116 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition It is in long-haul battles that horizontal linkages falter, as it was in the case of the Congress for People's Agrarian Reform (CPAR). Faced with stiff opposition from a landed- elite packed Congress, CPAR, despite the noble efforts of some of its members, eventually dissolved due to differences in perspectives as to which track—state-directed or mass-movement based—must be taken. (Wui and Lopez 1997) In her own examination of Philippine civil society, Franco (Alagappa 2004) saw other sources of horizontal division as she states that: One fault line is between those who subscribe to the dominant elite view of the meaning and purpose of democracy and those who hold a more popular view…Among those subscribing to a popular view in more recent decades, however, disagreement over how to get there, inuenced in part by the difcult institutional obstacles associated with elite democracy, has created two broadly distinct currents concerned with system transformation…One current ows along a political-electoral reform path—seeking to promote system change by seizing power from a corrupt traditional political elite through political-electoral means. The other ows along a social reform path—aiming to promote change by exercising citizenship power in state policymaking and implementation. The fault line that Franco observes could be traced to an even earlier period when divisions, chiey ideological, existed among proponents of community development from the 1950s. (Cariño 2001) An NGO leader offers another perspective as to how CSOs are divided into four different groups across two axes—between people empowerment and leadership change, and between engaging the state or steering clear of it: One axis is really about working with communities, organizing and mobilizing them (people empowerment) and of focusing on leadership change through elections, formation, training (leadership change)…a second axis is about “engaging the state” and “not working with any of the state agencies”. (Macasaet 2011) In explaining this division, Macasaet categorizes CSOs into four clusters: 1. 2. 3. 4. People empowerment—state engagement People empowerment—non-engagement with the state Leadership change—state engagement Leadership change—non-engagement with the state These two characterizations of the fault lines or divisions within civil society mirror the common dilemmas among CSOs that should be resolved by reecting on the wealth of experience that CSOs have had in the last 25 years. The rst dilemma pertains to the decision of whether or not to engage the state, or by extension, hold the state, or its leaders, accountable. The second is with