates poverty or corruption. A 2024 Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department review explicitly describes the development effects of dynasties as nuanced and the evidence as mixed.
That is precisely why the reform should be understood as institutional, not moral.
WHAT ANTI-DYNASTY LAW CAN CHANGE
A properly designed law could change the structure of political entry.
It could prevent a situation in which several closely related individuals simultaneously occupy multiple elected positions, depending on the definition eventually adopted by Congress.
It could create more opportunities for people outside established political families.
It could force political organizations to recruit candidates beyond the traditional family networks.
It could make succession more difficult.
And over time, it could weaken the assumption that a particular elected position naturally belongs to a particular family.
That is not nothing.
PIDS researchers have previously argued that anti-dynasty legislation would not completely eliminate political dynasties or level the political playing field, but could begin broader reforms by widening access to political participation.
The key word is begin.
An anti-dynasty law is potentially a door-opening mechanism.
It is not a complete political system.
BUT POWER WILL FIND NEW FORMS
This is where the debate needs to become more realistic.
Suppose a law prevents a governor from being succeeded immediately by a spouse or child.
The family may support another candidate.
Suppose relatives cannot simultaneously hold several elected positions.
The family’s business allies, political associates or longtime protégés may remain active.
Suppose a particular surname becomes legally restricted from occupying certain positions.
The political machinery surrounding that surname does not automatically disappear.
The campaign organization remains.
The donor network remains.
The local relationships remain.
The economic interests remain.
The accumulated name recognition remains.
In other words:
You can prohibit a family configuration without necessarily eliminating the underlying concentration of influence.
The 2026 CPBRD analysis makes essentially this point: banning dynasties may reshape the political landscape but does not necessarily dismantle political dominance, because political actors can adapt.
This is perhaps the most important lesson.
Political reform changes incentives. Political actors respond to incentives.
That means an anti-dynasty law must anticipate adaptation.
Otherwise, the country could move from political dynasties to something that looks different on paper but behaves similarly in practice.
THE FAMILY IS NOT THE ONLY PROBLEM
There is also a danger in making the dynasty the entire explanation for Philippine political dysfunction.
Consider what happens when the family disappears but the following remain:
Weak political parties.
Expensive campaigns.
Vote buying.
Patronage.
Weak campaign-finance transparency.
Limited voter information.
Poor enforcement of conflict-of-interest rules.
Weak local checks and balances.
Political appointments based on loyalty.
Business-government relationships that lack sufficient transparency.
A bureaucracy vulnerable to political pressure.
A judiciary and accountability system that can take years to resolve important cases.
An electorate that may depend on politicians for access to government services.
None of these problems is automatically solved by an anti-dynasty law.
The family may disappear from the ballot.
The incentive structure may remain.
That is why the anti-dynasty debate should be connected to electoral reform, political-party development, transparency, campaign finance, civil-service professionalism and stronger local accountability.
A 2026 CPBRD paper on implementing anti-dynasty legislation similarly identifies administrative, legal and election-related difficulties, including questions over how dynastic relationships would be defined and how quickly disqualification disputes could be resolved.
The details matter enormously.
ABSOLUTE POWER IS STILL ABSOLUTE POWER
There is another uncomfortable truth.
A politician who is not a dynast can become just as abusive as a dynast.
A political newcomer can become corrupt.
A reform candidate can develop a political machine.
A supposedly independent politician can build his own network of loyalists.
A political party can become a vehicle for personal ambition.
A businessman can become a politician.
A politician can become a businessman.
The problem is therefore not simply which family occupies power.
It is how much power any individual or network can accumulate without effective checks.
This is why the old warning about absolute power remains relevant.
If an anti-dynasty law simply replaces hereditary concentration with another form of concentrated power, the country has changed the occupants without sufficiently changing the system.
The objective should therefore not be to make politicians morally better.
Government cannot legislate virtue.
It can, however, make abuse harder.
GREED CANNOT BE LEGISLATED AWAY
The same applies to greed.
An anti-dynasty law cannot make people less greedy.
It cannot eliminate conflicts of interest.
It cannot prevent someone from seeking wealth through public office.
What government can do is create systems in which greed becomes harder to convert into public power and public money.
That means:
Transparent procurement.
Open government data.
Auditable transactions.
Competitive bidding.
Conflict-of-interest rules.
Asset-disclosure systems that actually work.
Independent oversight.
Professional civil servants.
Effective prosecutors.
Reasonably fast administrative and judicial processes.
Whistleblower protection.
Transparent campaign financing.
And consequences that arrive before the next election rather than years afterward.
Good institutions do not depend on everyone being good.
They are designed on the assumption that people have incentives, ambitions and weaknesses.
That is the deeper lesson of institutional reform.
AND PEOPLE WILL STILL LOOK THE OTHER WAY
This may be the hardest problem of all.
A politician does not remain powerful simply because the politician is powerful.
Political power is sustained by networks of people.
Some benefit directly.
Some receive jobs.
Some receive contracts.
Some receive assistance.
Some receive access.
Some are related.
Some are loyal.
Some are afraid.
Some simply believe that the politician delivers.
Others may know that something is wrong but decide that opposing the local power structure is not worth the personal cost.
An anti-dynasty law does not automatically change any of that.
But stronger institutions can gradually change the incentives.
If public services become predictable, citizens become less dependent on individual politicians.
If government transactions become transparent, political intermediaries become less important.
If employment is based on qualifications rather than political loyalty, patronage loses value.
If political parties develop genuine platforms and organizations, candidates become less dependent on surnames.
If citizens can obtain government services without knowing a politician personally, the political value of personal favors declines.
This is where anti-dynasty legislation becomes part of a much larger project.
THE REAL TEST: CAN POLITICS BECOME MORE OPEN?
The measure of success should therefore not be:
“Did we eliminate political families?”
That is too narrow.
A better set of questions would be:
Are more qualified citizens able to run for office?
Are elections more competitive?
Are political parties becoming stronger?
Are campaign costs becoming more transparent?
Are voters less dependent on political patrons?
Are government services less dependent on personal connections?
Are elected officials subject to meaningful checks?
Can businesses compete for government contracts without political connections?
Can civil servants perform their jobs without fear of political retaliation?
Can citizens challenge government decisions without risking access to basic services?
Can a politician leave office without the entire machinery of government collapsing around that person’s network?
These are much harder questions.
They are also more important.
ANTI-DYNASTY LAW SHOULD BE A STARTING POINT
There is a legitimate case for implementing the constitutional prohibition on political dynasties.
But it should be sold neither as a miracle cure nor as a moral cleansing of Philippine politics.
It is an institutional intervention.
Its purpose is to widen political access and reduce one form of concentrated political power.
Its limitations should be understood from the beginning.
A law can prevent certain relatives from occupying certain offices.
It cannot prevent another network from acquiring power.
It can make succession harder.
It cannot eliminate patronage.
It can open political space.
It cannot guarantee that better candidates will occupy that space.
It can weaken one mechanism of political concentration.
It cannot remove the human desire for money, influence and power.
That is why an anti-dynasty law should be accompanied by reforms that address the ecosystem around political power.
Political parties need strengthening.
Campaign finance needs greater transparency.
Government procurement needs stronger safeguards.
The civil service needs protection from political interference.
Local accountability needs strengthening.
Citizens need better information.
Public services need to become less dependent on political patrons.
And perhaps most importantly, institutions need to become stronger than personalities.
FROM FAMILY POWER TO INSTITUTIONAL POWER
The ultimate objective should not be to find a generation of politicians who are unusually virtuous.
That is not a sustainable national strategy.
The objective should be to build a political system in which even an ambitious, wealthy, connected or imperfect politician faces meaningful constraints.
That is what institutions are for.
The Philippines does not need a politics that assumes everyone in government will behave badly.
Nor can it afford one that assumes everyone will behave well.
It needs institutions designed for the real world.
An anti-dynasty law can help by opening the door.
But what happens after that door opens will depend on everything else behind it.
Because if we remove the dynasty but leave the incentives untouched, power will simply reorganize itself.
And if we want Philippine democracy to become more competitive, accountable and resilient, the deeper task is not merely to prevent one family from holding power.
It is to make sure that no family, faction, party, business network or individual becomes so powerful that the institutions of the Republic must bend around them.
That is a much bigger project.
And an anti-dynasty law should be understood as one piece of that project—not the project itself.
Very good analysis by Karl. Very few countries have anti dynasty laws and the least corrupt ones don’t have it but have very strong institutions. The Barzaga episode shows how attempts at accountability are defeated by clan culture when the mother was voted overwhelmingly to replace the son.
Welcome Back Andrew! Longtime! Thanks!
Very good analysis, Karl. Few countries have anti dynasty laws; the least corrupt have strong insitutions instead. The Barzaga episode shows how attempts at accountability are defeated by clan culture when the mother was overwhelmingly voted to replace the son.
Thanks again
If the problem is the human penchant for power and greed, the solution is captured in the following exerpt from the article. I have graded each from 1 to 10 where 1 is “not done” and 10 “is being done well” under the Marcos Government.
Transparent procurement. 7
Open government data. 6
Auditable transactions. 7
Competitive bidding. 4
Conflict-of-interest rules. 2
Asset-disclosure systems that actually work. 2
Independent oversight. 4
Professional civil servants. 2
Effective prosecutors. 5
Reasonably fast administrative and judicial processes. 1
Whistleblower protection. 6
Transparent campaign financing. 5
And consequences that arrive before the next election rather than years afterward. 2
Many many thanks for this Joe.
I’d like to throw in this question, perhaps a future discussion: why does the Philippines have a hard time building institutions? what specifically is it in the culture, the conscientization, the clan/ethnic/tribal instincts, what? Insights gained from travel: why do most countries have no need for traffic enforcers? why can some countries build monuments that take centuries to build involving different generations and govts, withstanding wars, epidemics, revolutions, etc. while we can’t?
Somehow we have been discussing this one by one with every discussion leading to further pondering. I have tried to analyze it by parsing GRP, keeping it up with Singapore, historical traits whuch turned out to be regional traits. We will continue figuring thigs out. Again, I welcome you back.
Interesting questions, Andrew. Take traffic enforcement. Citizens of other countries respect the need for “community” rules, and for the justice system, from the cop who writes the ticket to the judicial system to the prisons. Here the cops and judges earn little respect because there is so much corruption, and jails are horror houses that disappear people from life. So no basis for respect. As for community rules, the Philippine rules are honed by poverty: “I gotta get mine” not “I give myself to the well-being of the community.” These concepts will change if corruption is made an exception rather than norm, and people have money that leads to better foundational thinking, and the justice system is professionalized.
maybe even at the lowest level, communities have issues organizing themselves, take Homeowner’s Associations:
Ninotchka Rosca who spent a year in the Philippines (she is now back in NYC) shared something on FB about a subdivision where water was lacking because allegedly instead of buying 3 water tanks they bought only two and the officers of the HOA took a trip to Baguio with the rest of the money.
There are enough examples of how even at Sangguniang Kabataan level, barangay youth officers, there is misuse of funds and even more of authority at grown-up barangay level.
Institutionalizing people power – or any form of direct democracy a la Switzerland or even a limited form a la Bavaria – is not possible if people are like that. What I have seen from Filipino overseas associations is that they tend to devolve into “barkadahan”, into small cliques that run things as if they owned the group, of course they can’t coerce anyone like in the barangay or HOA so people just form their own new group or leave. Anyhow I might yet frame Andrew’s question into an article if he doesn’t do it..
P.S. I think that framing the different aspects of the question is important to find the answer(s) if ever, and I will not even assume I have the answers, in line with Socrates’ “I know that I know nothing”, I think what is important is the different perspectives we can get. IF I write an article – as Andrew has first dibs at this.
P.P.S. I have taken the liberty as one of the moderators here to delete what I consider an impertinent answer by CV, see screenshot. Nobody tells me how to write my articles. Everyone is free to give comments in them of course, once done, but not even my father who taught me a lot in my writing craft has told me what to write after my teens.
Yes, public funds are a pool into which one dips if one has access and is not overly ostentatious about it, the latter increasing chances someone will care. Do write the article. Andrew is sunning on some wayward beach sipping mint juleps, I’d guess.
IMHO a lot of the behaviors of local political dynasties and Class D/E that support those dynasties are just modern versions of Philippine culture that had already existed in native form long before the Spanish arrived. That the practices of the 90-93% of society seems “immoral,” “disorderly,” or even “alien” to the much smaller 7-10% of elites and middle class was explored as far back as 1959 in Renato Constantino’s essay The Miseducation of the Filipino, though I think that essay’s nationalist framing should carry heavy caveats. The core argument of that essay seems to be ironically misunderstood by the educated who came of age in the Third Republic as something along the lines of “Filipinos are deficient and require more (external) tutelage.” My takeaway on the essay is that American education inadvertently created a societal cleavage between the upper and middle classes with the masa as the educated and professional elite started monopolizing power towards themselves (i.e. a type of gatekeeping) while not really bothering to democratize progress any further than where progress started to threaten their privilege.
As someone who spends his time in the Philippines almost solely with Class D/E, I see their actions as rational behavior within the set of choices available to them. My belief is that behavior seen as “bad” by elites and middle class are simply a part of cultural habits as they always were — and rather than seeing behavior as “bad,” it is more useful to shift the framing to “cultural behavior has a positive side and a negative side, a productive side and an unproductive side.” Whenever I’m able to help D/E acquaintances or give them advice, I always try to mentor by encouraging them to apply themselves to the positive and the productive. Anyway, nowadays a lot of D/Es that “figured it out” share what they know, free of gatekeeping, on social media reels and videos. When people are given more choices, they don’t continue less productive behaviors once they recognize doing things a different way is more beneficial.
A lot of the Third Republic era works which are still studied today, such as Virgilio Enriquez’s Sikolohiyang Pilipino contain good starting points IMO, though I don’t find the nationalist framing or the Filipino-insularity to be as useful.
I did mention the HOAs especially the Baguio trip allegation as they are an example of corrupt (even downright antisocial) behavior by people who are NOT DE class.
The 1986 historical illustrated book “History of the Burgis” said that everything privatized in the Philippines like schools and subdivisions (malls weren’t that much of a thing yet) meant that those with means had effectively left civic society. Of course one should see it systemically, I always go by “don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
Some HOA functions like security and clean streets are stuff that DISTRICT COUNCILS talk about in German cities – with all social classes potentially participating especially in their quarterly citizen’s meetings (I have never attended one myself, shame on me, but I am familiar with the agenda which at the end always has Q&A with the city police) – but those who live in subdivisions don’t necessarily NEED to care about what is happening in the rest of the barangay they theoretically also belong to.
In fact Karl did mention once here that mediation of conflicts in villages/subdivision takes place internally first before it goes to the barangay.
The book History of the Burgis also mentioned that the Filipino burgis did not have to care about public schools either. Nowadays not even good urban planning by city hall matters anymore as the malls – often entire complexes with condos and more nowadays – do the job of creating urbanity that in Europe is done by towns.
Re Constantino, he reminds me a bit of Simoun telling Isagani why learn Spanish, then even your thoughts will be foreign – just a paraphrase.
In my social observations, I find that it might be useful to view cultural behavior as cultural “software,” an analogy I’ve used before. So if the same underlying cultural software runs across all classes, HOA officers stealing from association funds is something one would expect to happen. The elite/upper middle class “cleavage” is sort of a “software wrapper:” where the educated elite speak in Western-facing terms (e.g. civil society, impersonal rules, professional bureacracy). The actual underlying “software” for the 90-93% of the population (Class D/E) and the politicians they elect lack this “wrapper.” The Philippine “software” is a web of personal alliances, utang na loob, bonds between patron-client and barkadahan. Once the elite’s Western-facing lens is set aside a lot starts to make sense — political dynasties, barkadahan, HOAs, and clique behavior start looking less like malfunctions than realities. Of course, the elite “wrapper,” just like software wrappers in technology, can lead one to not even be aware of the actual software architecture running beneath the wrapper.
Extending the “software” analogy, the cultural “hardware” defines what cultural “software” may run on top of it. The Philippines cultural “software” has weak official enforcement and strong social coercion built in, removing an exit option for most purposes since a Filipino who “sticks out like a nail” may get socially ostracized. Abroad, diaspora cliques lack the social coercion factor since members are operating within another cultural hardware (of the country they reside in). Subdivisions in the Philippines are enclaves built for “exit,” and the proliferation of subdivisions and the HOA “governance structure” is sort of like a software that is copied without any spillover pressure to share what is inside the enclave with the outside. So it’s probably better to pursue other types of enclaves that can be seen, compared, and whose positive points can be demanded by others who lack access.
yep
often the terms just are ways of showing allegiance to a group, for example, and barely mean anything beyond that.
Like Bible verses on many a Pinoy FB profile
one should never mistake Philippine adobo for Spanish or Latin American adobo, even if the former uses an imported name.
the cofradias of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo (Xiao Chua’s PhD topic BTW) are NOT the same thing as the Lenten cofradias of Sevilla.
one can use the Spanish term compadrazgo like many Third Republic authors did for how personal political alliances worked (sometimes even with foreigners like in the Quezon-McArthur case) but the deeper workings of the now assimilated “kumpare” term are more like the sandugo of old, middle-class Pinoy college fraternities even more.
B-class Filipinos might speak of batchmates while C-class Filipinos will say ka-batch. A never published study of my father about Filipinos in Germany mentioned how ka-klase, ka-eskuwela, ka-eroplano, ka-ospital bonds played an enormous role in the informal networks of migrants here. He also found patterns similar to the chain migration to cities from rural areas in the Philippines, meaning that the first to come in would get their relatives, their townmates etc. to the new place.
I have seen similar patterns in the Cagayan clan of our late labandera (same birth year as Enrile) going to Manila, Hong Kong and all the way to Winnipeg, Canada. Our labandera was the first to reach Manila and guide her nieces including my yaya on survival there. Her niece was the first one in HK (the former DepEd teacher turned HK kasambahay, then married a Londoner and moved) and another niece who was guided by her from the early 1980s onwards was “in charge” by 1995, speaking Cantonese perfectly..
Elite spaces often operate on a “social credit system” where the “credit” is “who is more moral,” usually in a performative way to gain or maintain standing within the in-group. Completely ineffectual once it moves outside of the elite spaces of course and collides with reality.
Here in the US the Democrats (center-left, and American progressive which is sort of something in between Euro social democrats and democratic socialist) along with center-right Never Trump ex-Republicans who have allied with Democrats are poised to win big in this year’s midterm elections. Into the mix so-called “democratic socialists” have thrown a wrench by demanding unreasonable purity tests that threaten some key congressional and senate races. These former Bernie Sanders supporters who call themselves “democratic socialists” aren’t really democratic socialists but rather straight up communists and anarchists. They are also exclusively either elite or affluent, yet claim to speak for working people. Their purity testing is a type of in-group behavior.
One of the weird global confluences is that apparently the DSA in the US, who were “entered” by communists post-2016, are greatly influenced by groups like Bayan. Bayan has sent cadres to the US to teach “revolutionary thought” and “organizing tactics” to the American comrades. Apparently Bayan, along with radical far-left American groups are funded by multimillionaire Roy Singham who has suspected ties to China and the CCP.
The following is from the City Journal, a NYC magazine which leans conservative but the two articles illustrate the point:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/philippines-communist-party-lyle-prijoles-kai-dana-rene-sorem
https://www.city-journal.org/article/north-korea-us-groups-nodutdol
Obviously Bayan and the CPP are total crackpots and failures in the Philippines, mostly elites who groom the mentally ill and prey on the marginalized. Alarming that after largely failing in the Philippines they are starting to grow influence in the US. I had noticed about a year ago that American far-left tactics started to look weirdly similar to Bayan’s tactics in the Philippines, which is a lot different from how the American far-left operated in the past, so kudos to the counter-radicalism researcher who is the author of the two articles I linked for his research. Interestingly though the far-left so far this year seems to have overplayed their hand and exhibited premature exuberance, “letting out their crazy,” before they actually won anything aside from the NYC mayoralship, so Americans are wising up to how insane these people are who demand group conformity and group allegiance.
I can understand the point about the educated being alienated from the masa. I grew up middle class in the Philippines, though we were renters, and as a teen-ager I often had the impression that our class and the wealthier classes looked at the poor almost as the Pharisee looked at the sinner “over there”—with relief that they were not in the same condition, rather than with much concern for them. That attitude could indeed be transmitted through school, language, and family example. Can we blame schools for that “miseducation?” One caveat, I have no idea how it went in public schools, especially at the elementary and high school levels.
I would hesitate to describe the poor or their political behavior mainly as a survival of precolonial culture. By high school, even in an elite private-school environment, I was encouraged by what I observed as the growth of factory work. It seemed to offer people an alternative to becoming maids, houseboys, drivers, or dependents of the well-off. I envisioned more Filipinos raising their stations in life. Mind you these are observations and thoughts of a teen-ager.
Constantino is useful because he saw how education could detach the educated from their own people. My point is that it did not happen to all Filipino students. Some Filipinos saw that the answer was to democratize opportunity—good schools, productive employment, decent wages, social protection, and institutions that allow Filipinos to rely on rights rather than on patrons. Problem is, there were likely too few of such Filipinos to see that. Constantino himself was likely one of the few.
An odd trait of the Filipinization trend in universities post-Independence was that it probably swung too far the other way, into near-total insularity in the name of decolonialization — which can make one blind without knowing it. The political behavior of poor Filipinos, for example, has many similarities with nearby Austronesian cultures (Malaysia, Indonesia), apparent only once one has spent enough time in those countries (as I have). I don’t find such behaviors “deficient” — rather, a cultural behavior may have more positive application if nudged in the right direction.
But yes, industrialization, hard and often dirty, has been a vehicle for class advancement since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the US and Europe. Perhaps one can say that even well-meaning Filipino elites look down on factory work as something “beneath them,” and via this “proletarianization of the elite,” they project their own preferences onto those socio-economically below them, moving national preferences away from industrialization then collapsing into premature deindustrialization — even though poor Filipinos today clamor to go abroad to work in Taiwanese, South Korean, and Japanese factories, where the salary is much higher (~P50-70K/month) than domestic/service OFW work in the Middle East (~P25-30K).
For sure, some elite Filipinos did seek to spread their privilege and democratize opportunity, both back in the Third Republic and now. The problem is that the elite and middle class make up only 7-10% of the population, and of that number, those who genuinely want to democratize opportunity (as opposed to merely claiming to) are even a smaller slice of an already smaller slice… IMHO, the solution is to grow the economic independence of the DEs. Thankfully, market forces win in the end, the same way water finds a way to flow downstream — the Filipino fondness of “bypassing” is an indicator of that. So we should support political and civic leaders who are building enclaves where such better behavior is trialed, proven, then diffuses out by the spillover effect when nearby citizens demand “I want some of that too” while nearby leaders feel competitive pressures to do better.
Hope my Monday’s essay will start exploring part or most of your questions
OT sharing Joey’s link on electrification again and some related articles:
https://joeam.com/2020/10/26/why-the-philippines-should-add-nuclear-power-to-its-energy-portfolio/
Electricity, Part 3: Epira is a lame duck with a non-performing WESM | The Society of Honor by Joe America
Philippines electricity tariff decoded | The Society of Honor by Joe America
Electrification and Decarbonization – what’s going on | The Society of Honor by Joe America
The Philippines: a nation unplugged | The Society of Honor by Joe America
Twinges of nostalgia for the days of old when blogging was mainstream. I don’t know what bug Chempo got in his brain. Genius turns idiot. Thanks for hauling these gems out.
Thanks Irineo. I had no idea there were old articles written on this topic.
Even in the 6 years since the last article, there is much progress in the availability of analytical tools — though I must caution that one would still need to actually read through studies and policy papers in order to identify where linkages may surface. I spent months on this analysis project, considering numerous other sequencing strategies that I ultimately discarded. Hope my analysis becomes useful somewhere….