24 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition Nations Development Program or the nationally-focused Philippine Human Development Report (PHDR) of the collaborating Human Development Network, show little progress when critically read. Across the decades, the national economy has grown mostly unimpressively in comparison with its more dynamic vicinal states. Furthermore and much more critically, this growth has not been attended by sufcient improvements in the living conditions of most Filipinos whether one considers the decades-long patterns of income distribution or people's access to health services, education and even basic nutrition.3 Poverty incidence has remained quite high and improvements suggested by proportional analysis cannot conceal the fact that the absolute number of poor people had markedly increased in the country. Thus a sense of systemic neglect, of numerous inequities and social injustice is shared by many who have been vulnerable to recruitment in destabilizing armed rebellions (HDN, 2002; HDN, 2005; HDN, 2009). Beyond the cited HDR and PHDR readings, the same pattern of less than impressive national performance on human development-related indicators is also reected by available Millenium Development Goals (MDG) monitors and current research on global poverty and middle income studies (UN [MDG Report], 2015; [Pew Research Center,] Kochlar, 2015). The persistence of Muslim and communist rebellions in the country marking both as among the most enduring insurgencies worldwide, together with periodic coup attempts by disgruntled military elements, testify to the high level of resentment smoldering among many Filipinos. Poverty and inequality, together with ethic conict and an increasingly resentful sense of being left grossly behind even as economies grow are among the reasons identied for why even democracies already in place fail (Kapustin and Converse, 2000:60-67). In polities where democracy has not yet established a secure foothold in, much less a rm embraces of, the body politic; these factors invariably prevent democracy from gaining even the most marginal toehold. The 2002 PHDR, identifying a core reason for the country's problematic economic growth, underscores the political factor but makes its point using low key language The 2002 report (HDN, 2002:13) restrainedly notes that: As a nal reason for the instability and low level of Philippine growth, one must point to the historical instability of the political process itself. Objectively speaking, formal political processes in the Philippines have been periodically challenged and subverted, for both good reasons and bad. The sources of instability have run the gamut from the usurpation of power by Marcos, to threats of armed rebellion, coups d'état, and, yes, even the two or three EDSA's. Such instances are found to be a powerful discouragement to both domestic and foreign investments since they often raise the prospect of wholesale changes in laws, policies and even individual contracts. At bottom, however, the record of large scale change in the Philippines must be traced to the failure of normal political institutions to accommodate and address what are deemed by signicant sectors of the population to be fundamental inequities and injustices.