Prologue xiii molding and fostering democratic mindsets in contrast to the dominant political culture's authoritarian predilections. All eight chapters, it may be observed, sound either a passing note or provide summary evaluations of the Philippine record on quality of life developments. A ninth and nal chapter, synoptically integrating these concerns and synergistically focusing their collective impact on the issue of the type of political regime demonstrably obtaining in the Philippines, concludes the book. The authors' nal verdict on the Philippine claim to democratic governance may disconcert most Filipinos and the majority of academics in the country. It is with much regret that the writers collaborating in this volume conclude that theirs is probably not a democratic country, neither at this point in time nor sometime in the recent past. Whether a time frame of twenty-ve or fty years is used in assessing the Philippines makes no difference; it has not advanced beyond formal democratic trappings and developed a working, modern democracy in the last ve decades. At best the illusion of democratic governance among most Filipinos is a reection of their strong aspiration for a democratic regime they have been systematically denied across the decades. Even falling back on the simply procedural, minimalist conception of democratic governance provides no comfort to conscientious Filipino analysts. Three of the nine chapters in this volume present a detailed reading of elections and election-related concerns. The historical record of Philippine elections attended by systematic and widespread violations of the laws governing their democratic conduct, the level of violence often attending the country's elections, the frequent manipulation of the electoral count at practically all levels of votereporting and the numerous, demonstrable corruption of many electoral ofcials before, during and after elections conspire against an assessment of the country as a practicing democracy. This regrettable electoral record is compounded by the fact that the main agency constitutionally tasked with the administration of the country's elections, the Commission on Elections, has been regularly tainted with inefciency, blatant illegality and a gross lack of transparency in its conduct of elections. Technological advances as in the case of automated elections appear not to have facilitated democratic elections; on the contrary, they have created patent vulnerabilities in the electoral process by facilitating systemic cheating and other irregularities, at greater public expense. The election-focused, minimalist formulation of democracy is further undermined by a historical combination of self-perpetuating, often impunityoriented, political families, permeable, unduly personalistic political parties and even ip-opping judicial readings at the highest levels regarding party list entitlement for the nation's demonstrably marginalized sectors. Predictably, when the more substantive conception of democracy in this study is applied to the Philippines, its claim to being a democracy erodes even