In Search of Credible Elections and Parties: The Philippine Paradox 51 In the second model, an – 'accountability view'— “…elections serve to hold governments responsible for the results of their past actions. Because they anticipate the judgment of voters, governments are induced to choose policies that in their judgment will be positively evaluated by citizens at the time of the next election” (Manin et al. 1999: 29). These authors also agree that these two views of elections are not necessarily exclusive since citizens can use their vote to choose policies and politicians (mandate view), to sanction the incumbent (accountability view) or vote simultaneously in both ways. However, they also concede that both views of elections are problematic. They point out that “representation is an issue because politicians have goals, interests, and values of their own, and they know things and undertake actions that citizens cannot observe or can monitor only at a cost” (Manin et al. 1999: 29). James Fearon provides a third approach to understanding elections as a mechanism of democratic governance by arguing that these should not be seen as mechanisms of accountability or sanctioning devices. Instead, elections serve simply as “opportunities to choose a 'good type' of political leader, one who would act on their behalf independent of reelection incentives” (1999: 56). As Fearon notes, some examples of this kind of behavior would be the privileging of charisma in the choice of leaders or simply voting on the basis of warm feelings for a candidate. There exists a variety of both objective and subjective signals and measures about candidates in distinguishing between “good and bad types”. Fearon also agrees that viewing elections in terms of selection of good types is not incompatible with the sanctioning perspective since “successfully selecting for good types implies sanctioning bad types”. These three views on elections all share the assumption that when citizens cast their vote, they are acting largely as free, independent, individuals in processes that are free and fair. However, these views on elections do not systematically take into account the social and political constraints that may in fact deter citizen-voters from expressing their preferred electoral choices or the structural constraints that limit choices to begin with. These constraints on voters' electoral choices are all too real in societies where power relationships are acutely unequal as seen in deeply rooted patronage-client ties or in the use of force and coercion by powerful elites to elicit desired political outcomes. Hence, elections may in fact function primarily to legitimize the rule by powerful elites skilled in the use of material incentives, co-optation and coercion.