152 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy private sector, a number of whom have also extended their reach into civil society, have by far more strings to pull in the halls of public policy making institutions. For civil society, this reality should lead the groups to reflect on an observation made many times that so far, the triumphs have been much more evident in the process than in the results (Isberto 1998). The limits of civil society's reach Attributing civil society's failure to facilitate substantive political and economic changes to the callousness of the state may end up to be nothing more than blame-shifting. Taking the state as necessarily infested with toxins, civil society must be able to attend to the factors that limit its own strengths, factors that have been recognized by many leaders and groups within. The first limitation is that many civil society groups are found to be “project- oriented.” Though the plethora of activities does indicate the span of reach of civil society groups, with many of the activities rolled over in the same communities or replicated in other communities, these initiatives have been time-bound, oriented towards specific rather than strategic goals, and external (either from larger NGOs or external funding agencies) fund dependent. One positive side of project-orientedness is that many of the initiatives that have clear or tangible outcomes are able to draw greater participation from the intended public because of the palpable benefits such as access to micro-credit, potable water, and the rehabilitation of production areas (be these idle lands taken over for agricultural production, and mangrove areas that are restored to improve aquatic resource imbalances), among others. We also do recognize that a number of these CSO projects involve participatory designs, from the formulation, implementation and monitoring/evaluation of project outcomes. However, these projects are intrinsically limited as they are difficult to scale up to link with strategic goals. Further, many development projects are found to be embroiled in what has been referred to as the paradox of participation (Cleaver 1999) with the link between project objectives versus broader goals (e.g., empowerment, popular participation) not clearly established or clarified among the project participants. A significant limitation of civil society is its “weight,” measured in terms of the pool of people that would provide it the muscle to force the state to act favorably on their advocacy or agenda. Against a state suffering from inertia, civil society must make its presence felt before politicians who could only be swayed to act when they know that their political futures are at stake and when their constituencies are organized and effectively linked with civil