Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy 33 Recapitulating the arguments against a reading of democratic governance in the Philippines, one winds up with the following observations, many already elaborated on in earlier parts of this essay and others more substantively discussed by writers collaborating with the author in the present study: 1. Subversion of the electoral process has been the rule rather than the exception during this period. 2. Oligarchic elites (political families and patrimonial clans) remain in control of local and national politics. 3. The leading formal institutions of governance have not worked to serve democratic ends: progressive constitutional reforms have not been enabled by law (the anti-political dynasty provision of the 1987 Constitution has been zombied by a legislature that after two decades has not passed the required enabling act); the executive's leading authorities have been vulnerable to charges of plunderous corruption and judicial politicization; the judiciary even at the levels of the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court is much tainted with politicization and corruption. 4. Political parties functionally speaking do not exist; party membership is taken lightly and sanction-free, nominal party-switching occurs with much regularity: clear, alternative party programs of governance have not materialized; personalities rather than issue orientations dominate party politics; party discipline hardly means anything to members of nominal parties. 5. Civil society groups as a whole have not succeeded in gaining enough influence, much less control, over the ruling, non-democratic elites as the latter politically manage the country. 6. Horizontal public accountability has been largely inoperative as indicated by the extent of government graft and corruption and the impressive absence of sanctions being successfully applied to their perpetrators; vertical public accountability is marginally effective as elections have been corrupted with impunity and co-optation of civil society groups has successfully been done by ruling administrations. 7. Human quality of life indicators do not show any marked improvement in the past 50 years; on the contrary, poverty levels remain high and resource distribution remains highly inequitable (the gini coefficient for income distribution has been particularly tacky at 0.445 to 0.465 and points to much inequity continuing whether the national economy had performed well or not).