52 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition electoral outcomes and three indicators of human development: income, health, and education. Not surprisingly, the elections between 1987 and 2010 provide a dramatic proof of the continuing dominance and resilience of “political families” in the country. Of the 77 provinces included in this study, 72 provinces or 94 percent have political families as dened in this study. (see Appendix 1 for the provincial and regional distribution). The average number of political families per province is 2.31 and the median is two. For the 13 landlocked provinces, the average number of political families is 1.69 with a median of 1.11 For the 17 “island provinces”, the average is 1.65 families and also a median of 1.12 Thus for both landlocked and island provinces, the number of political families tends to be smaller. Considering the more strict denition of a “political family” adopted in this chapter, these results still show a large number of such dominant political players. This study has also identied a total of 178 dominant political families of which 100 or 56 percent are old elites and 78 or 44 percent are new ones. The old political families trace their power base to the electoral politics of the postwar era, and sometimes to as far back as the colonial era. The new ones have emerged and prospered after the restoration of elections in 1987.13 In this study, I examine the applicability to the Philippine experience of the most widely used indicator employed by the procedure-oriented approaches to democracy to determine the presence of a democratic regime: “free, fair, and competitive elections”. While it is true that most procedural denitions of democracy include other key factors such as the guarantee of basic civil and political rights, the universality of the franchise, and civilian control over the military, I focus my analysis on the electoral process to dramatize the fact that even on the most minimal aspect of elections alone, the Philippines cannot qualify as a democratic regime.14 However, I also analyse the inrmities and dysfunctional operation of the party system in the country. By examining in detail the electoral processes and outcomes at the gubernatorial and congressional level from the 1987 to the 2010 elections,15 I provide concrete historical evidence showing that the Philippines fails to qualify as a democracy even from a mainly procedural denition of the concept. In the overall system of the public accountability of ofcials in a democratic regime, elections constitute the process of “vertical accountability” when citizens are enabled to choose their ofcials in “free, fair, and competitive” contests. O'Donnell reminds us that elections “…occur only periodically, and their effectiveness at securing vertical account-ability is unclear” (1998: 113). However, credible electoral contests can provide legitimacy to governments and become practicable way(s) of resolving conicts without bloodshed and violence (Przeworski 2003). As further argued by Diamond, with good elections, “People are more likely to express support for democracy when they