Militarizing Governance: Informal Civil–Military Relations and Democratic Erosion in the Philippines

Abstract

This chapter concentrates on addressing the following question: Is the Philippine military socially, politically and economically embedded to the point that civil–military relations cannot be viewed as a gap between civilian and military elements? It argues that the shift of the military’s original reformist stance favouring democratic civilian control towards a more politicized disposition can be explained by two interrelated structural factors. The first is the presence of informal institutions such as the militarization of civilian structures and the traditional reliance on the military regarding security matters. Their competing, substitutive and latent nature profoundly provide political autonomy to the military despite the presence of formal civilian control guaranteed by laws and institutions. The second factor is the erosion of the country’s democratic regime instigated by a populist leader. The chapter discusses how the interaction of these two structural factors influenced the current civil–military imbalance based on different sources, including an original survey of members of the Philippine strategic community comprising uniformed personnel from the country’s security sector as well as government officials, researchers and academics representing the civilian sector. This non-random elite survey reveals the polarized perceptions and evaluations of the respondents on the state of civil–military relations under Duterte.