Preface xiii processual probes are focused on several dimensions of Philippine democratization. The historical dynamics of the Philippine executive, the legislature, elections, political parties and civil society are looked into and their historical effects and future implications for political participation, public accountability, dynastic politics and democratic decentralization are assessed. All four chapters provide summary evaluations of the Philippine historical record on quality of life developments. A fifth and final 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' final 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 not a democratic country, neither at this point in time nor sometime in the recent past. Whether a time frame of twenty-five or fifty 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 five decades. Even falling back on the simply procedural, minimalist conception of democratic governance provides no comfort to conscientious Filipino analysts. The historical record of Philippine elections attended by systematic and widespread violations of the laws governing their democratic conduct, the level of violence 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 officials before, during and after elections conspire against an assessment of the country as a practicing democracy. Predictably, when the more substantive conception of democracy in this study is applied to the Philippines, its claim to being a democracy erodes even more and inevitably shatters before the weight of historical evidence. The effective truth of the matter, again borrowing the Florentine's formidable language, is that seeking democratization in the Philippines in the past fifty years has been akin to chasing the wind. However, while their experience of failed democratization has been incredibly exhausting, serious democrats in the Philippines are not giving up on this worthy chase. They are not buckling down and accepting defeat in the light of demonstrably continuing nondemocratic, oligarchic rule. After all, to them as well as to the authors of this book, history is not necessarily inevitable destiny. The paramount challenge in a country where democracy has failed to develop is for its scholars and citizenry to candidly explore the objective reasons for its historical failure and then to