Conceptualizing and Measuring Modern Democracy 29 FIGURE 2 CHANGES IN THE RESPONDENTS' PERSONAL QUALITY OF LIFE (June 1999 to July 2016/Philippines) people believed that a second Aquino administration meant QOL improvements were forthcoming. Even congenitally hopeful, perhaps even desperately hopeful, Filipinos do learn from their oft-painful history. "Democratic" or otherwise, governance regimes in the Philippines had not worked to improve the material life of most Filipinos. Though a lucky few denitely had their quality of life tremendously improved, the great majority remained handicapped by poverty. (This particularly good fortune for a selected few continued whether the national economy was doing well or faring badly.) The same surveys cited above also capture another indicator of failed political and economic "democratic" administration: the huge number of Filipinos who attest to their being "poor" or "very poor." Across the years, roughly 6 to 7 out of 10 Filipinos self-rate themselves as such (see Figure 3). While the Pulse Asia chart below shows the record of public perceptions only for the past fteen years, other survey data exist showing that this telling statistic has remained virtually the same from Marcos through Aquino to Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo and yet another Aquino.
A pragmatic lesson could be learned from this monitoring of the public pulse. If the delineation of a political system must be appreciated beyond its formal attributes, i.e. if the truly dening character of a polity were understood