Philippine Democratization: Summing-up Key Conceptual, Institutional, and Developmental Issues 255 executives for their private ends, the sheer wastage of congressional “pork barrel” funds deployed for non-productive projects, and the unbridled corruption at all levels of government. Enhancing the Overall Process of Accountability and Regime Performance The path to successful democratization requires a minimum level of favorable socio-economic conditions and appropriate institutional accountability mechanisms (vertical, horizontal, and social). The assumed virtuous effects of appropriate institutions are best achieved under certain material factors such as better economic conditions and higher forms of social inclusiveness. However, such material conditions do not automatically lead to more effective accountability mechanisms in the same manner that well-crafted institutions do not also guarantee substantive material improvements in the life of the people. The challenge then for a successful and sustainable democratization is to identify thresholds of material progress that need to be achieved and the set of institutional mechanisms and political practices that will further advance and not stall or reverse the democratization process.5 Following our redenition of democracy, our rst caveat focuses on the need to ensure that our people get to experience a substantive improvement in the human quality of their lives in the process of democratization. In our historical experience, the oligarchy that had been in place at the time when formal representative institutions (elections at the local and national levels) were introduced during the American colonial era continue to be largely in power even while their sources of wealth have diversied. This is the material bases for the resilience of political dynasties that continue to dominate our electoral contests. Thus, unless we are able to signicantly undermine oligarchic power in our society and in turn empower the majority of the people, any claim to being a democracy remains hollow. Knowledge of the material bases of our oligarchic system and the emergence of a critical core of an empowered citizenry open up opportunities for nationstate building and in the process dispose of harmful institutions, strengthen useful ones, and craft new arrangements when necessary. It is in this context that we can then examine specic aspects of accountability mechanisms at all levels that can push forward the democratization process. As discussed in earlier chapters of the book, the vertical accountability mechanism as represented by the electoral process in modern democratic systems is the main formal path for the citizenry in accessing power through their elected representatives. As such elections should be as “free and fair” as much as possible in an environment where basic civil and political rights are also practiced and protected to enable the electorate to manifest their choices freely. Aside from the material encumbrances dramatized by widespread poverty and lack of education that magnify the vulnerability of the electorate to the machinations of powerful elites, there are electoral mechanisms that