112 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition brought forth substantive political and redistributive reforms in many polities, including the Philippines. One of the rst groups to stage protests during Martial law was a labor union that engaged in a strike in an alcoholic beverage rm. Unfortunately, in the last three decades, total union membership has declined. In 2014, total union membership stood at around 1.94 million less than half of the peak number of union members in the year 2000, when there were more than 3.7 million union members. Total union membership in 2014 represented just 8.7% of total wage and salary workers, down from a peak of 31% in 1994. The decline in union membership is due to a number of factors that include increasing capital mobility and global economic competition; a contracting manufacturing sector; the shift of the work force to services; labor only contracting; and the measures taken by corporations to prevent unionization (Aganon, Serrano and Certeza, 2009). One critical nding of Clarke (2013) points to the weakness of Philippine society. He observed that unlike the characterization of Coronel-Ferrer (1997) that Philippine civil society is a progressive arena dominated by NGOs and POs, Philippine “civil society is a diverse institutional space characterized by a wide range of organizations, often representing antagonistic, class based interests” and is dominated by “bonding” social capital, mutual benet organizations (MBOs) rather than “bridging” social capital, public benet organizations (PBOs). Issues and interventions Notwithstanding the limits borne by the preponderance of bonding CSOs, Philippine CSOs have been quite active in seizing opportunities for reform since the political transition in 1986. Reports and assessments of civil society interventions (Diokno 1997; Clarke 1998; Wui and Lopez 1997; Coronel 1997; Yu-Jose 2011) document the expanse of issues and interventions of civil society groups towards getting a redistributive reform policy formulated or seriously implemented; in stopping what is believed to be development aggression;3 or in countering what are arguably indicators of a slide towards overt repression or the abuse of power. All told, Philippine civil society, a force that played a critical role in the political transition, has not been demobilized after EDSA1. In the last 30 years we have seen CSOs exhibit episodic rebrand political activism, some zeal in community organizing and implementing development projects in urban and rural areas, and the openness to collaborate with each other as well as other players in the political and economic sphere, to secure the passage of important legislation. In the area of community and sector organizing, CSOs worked within the socalled democratic space to pick up the organizing initiatives in virtually all sectors—from the artisanal sherfolks to the more dispersed informal economy “workers” (street vendors, unafliated small transport operators), and persons with disabilities, to mention a few. The involvement of CSOs in communities is