Southeast Asia Research Centre

Mark R. THOMPSON
Director
Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC)
Professor of Politics
Department of Asian and International Studies (AIS)
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR
The Post-Marcos Presidency in Political Time

Working Paper Series

No. 142
March 2013

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The Post-Marcos Presidency in Political Time

by Mark R Thompson,
City University of Hong Kong
Paper prepared for presentation at the Philippine Political Studies Association (PPSA)
2013 International Conference, Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU),
11-12 April 2013, Batac, Philippines, Plenary Panel 5
(This paper is part of a book project co-authored with Julio C Teehankee)

The Philippine presidency, the oldest in Asia, has been the subject of remarkably little
political science analysis. While there have been many biographies and journalistic accounts of
Philippine presidents, there have been few studies of the presidency as an institution (among the
few exceptions are Cortes, 1966; Bacungan, 1983, Agpalo, 1996a & b, Rebullida, 2006a&b, and
Kasuya, 2008). This is surprising because in the Philippines, like in many presidential
democracies in developing countries, the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, the keystone of
the democratic system.1 But it has also been a system under threat. In the Philippine case,
President Ferdinand E. Marcos, declared martial law in 1972: this autogolpe brought about the
collapse of an electoral democracy that had been in place since independence in 1946 (and a
presidential system begun during the Commonwealth period beginning in 1935). In the postMarcos era, the presidency has seemingly became a force for democratization (Rebullida 2006).
But democratic transition in the Philippines has been very rocky, with presidents threatened by
military plots, civilian protests, and civilian-initiated coups when facing legitimacy crises (Ronas
2011).
By applying Stephen Skrowroneks (1997; 2008) influential theory of U.S.
presidentialism to the Philippines, this paper aims to show the usefulness of analyzing the
1

In fact, the Philippines appears to have one of the most powerful presidential systems anywhere in the world.
Emil P. Bolongaita, Jr. (1995, p. 110) argues that among presidential democracies, the Philippine president
virtually has no equal in terms of aggregate executive power. The president controls the bureaucracy and policy
execution (including the use of executive orders) and also has the power of budget making and implementation
(de Dios 1999; de Dios and Esfahani 2001). The presidency was marginally stronger under the 1935
Commonwealth than under the 1987 post-Marcos constitution, particularly due to limitations placed on
emergency powers and the single term limit under the newer constitution. Both changes can be seen as being
driven by fears of presidential abuse of power given the countrys authoritarian experience under martial rule. But
surprisingly presidential powers remained otherwise strong, perhaps because legislators had little input into the
writing of both constitutions (Kasuya, 2008, p. 86).

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Philippine presidency in political time while offering insights that aim to advance the
comparative study of the presidency. From this perspective, presidential performance is
relational, with presidential agency confronting structural constraints and opportunities
(Liebermann 2000). To give it a Marxian phrasing, presidents make their own presidencies, but
they do not make it as they please.
Presidents find themselves facing different obstacles to leadership based on their relation
to a dominant regime (a stable set of interests, ideologies, and institutions that form around the
presidency in a particular time period) established by a foundationalist president who usurps
the pre-existing presidential order. In the U.S. context, Skowronek argues the current political
regime of small government began during the Reagan presidency which repudiated the
liberal New Deal-style regime started by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s of which Jimmy
Carter was the last representative (Skowronek 2008, p. 19) In the Philippines, Corazon C.
Aquino,

after

replacing

the

fallen

dictator

Marcos,

repudiated

Marcos

failed

developmentalist regime and installed a reformist one instead. Sequentially based challenges
are understood by Skowronek as political as opposed to normal secular time.
Applying the concept of political time - which is reset when a new regime is
established this paper will discuss the cycle of presidential leadership within the context of the
post-Marcos reformist regime in the Philippines. Specifically, it will delineate the series of
discrete political choices made by five post-Marcos presidents Corazon C. Aquino, Fidel V.
Ramos, Joseph E. Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and Benigno S. Aquino III within the
context of political time dictated by the character of this political order. Reformism in this
context has involved a discursive commitment to combatting corruption in the name of good
governance that binds together three key elite strategic groups (big business, the Catholic Church
hierarchy, and middle class activists) within weak state institutions. Each post-Marcos president
has been sequenced in political time based on this regime: Cory Aquino as regime founder,
Ramos carrying the regime forward as an orthodox innovator, Joseph Estrada attempting but
failing to pre-empt the regime with a populist platform (he was unconstitutionally removed
from office), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as an apostate of the regime after she was seen as
having betrayed her promised commitment to reform, and the current president as of this writing
Benigno Simeon Aquino, III (Nonoy) who is again seen as a standard bearer of reformism.
This brief summary of the post-Marcos presidencies suggest perceptions of presidential

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performance are shaped by the sequencing of a particular presidency within the political
regime.
But this is not to say that agency has no role in this structuralist approach. By looking for
a pattern of presidential regimes and the cycle of presidents within the political time set by
these regimes, this perspective allows a fairer judgment of the choices president make because it
takes into account structural constraints within which they choose. Consequently, the agentialstructural dichotomy underscores the antinomies of presidential power recapitulate a more
general dilemma in the social sciences, between structure and agency between more or less
deterministic patterns of social reality and the creative potential of individual human actors
(Lieberman, 2000, p. 275). By adopting a structuration approach as proposed by Anthony
Giddens (1984) in this paper, due attention is given to both perspectives, agential and structural.
The nature of presidential power in the Philippines will be analyzed by identifying the strategic
moments that lie between the structural (regimes) and the agential (presidents choices).
Finally, by arguing that a focus on campaign narratives, governing scripts and
legitimacy crises sharpen the understanding of regimes in comparative perspective. Skowroneks
more conventional focus on ideas goes too far in the Philippine context in which diffuse
campaign narratives and governing scripts lack a systematic, programmatic quality. In the
Philippines context a regime can be understood as based not a series of more-or-less systematic
ideas but as a diffuse governing script (that usually arises out of a campaign narrative) which
binds together a coalition of interests within a particular institutional context. A Philippine
presidential regime is not highly ideological in the sense Reagan and his Bush family dynastic
successors in the U.S. have been, but rather is based on a certain set of mentalities that has
characterized the reformism of Cory Aquino and her successor reformist presidents.
On the other hand, in the context of a stable, long consolidated democracy like the U.S.
political crises are unlikely to threaten the political system itself. Well established institutions
seem capable of withstanding a series of political crises including a stolen election in 2000 and
the current deadlock between Obama and the Republican controlled House of Representatives. In
the Philippines, by contrast, severe legitimacy crises led to the overthrow of one president
(Estrada) and nearly toppled a second (Arroyo). In the Philippine context, the presidency is a
fragile institution that is under threat when a president loses legitimation. The consolidation of
the U.S. system has concealed this problem to American observers of the presidency: the

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institutional fragility of a regime can mean crises can soon cast into doubt the legitimacy of the
political system itself.
As is common in U.S. presidential studies, many scholars of the Philippine presidency
emphasize the so-called presidential style of leadership that is understood within a particular
cultural context (although in studies of the U.S. presidency the peculiarities of American political
culture tend to be taken only implicitly into account rather than systematically analyzed). From
an agential approach, presidents draw from an arsenal of political skills and character attributes
to persuade others to do their bidding. In the Philippines, two viewpoints can be identified within
this school of thought. One, a decisionist perspective, suggests that an effective president in
the context of hierarchical Philippine culture must be a strong leader, which Remigio E.
Agpalo - the Richard E. Neustadt (1991) of the study of the Philippine presidency - terms a
pangulo regime, as will be discussed below. The other viewpoint is that the president must
lead by example by being a good person within a folk cultural context. Regardless of whether
the emphasis is put on decisiveness or morality, presidents hold their own fate in their hands
if they are only strong or good enough while serving as the countrys chief executive.
Other scholars view the Philippine presidency through the lens of political clientelism
and patronage.2 In this school, the personal qualities of a president are secondary to her or his
role (or even function) as patron-in-chief. Given the extraordinary powers the Philippine
president possesses over the budget and the extensiveness of clientelist relations in Philippine
politics, it follows from this viewpoint that the Philippine president is little more than a dispenser
of patronage, a task that most presidents perform well enough (although there the occasional
patronage-distribution-challenged president as we will see below). The next section discusses
this patronage politics as a structuralist perspective before turning to agency-centered arguments
about the importance of presidential character in understanding the chief executives
performance in office. It will then be suggested that the political time approach combines a more
plausible account of structural constraints and opportunities for presidential agency than either
the determinist patron-in-chief or the voluntarist presidential style perspective.
2

Scholars sometimes try to distinguish clientelism, patron-client ties, and patronage, which they confine to the
distribution of government goodies (jobs, contracts, etc). For a recent discussion, see Tomsa and Ufen 2012, pp.
4-5. Putting aside the linguistic overlap of the two terms (what do patrons do if not distribute patronage?),
government patronage is the keystone of the clientelist system. Political patrons are exchanging their clientelist
voting networks for something which can be nothing other than governmental patronage (by an incumbent) or
promised patronage (by a candidate).

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The president as patron-in-chief

One important reason for the academic neglect of the Philippine presidency is the
continuing dominance of the patron-client framework in the study of countrys politics, which
has recently been supplemented by arguments about bossism which is not as distinct from
clientelism as its proponents often contend.3 From this perspective, politicians are elected
through long lines of clientelist ties that pyramid upward from voters to local and then to national
politicians (Lande 1966, Kerkvliet 1995). Post-Marcos presidential candidates have generally
founded their own parties (and/or party alliances), revealing only too clearly how parties are
mere vehicles for a presidents election. Political machinery is assembled around the country
needed for effective national campaigning. In short, parties in the Philippines are little more
than a means to patronage-building necessary for a successful run for the presidency and then
distribution of the perks of office to ones clientelist allies once in power (Quimpo 2009).
Changes in the 1987 constitution accelerated this process. While presidential candidates
frequently changed parties in the pre-martial law Philippines, they generally did not found parties
for their own presidential campaigns (and when they did they were transient third parties). With
the opening of the electoral system to any group that declared itself a political party, a multiparty system was created in which most parties had a clear link to a particular presidential
candidate and generally withered away or at least sharply decline after electoral victory or defeat
(Magno 2006). Presidents may be at the top of the clientelist pyramid, but their ability to exercise
power effectively rests on their skill in allocating patronage within this personalistic system.
In the US and other developed country presidencies, presidents are said to represent
national policies (in the language of rational choice theory, collective goods) while the
legislature is concerned with local programs (pork barrel is used as a selective incentive by

Bossist (Rocamora 1995, Sidel 1999) analyses emphasize the role of coercion in relations between poor voters
and political leaders which was missing from Landes original analysis in which the smooth functioning of clientelist
ties between consenting poor clients and paternalist leader patrons was stressed. While this critique obviously has
some validity (as the Ampatuan and other warlord clans have so violently demonstrated), it does not logically lead
to the wholesale rejection of the clientelist framework as Sidel claims (1999), but rather points to the need to
expand its scope. It remains unproven how widespread bossism really is in the Philippines until a detailed
political mapping of the country is undertaken. Viewed more broadly, both votes secured through consensual
ties between patrons and clients and more coercive relationships can viewed as command votes (Teehankee
2002). The former are votes controlled by political leaders either through personalized or material (and usually a
mixture of both) ties of politicians to voters, the latter are votes commanded through the use of force.

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legislatures to voters in order to secure re-election4). But in a highly clientelist system such as the
Philippines, presidents may also be tempted to distribute pork to create majorities on key votes
and to insure his or her own re-election. The presidency can even become a fountain[head] of
clientelist linkage building (Kitschelt 2000, p. 860). Reducible to its function within a patronclient system, focus on the presidency as an institution appears to be of little independent
interest.
Furthermore, as there are no fundamental differences of ideology between the two
parties: a party does not have a real platform or represent any major policy alternatives. In fact,
according to Carl Landes classical clientelist theory of the Philippines (Lande 1967), the
leaders of each party are united by little more than their common desire to be elected, thus
making it unsurprising that they have no real party platforms. Furthermore, given that parties
attempt to construct multi-class, multi-regional clientelist electoral alliances, too much emphasis
on divisive political and social issues could potentially undermine a partys electoral strength.
Lande says that each major presidential candidate does have a personal platform, but this is
also of limited significance.5 A presidents program is of little elite political or public concern.
Lande writes:
Each new President, before he assumes office, or sometimes after that event, formulates
a program for his administration which may be somewhat different from that of his
predecessor. He devises this program in accordance with his personal convictions, and
the advice of his principal lieutenants in the Executive branch and in Congress, usually
staying within the fairly narrow limits set by the expectations of various organized and
unorganized interests which no President can ignore. His ability to enact his program is
limited not only by his uncertain control over his party mates in Congress but also by
the occasional indiscipline of the members of his Cabinet and their subordinates, as well
as by a lack of public interest in and support for presidential programs as such. Typically,
the election of a new President is followed by lively and protracted journalistic
speculation concerning the names of possible cabinet appointees and by an almost total

Pork can be understand as political useful government-funded projects that are often economically inefficient
(Kasuya 2008, p. 71).
5
When president do have pet programs still they have to buy support by the distribution of favors through
patronage allocation.

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lack of interest in, or discussion of, the President elect's legislative program (Lande
1967, p. 35).
In short, the clientelist perspective suggests that once in office presidents cannot rely on
their electoral mandate or ideological commitments to rule effectively. Instead, presidents must
use patronage as a tool to influence legislators in order to maintain power. Writing within this
framework, Kasuya (2003, 2005 and 2008) argues that Joseph E. Estrada was impeached by the
House of Representatives in November 2000 because he lost control of presidential patronage
with which the president can normally can control (or at least contain) the lower house. She finds
that Estrada lost the support of legislators who had received less patronage in the past and
expected to receive less than others in the lower house in the future. Kasuya allows nonclientelist elements into her analysis in that she admits that Estradas serious wrongdoings
were the catalyst for defections. But she emphasizes not everyone defected, just the weakest
links in the clientelist chain: those party-switching legislators (known in the Philippines as
political butterflies or balimbings from the many sided starfruit) who received less patronage
from Estrada because they joined his camp later and also therefore expected less in the future
from him, making their political defection less painful in patronage terms. The bottom line
remains that according to this clientelist framework presidential performance is largely
dependent on presidents effective wielding of patronage. Should s/he not live up to the role as
patron-in-chief removal from office may be the result, as Estradas experience showed.
The clientelist paradigm of the Philippine presidency is not so much wrong as it is one
sided. It ignores evidence that most votes are now market ones open to direct media appeals to
voters by candidates, not commanded by provincial bosses and/or leaders of clientelist
networks (Teehankee 2002). Presidents must have a convincing campaign narrative in order to
win office. Corazon C. Aquino was clearly outgunned, outgunned and outgold by
incumbent Ferdindand E. Marcos in the 1986 snap presidential elections, yet some observers
believe she actually won the election (even if she lost the counting) (de Guzman and Tancangco,
1986; NAMFREL 1986 and Thompson 1995, chp. 8). Presidential candidates with strong
political machinery but with weak direct media appeals have been decisively defeated in almost
all post-Marcos presidential elections (Ramon Mitra in 1992, Jose de Vencia in 1998, Manuel
Villar in 2010). The exception is Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who used all the patronage available
to an incumbent president to win the 2004 elections. (Incumbents running for re-election was not

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foreseen in the 1987 constitution that limited presidents to one term; Arroyo circumvented this
by running again after a truncated first term after Estrada was toppled.) While her advantage in
government patronage she used to cement clientelist ties clearly strengthened her election effort,
the appeal of her populist opponent Fernando Poe, Jr., who had limited clientelist support and
much less campaign money to spend that Arroyo, was still so strong that Arroyo had to engage in
fraudulent electoral tactics that were later exposed that her opponents said she actually stole
the election and used this to demonize during her remaining time in office (Raquiza 2005). Even
victorious presidential candidates discovered the limitation of clientelist/bossist electioneering.
In a study of the 1992 presidential election, Carl Lande (1996) partially relativized his
earlier findings about the clientelist nature of Philippine politics. He pointed out that the
candidate with the most money to spend and the strongest political machine (which he measured
through the numbers of successful provincial political leaders each candidate had as allies),
Ramon Mitra, did not win the 2004 election, and in fact only finished a distant fourth. The
winner, Fidel V. Ramos, had less than half as many elected governors, representatives in the
lower house, and Senators as Mitra did (60 to Mitras 129). Ramos also reportedly spent much
less on his campaign than Mitra, although doubts have been raised about this claim given that he
had the incumbent Cory Aquinos endorsement (Lande 2006, pp. 106 and 109). The second
placer in the 2004 election, Miriam Defensor-Santiago had almost no political machinery
whatsoever measured in these terms. She is said to have spent only a miniscule percentage of
what Mitra and Ramos did, yet she was defeated by Ramos by less than four percentage points
(Mitra was nearly 10% behind Ramos). Lande then cited interviews with politicians who agreed
that the country
is no longer as feudal as in the past. Leaders can no longer deliver their constituents
blindly. There must be some favorable perception by your constituents about the
candidate. The media, especially radio, now provide a means by which voters can
evaluate a national candidate (Lande 1996, p. 107).
This paper draws on this insight. Successful presidential candidates need strong
narratives that appeal directly to voters through media-driven campaigns. While not elaborate
ideologies, they are not reducible to instrumental clientelist ties to voters and fellow politicians
either. Once in office, presidents attempt to use their narrative as governing scripts both to
maintain popularity and maintain elite support. The interests behind a presidency are not

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reducible to the distribution of political patronage, but involve popular appeals and the support of
key strategic groups who have not just material but also ideational reasons to support or
oppose particular presidents. Institutional arrangements and the degree of their stability are of
particular importance given the way disloyal oppositionists make extra-constitutional efforts to
subvert the presidency.
While Kasuyas clientelist-style analysis provides some insight into Estradas
impeachment by the lower house, it cannot explain what triggered it (outrage at Estradas
corruption), nor does it tell us how Estrada actually lost power. He was not of course convicted
by the Senate (where Estradas patronage power was stronger?) but rather was forced out of
office by a people power coup in which elite demonstrators backed by the military made
Estrada give in. In terms of the analysis offered here, Estrada had lost the support of the
(un)holy trinity of big business, the Catholic Church hierarchy and middle class activists. This
also lies outside the clientelist framework, which focuses on clientelist ties of rich patrons to
poor voters not on elites angry with a sitting president. Despite being overthrown in an elitist
insurrection, Estrada continued to enjoy strong support among the poor. Even after his long
house arrest and conviction for corruption, many poor voters continued to back him, as his
second place finish in the 2010 presidential election demonstrates. His successor Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo was a clear master of clientelist politics, but even that was not enough to
stop the FPJ populist juggernaut in 2004 which is apparently why she turned to electoral
manipulation to insure her victory in that election. Arroyo, however, paid for her electoral
wrongdoings (and corruption scandals) in terms of popularity. Arroyo was the most hated
president since Marcos as opinion polls showed (Wilson 2010). Yet she clung to power because
two of the countrys three strategic groups, big business and the Catholic Church hierarchy,
supported her despite vehement middle class activist opposition. Estrada was a failed president
both in clientelist terms and for losing the support of the key elite strategic groups but retained
strong support in the masa, among poor Filipinos. A broader form of analysis is needed to
capture both the elite and popular dimensions of presidential performance.
Presidential style: character and performance
If the clientelist perspective is overly determinist, the chief alternative used by other
scholars is highly volunterist. This influential perspective on the Philippine presidency which is
common in the analysis of presidential democracies including the US - is that a presidents

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character is crucial in determining presidential performance (in the U.S. case Neustadt 1990
has been very influential). The problem of course is deciding which kind of character traits are
favorable for good presidential performance, and what traits are seen to undermine such
achievements. Given the personalistic nature of this perspective, an unending list of traits could
be compiled by which to judge presidential conduct. In the Philippine context, I think it fair to
single out two perspectives that are (or at least once were) influential: Remigio Agpalos
pangulo regime (1996) and arguments centered around Catholic folk culture associated with
the work of Reynaldo Ileto (1979 and 1985).
Agpalo (1996) distinguished the character of Philippine leaders, and presidents in
particular, through their ideological commitments and organizational capabilities. Strong
Supremo-style presidents (a presidential type Agpalo models on Filipino revolutionary leader
Andres Bonifacio) have both strong programmatic beliefs and extensive organizational support.
For Agpalo, among recent Philippine presidents, Ferdinand E. Marcos fits this category best.
Marcos strongly believed that the Philippine society was weakened by its oligarchical structure
and was determined to use all the powers of government to transform it into a new society. He
controlled, and enjoyed the strong of backing of the countrys bureaucracy. Although Agpalos
argument may sound a bit like pro-Marcos propaganda, this conservative political scientists
point of view deserves more serious attention than such a snap judgment would suggest. Even if
Agpalo overlooks Marcos many character flaws and the fact that as a lawyer politician he not a
military man on a mission to transform his country like Park Chung-hee was (Hutchcroft 2011),
Marcos was nonetheless the most developmentalist president the Philippines has ever had.
With the declaration of martial law and the launching of an export-oriented industrialization
drive in the early 1970s, Marcos was attempting to put the Philippines on a path of authoritarian
development well-trodden in Northeast Asia (in South Korea and Taiwan) but also by that point
in Thailand (Sarit beginning in the late 1950s), in Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew and the Peoples
Action Party) and in Indonesia (Suharto beginning in the last 1960s). Such authoritarian
developmentalism was subsequently undertaken by Mahathir in Malaysia as well (Suehiro 2008,
chp. 5). It is beyond the scope of this paper to develop this argument in detail, but because of its
developmentalist goals Marcos presidency has a different quality than his predecessors (and his

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10

successors to date), not simply because of its authoritarianism, but also for its ideological and
organizational commitment to transform the country economically and socially.6
It is not surprising that if Marcos was the ultimate Supremo for Agpalo, Corazon C.
Aquino, appeared to be exact opposite. For Agpalo, she had neither clear ideological
commitments nor strong organizational backing. A last minute compromise when the opposition
was divided among several would be candidates to oppose Marcos in the February 1986 snap
election, she ran under the banner of several opposition political parties and NGO-groups which
often were conflict with one another (Agpalo, 1996, p. 261, Thompson, 1995, chp. 8). Aquinos
rainbow coalition as it was then called was expended further as assumed the presidency after
the people power uprising against Marcos. She ruled over an (unruly) coalition that ranged
from conservative to radical (or at least one-time radicals). Infighting quickly broke out among
her political allies, explaining frequent demonstrations and coup attempts directed against her.
Her government was largely reactive, striving largely survive and anyway having little vision
of its own. If Marcos at least had started well (and clearly enjoyed some popular support during
the early years of martial law), Aquinos presidency began disastrously, with the biggest surprise
being that she survived until the end of her term.
The diametrically opposed view to Agpalos is a seemingly yellow one which takes
into account Filipino folk Catholic traditions. Reynaldo Ileto famously argued that the pasyon
(indigenous epic poems written under Spanish colonialism depicting the birth, life, and death of
Christ in a didactic manner) by Filipino revolutionaries as powerful political metaphors used

This is a seemingly obvious point that too few writers about the Philippines are willing concede, in part because a
large literature has been written condemning Marcos as crony-in-chief (or chief of the cronies) and confining
analysis of his presidency to extreme patrimonialism (or sultanism to use the term this author employed in his
earlier analysis of Marcos, Thompson 1995). Viewed this way, the Marcos presidency can be placed in the
clientelist framework, albeit one of authoritarian patronage. This confuses in my (revisionist) view the lamentable
outcome of the Marcos presidency economic and political crisis with the developmentalist intentions that
accompanied the launching of his legal and then later authoritarian presidency. Marcoss commitment to
developmentalism was genuine, even if he did not grasp how extreme cronyism, at which he was also highly
skilled, could undermine it, particularly if it did not involve performance criteria to maintain economic efficiency
despite close state-business ties as was the case in South Korea under Park Chung-hee (Amsden 1992). One of the
few authors who has given Marcos his due as a tragic figure (albeit in a rather cranky manner) is Lewis Gleecks
1987 book that is hardly read anymore (if it ever was). Another book worth considering in this regard is the Marcos
apologia written by American journalist (and later wife of then Marcos Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos P.
Romulo) Beth Day: The Philippines: Shattered Showcase of Democracy, 1974. Despite its tendentiousness, the book
reminds us of some of the revolutionary developmentalist projects that Marcos was undertaking during the early
martial law period. Then there are of course Marcos own (ghost-written) tracts such as Revolution from the Center
(1978). What Philippine president will ever again make a claim as baroquely melodramatic as this?

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11

against Spain and then the Americans. He later applied this analysis to the reaction to the Aquino
assassination in 1983 (Ileto 1979 and 1985). Ileto argued that in the context of Philippine folk
culture the Aquino assassination seemed a familiar drama involving familiar themes. Aquino
was often compared to Jose Rizal, whose writings and execution in 1896 helped spark the
Philippine revolution against Spain. After his death, many Filipinos even began comparing
Aquinos sufferings to Christ, a comparison earlier made between Rizal and the Christian savior.
When Marcos denied responsibility for the Aquino assassination, Ileto reports that a common
retort was Pontius Pilate. A grief stricken nation imbued folk religious qualities into its newest
fallen hero (Thompson, 1995, p. 116).
What does this have to do with the Philippine presidency? Folk religious imagery
accompanied the campaign of Cory Aquino for the presidency. September 1985 had seen the
start of the Marian celebration commemorating the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of
the Virgin Mary. In his homily at the events start Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin had
warned against a dying of hope during the dark days facing the country since the Aquino
assassination. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino mobbed Sin his is travels around the
archipelago with a small statue of the so-called Weeping Madonna. An estimated 1.5 milion
gathered for a final mass in Manila in December, probably the largest religious celebration in
Philippine history. The same crowds that had mobbed Sin and the Weeping Madonna cam out to
see the Filipina Mary, Cory Aquino. She based her campaign of the promise of moral renewal:
honesty, sincerity, simplicity and religious faith as she put it. Her answer to the Philippines
many problems was simply to restore democracy and establish good governance (Thompson,
1995, pp. 144-45).
In such moralistic terms, the tables of presidential performance are turned. The Supremo
becomes a demon (Marcos complained that Aquinos campaign had tagged him as a
combination of Darth Vader, Machiavelli, Nero, Stalin, Pol Pot, and maybe even Satan
himself), and, to mix metaphors further, the lamb defeats the wolf. When framed by a
developmentalist regime perspective, which Agpalo evidently took, Marcos once seemed a
successful, if not the outstanding Philippine president. When this project came crashing down
after the Aquino assassination, debt overload, and currency devalution, the reformist narratives
portrayal of Marcos as a corrupt dictator quickly took hold. Agpalos positive analysis reminds
us how easy it once seemed to view Marcos as the Philippines greatest president (a google

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search still yields nearly six million results under this category). Now he is commonly viewed as
the worst, and certainly the most corrupt (in 2004 Transparency International ranked him the
worlds second most corrupt leader after Suharto). Nearly two decades after Marcos fall from
power, Arroyo was judged by the yellow followers of Aquino to be nearly as evil as Marcos
(the Marcos/Arroyo comparison was common). Estrada had earlier been tarred by his elite
opponents for feathering his own (love) nests. By contrast, Noynoy Aquino, like Fidel V.
Ramos, has earned moral seal of approval from the yellow crowd.
If all the above discussion of presidential style seems quite subjective and arbitrary,
then the nature of the critique of this perspective has already been advanced. How a president is
judged in terms of performance depends very much on the expectations and perceptions of the
observer. It can be asked, for example, why the corruption scandals that dogged the Ramos
administration (such as the PEA-Amari deal) did not undermine his presidential narrative, while
such illicit dealings under Estrada were seen as sufficient justification for overthrowing him
extra-constitutionally under the guise of revived people power. Similarly, it can be queried
why Nonoy Aquinos popularity has been boosted by rapid economic growth thus far during his
presidency (with the president claiming vindication for his slogan good governance is good
economics), while high growth during the Arroyo era won her no popularity whatsoever (she
was the least loved president in terms of opinion polls) and was seen to have occurred despite
massive corruption. The point is simply that judgments about a president are not formed in a
vacuum but according to a regime narrative and how it is applied to a particular presidency.
Ramoss self-proclaimed reformism made his presidency teflon-like in regard to corruption
charges while Estrada, already widely tagged by the yellow crowd as a lazy buffoon with movie
star appeal to the poor, could easily be tagged as corrupt in elite eyes. Arroyo had earned the
scorn of middle class activists (many of whom has supported her extra-constitutional rise to the
presidency and her re-election bid in 2004) and thus faced vehement criticism regardless of
economic growth.
What is needed then is a way to more systematically assessments of the construction and
defense of presidential narratives and the ways presidents attempt to use these narrative in new
innovative ways or try to pre-empt them with a counter narrative. Arroyo was the most
unpopular president - seen to be the most corrupt since Marcos - because she abandoned any
pretext to reformist intentions, but did so under pressure from the populist threat first

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represented by Estrada and later by Estradas friend, the even more popular actor and politician,
Ferdando Poe, Jr. Furthermore, we must distinguish between popular approval of a president
(which in the Philippines of course means the backing of the poor) and support within the elite
(which can be divided into three key strategic groups, the Church, big business, and middle class
activists).
Skowronek adapted
Stephen Skowronek situates the presidency not according to personal traits and attributes,
but rather on the structural pattern of regime change and the cycle of presidents within
regimesa pattern of political time. He traces recurring regime patterns in the presidency,
placing individual presidents within the context of regimes or the commitment of ideology and
interest embodied in preexisting institutional arrangements (Skowronek 2008). Except for rare
opportunities in which the regime becomes ripe for reconstruction, a president ascends to power
within a prevailing regime that largely shapes the perception of that administration. The political
identity of an incumbent president is either affiliated or opposed to the prevailing regime.
Moreover, the political opportunity (i.e. success or failure of presidential leadership) available to
the incumbent president hinges on how resilient or vulnerable a prevailing regime is (a strong
regime is good for affiliates, harsh on would be preemptors, the opposite holds true for a
weakened order structured around particular interests, ideologies, and institutions). Skowronek
has argued that regime orientations provide structured contexts for presidential leadership that
are repeated within political time. Thus, presidential leadership is defined by ones place in
political time rather than by personal style or character in facing down a series of challenges.
Political time is the medium through which presidents encounter received commitments of
ideology and interest and claim authority to intervene in their development. Comparing
presidents in different historical period according to parallel moments of political time would
yield more similarities in leadership challenges than those presidents compared according to the
regular sequential period of secular time. Presidents find themselves facing different obstacles to
leadership based on their relation to existing regimes that may be the same or different from
their predecessors or successors.
The study of Philippine presidentialism can benefit from such a mode of analysis. But it
requires a more nuanced approach to the relationship between presidential actors and regime
structures in the spirit of Giddensonian structuration. Also, Skowroneks specification of regime

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ideology is vague and profits from greater attention to the details of media-driven campaign
narratives and the governing scripts that develop out of them. If a dominant regime script
is seen to be challenged or worse abandoned by a president, the result is a legitimacy crisis, an
aspect of presidential which Skowronek, focused on the institutionally stable US case, overlooks.
Robert Lieberman attempts to combine structural and agency approaches in his analysis of US
presidentialism. He argues for an emphasis on moments of structured choice, opportunities for
strategic presidential action within structurally defined and delimited situations (Lieberman, p.
275). In paper an attempt is to adopt such an approach that balance agential perspectives and
structural limitations or opportunities.
A timely approach
How can the concept of political time, reset when a new regime is established and
ticking according to each presidents relationship to it, be applied from the study of the oldest
and one of the best institutionalized presidential systems in an industrialized country, the U.S., to
a third world context of chronic instability and widespread poverty such as the Philippines? It
is often argued in the literature that the logic (but not the systemic performance) of presidential
systems is similar, in industrialized and developing countries alike (Cheibub 2006, Mainwaring
and Shugart 1997). Usually this argument is made negatively: the result of the competing
electoral legitimacy of the president and the legislature is gridlock, political crisis or, at worse,
democratic breakdown during inflexible, fixed presidential terms (Linz 1990). Yet the
presidentialism literature provides a methodological justification for trying to understand better
how the presidency works in a comparative context. But comparison between the U.S. and
Philippine case is not an independent one, given that the Philippine presidency was adapted
during colonial democracy (Paredes 1989), making it in many ways, in terms of institutional
design, a system, from the American perspective, made in our image (Karnow 1990), although
as noted above with greater powers than its US counterpart. The way the presidency in the
Philippines and the US work shed insight into how far key concepts developed to analyze the US
presidency can travel in social science terms (Sartori 1970).
But if we accept presidential systems have a similar political logic across cultures and
levels of development, we can confront the determinism of the clientelist view of the Philippine
presidency as well as the voluntarist perspective of those scholars that stress the importance of
presidential style by adapting a relational approach to the presidency in the Philippines. Instead

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of stressing party ideologies which are unquestionably weak in the Philippines (Manasca and
Tan, 2005 and Hicken, 2009), the narratives of presidential campaigns come into focus. These
narratives, which become presidential scripts when a president takes power, are either
portrayed as compatible with the overall regime narrative, or are an effort to pre-empt it. In the
post-Marcos Philippines, reformism, the claim that fighting corruption and improving the
efficiency of governance is the chief executives most important mission, has been the dominant
regime mentality (Thompson 2010). Cory Aquino was the first and foundationalist postMarcos president with this narrative and her successor Ramos, strengthened this narrative further
in his role as orthodox innovator in Skowroneks terms. Estrada, by contrast, tried to pre-empt
reformism with his populist narrative that the people were oppressed by a greedy elite. After
Estradas unconstitutional overthrow in a people power coup, his vice president and successor,
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo reclaimed the reformist script, promising a return to good governance
after Estradas debauched and iniquitious presidency in the eyes of the activist middle class, the
Catholic Church hierarchy and big business. But discovery of electoral manipulation and a
number of high profile scandals made Arroyo an apostate of reform, setting the stage for the
renewed reformism of candidate and then president, Benigno Aquino, III. While skeptics will
doubt the importance of such narratives, they are crucial marketing tools in understanding why
certain candidates were successfully elected and why their presidencies were considered
successes or failures.
Interests, a second component of Skowroneks understanding of a presidential regime,
also need to be understood differently in the Philippines than the US. Given the fact that most of
the population is poor and relatively powerless, strategic groups in the Philippines stand out
more starkly than what C. Wright Mills once called the power elite in the US (Mills 1956).
The focus on the Philippine presidency three strategic groups (big business, the Catholic Church
hierarchy, middle class activists) or four if the military is counted. Three of these groups are
officially outside the government, though they have close ties to the state and often the
representatives of the first and third groups take high ranking positions in presidential cabinets.
Business holds the key to successful economic development and its support is of obvious
significance to a successful presidency. But major business leaders have usually proved
laggards in political activism related to the presidency, for example being slow to turn against
Estrada and only abandoning Arroyo for candidate Aquino when her presidency was nearing

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its end. The Catholic Church hierarchy, politicized during the anti-Marcos struggle (Youngblood
1991; Barry 2006), has continued to exercise great influence in the post-Marcos period. It was a
crucial ally in the anti-Estrada coalition, but did not abandon Arroyo when she faced growing
middle class-led opposition, helping save her presidency (here a clientelist-style analysis may
prove useful given allegations of Arroyo giving cash bribes and luxury vehicles to key bishops).
In the second Aquino presidency the Catholic Church hierarchy has led a high profile campaign
against a relatively tame reproductive health bill (which does not touch the absolute ban on
abortion, only promoting sex education and contraceptive availability). While the church
hierarchy has threatened Aquino for pushing and passing the bill with a withdrawal of support
over this issue it has not really abandoned his presidency as it once did Estradas, despite some
weak attempts to support pro-life candidates during the current mid-term congressional
elections and more successful efforts to influence the Supreme Court. Middle class activists are
the most volatile and easily mobilizable strategic group in the Philippines. Strong supporters of
Cory Aquino and Ramos, they turned against Estrada after several major corruption scandals.
After a brief political romance with Arroyo, they turned on her following scandals regarding
electoral manipulation and major government projects like lovers scorned. But without major
business, church, or military allies, their weakness was revealed as Arroyo was able to survive in
power to the end of her term. But under the second Aquino administration they again have found
(as of this writing) a president middle class activists strongly support.
The military seems to be another key strategic group, particularly given its fire power
and ability to overthrow a government single handedly, but this is often misleading. In the postMarcos period this has sometimes occurred through the military hierarchy (the withdrawal of top
generals support for Estrada) or against the hierarchy (lower officer-led coup attempts against
Cory Aquino or Gloria Macapagal Arroyo). But in the Philippine case, the military (and in many
other cases as well) military rebels have worked closely with other groups to challenge
unpopular regimes. For example, military rebel leaders were linked with Marcos loyalists or proEnrile forces during coup attempts against Cory Aquino (Tiglao et al 1990). The previously
mentioned (unholy) trinity of the Church, business, and middle class activists took the initiative
in people power II which the military hierarchy only gradually came to support (Lande 2001).
Middle class activists worked with military rebels in the coup attempts against Arroyo (Walsh
2006). But when the three major strategic groups big business, the Church, and activists have

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17

been lined up in favor of a regime, such as during Ramos presidency and now during the second
Aquino presidency all has been quiet on the military front.
The final element of Skowroneks presidential regime, political institutions, is hardest to
conceptualize clearly in the Philippine case. While the US has a constitutional arrangement that,
with minor modifications, spans over two centuries, the Philippines is a recently democratizing
country. Though it has a long institutional record of presidentialism that can be traced backed to
the Commonwealth era (and before that to the short-live Philippine Republic that began in 1899),
the current national institutional set up of which the presidency is the cornerstone has been quite
unstable, as coup attempts and people power coups suggest. Another important difference to
the US system is the rarity of a conflict in the Philippines between the presidency and the
legislature due to the prevalence of patronage (the failure of such patronage toward the end of
Estradas presidency being a key exception). But courts, and particularly the Supreme Court,
have increasingly stood in the way of presidential ambition. One notable case was the striking
down of a president Arroyos initiative to negotiate peace with armed Muslim secessionists in
Mindanao in 2008. More recently, the second Aquino administration has waged institutional war
against the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who was a midnight appointee of his hated
predecessor and who led the court in blocking key early Aquino administration initiatives. His
removal by House impeachment and conviction at a Senate trial was precedent setting in
Philippine politics. Recently the court has delayed the implementation of the Reproductive
Health act, suggesting it remains the only significant institutional obstacles to Aquinos
presidency. In short, the Philippine presidency faces few institutional constraints under most
circumstances (it is telling that even Estrada though demonized by his elite detractors could not
be removed constitutionally from power).
Conclusion
This paper has argued that a presidents relationship to the existing presidential regime
is crucial in understanding the perception of a particular presidency. The following
categorization of the post-Marcos presidents according to this timing of their presidencies was
offered: the clock was started by Cory Aquino as the regime founder; Estrada tried to pre-empt
reformism with a populist narrative (and was driven from power by a yellow mob for his
efforts); Arroyo was meant to be another reformist president, but turned out to be an apostate
(largely due to the manipulations she undertook to defeat the populist challenge of Estrada and

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then FPJ); the orthodox innovators of the reformist regime, to use Skowroneks terminology,
were Ramos and Nonoy Aquino - both made reformism the centerpiece of their narrative and
established a reputation as clean presidents (even if it is probably undeserved).
This kind of relational analysis helps solve some of the riddles of the post-Marcos
presidency. In terms of the economys performance, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was perhaps the
most successful president as economic growth and other indicators were highest during her
presidency (BizNews 2009). Yet polls show she could not literally buy popularity on the
contrary, she was the most unpopular president since Marcos. Of course, advocates of the
presidential style school would claim that she had made major errors in the political realm,
which she surely did. But those errors were not necessarily greater than some of her predecessors
or even her successors (corruption scandals, for example, have plagued all post-Marcos
presidential administrations). But the perception of her presidency as measured by opinion polls
was highly negative. Conversely, the presidential performance of Corazon C. Aquino both in
economic terms (the lowest growth of any post-Marcos presidency) and politically (the greatest
instability) was, in any reasonably objective terms, quite poor. Her popularity did sink during her
presidency, but remained always remained positive, putting her performance slightly above
Ramoss and far above Arroyos (SWS 2009). In both the negative case of Arroyo (and one
should add Estrada here who was one of the most widely attacked presidents for corruption), and
the positive one of Cory Aquino, suggest success is less related to presidential style than it is to
a presidencys point in political time. Cory founded a new reformist political regime and
enjoyed legitimation from being seen as the Marcos slayer and having started a new political
order. Even though she was often a weak and indecisive leader, economic growth was slow or
sometimes negative during her administration, there were corruption scandals involving her
relatives and friends, and numerous coup attempts against her rule were launched, her taking
power at the beginning of the current reformist time in the Philippines goes far to explaining
her popularity throughout her time in office. Arroyo, by contrast, was an apostate to this
reformist regime as she had resorted too much to patronage, bossism, and outright electoral
manipulation to win re-election in 2004 (exposed in the hello Garci tapes that appeared to
approve the administrations collusion with notorious Mindanao warlords, the Ampatuans, in
fixing voting in parts of Mindanao that may have proved decisive in her re-election). Although
clearly an intelligent and decisive leader who presided over nearly 10 years of continuous high

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19

economic growth, Arroyo was the most unpopular president because she was seen as betraying
the reformist regime.
This leads back to the clientelist view of the Philippine presidency. Being seen as too
closely part of the (inherently corrupt by moralist standards), clientelist system can be very
harmful to a presidents popularity, as we have seen in the case of Arroyos presidency.
Presidential candidates perceived as machine politicians (Mitra, de Venecia, etc) also suffered
severe electoral harm from it. While Arroyo may have been able to sufficiently manipulate the
clientelist/bossist system to insure her re-election it was at the cost of her popularity. Political
machinery was however not enough for candidates who had a better image with voters.
Political marketing has no place in clientelist theory. But it is used by candidates when making
their narrative appeals to voters. In the post-Marcos Philippines, an anti-corruption,
reformist narrative and populist, pro-poor appeals have been the most effective ones. A
strong narrative is the key to being elected president. Once in the presidency however, a
president with a populist narrative that runs up against the established reformist regime faces
great difficulties. It is in this structural context that the failure of the Estrada presidency can
best be explained - Estrada was removed from office after mass middle class-led demonstrations,
a military withdrawal of support and the Supreme Courts legitimation of this unconstitutional
transfer of power. The problem that the Estrada faced was not primarily his loss of control over
the patronage system in Congress as has been argued; rather it was that his populist narrative
aroused virulent opposition from the key strategic groups behind the reformist regime (big
business, the Catholic Church hierarchy, and parts of the military). Using corruption as an
excuse (corruption which was widespread in administrations before and after Estrada), a middleclass led people power coup removed Estrada from office and attempted to restore the
reformist narrative to the presidency. But when Arroyo was seen to have betrayed this reformist
legacy, Nonoy Aquino effectively used it as a foil to restore this good governance narrative. His
thus far popular presidency (measured in opinion polling) has been successful not primarily
because of the economys performance (which initially lagged behind Arroyos impressive
macro-economic record) but because it has adopted the symbolism of good governance and
demonstrated good intentions of undertaking political reform widely seen as appropriate to this
existing regime formation.

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20

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