Episode 26: Yellow Alert! How do you address populism?

In the first part of this series, we showed how the weakening of democratic institutions in the country can be traced to the establishment of neoliberal economic policies, which have given rise to a populist backlash. 

The Philippine debt driven, crony capitalist growth of the 1970s under Pres. Marcos led to the IMF prescribed austerity measures of the 1980s under Pres. Cory Aquino and the globalist trend of the 1990s under Pres. Fidel Ramos. The Philippine state and its economy was too weak for the state to say no to the imposition of policies from external lenders.

This led to a populist backlash from the left in 1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. The election of Pres. Joseph Erap Estrada was a response to the austerity under which  the government had to spend more on debt service than education contrary to our constitutional provisions. It was also based on Erap’s charisma and cult of personality.

Episode 16: Mahathir's Malaysia and the virtues of a parliamentary system

Malaysian PM Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad's visit to Manila in March 2019 has inevitably led some people to draw comparisons between the two nations. Malaysia follows a federal parliamentary system while the Philippines is unitary and presidential. They have reached a level of economic progress that the Philippines can only aspire to. How did they do it?

In this podcast we look at key differences between the two systems, and try to answer the question, would a shift to a parliamentary system benefit the Philippines. We avoid the chicken-and-egg question of what should come first: culture change or structural change? We do this by differentiating the incentives under either system and show how that shapes behavior and eventually the culture.

Read the transcripts of the show here.