Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy 23 Redistribution"—that more ambitiously offers "a unified model" deriving the distribution of different political regimes from the distribution—and effective redistribution—of economic and political resources at some given time in some given setting. A unified theory of political transition obviously necessarily involves exploring redistributive operations and, if the transition is to succeed, redistributive outcomes.) Finally, in suggesting how the measurement of democracy and democratization might be improved, perhaps only one more note might be struck: the greater use of perception data generated by survey research in democracy studies. While not a novel idea or historical development, the greater utilization of subjective data by academics serves notice that the very science of democratic research has democratized, that is to say, the very subjects—the people acknowledged to be the ultimate sovereign in democratic polities—are able to find their voice and make it a critical part of the vital public enterprise seeking to know more and understand better the dynamics of democracies worldwide. C. The Philippines as a Democratic Polity As an academic, this author is intrigued by the views of professional political scientists, Filipinos as well as others (Abueva 1991; Quimpo 2008; Hutchcroft and Rocamora 2003; Lande 2001; O'Donnell 2009), that post-war Philippines has been governed largely democratically in the postwar period. Given the enduring political and economic stresses that define the country's history as one of lingering underdevelopment, a highly skewed resource distribution indicative of oligarchic factors at work, open authoritarian periods of governance, persisting armed rebellions, high levels of graft and corruption and what has been generally perceived lately as " a culture of impunity" in governance, it would be gratifying to discover the reason for considering the country as a democracy or— however unsettling the possible reality might be — a non-democracy and, most probably, a non-democratic oligarchy. C.1 Democracy Definitions and a Problematic Governance History Admittedly, the country has a relatively long tradition of formal democracy confirmed by numerous constitutional and statutory provisions stipulating the character of its political institutions and the processes of governance. Despite this democratic façade, however, the dynamic operations of its politics demonstrably hew closer to oligarchic rather than democratic lines before, during, and even after Marcos.