xii Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition character of their demonstrably non-democratic regime. Even among those who actually are trying to help democratize nondemocratic polities, there is much danger in passing off struggling democratization initiatives as already substantially successful and offering a close equivalent to a functional democracy. Many of the polities now described as "democracies" reect much disorientation when citizens try to square their nominal status as a democracy with the realities of their political life: frequent emasculation of their electoral processes, the numerous violations of their human rights, their long tradition of popular immiseration and continuing deterioration in their quality of life and, above all, the glaring nonaccountability of predatory authorities basking in impunity. Many of those who err in the liberal identication of democratization with democracy may plead a desire to motivate the authorities as well as the citizenry towards deepening their democratic commitments. While their intention might be commendable in some cases of polities initially trying to democratize, political mythmaking – particularly those employing "noble lies" -- has a long history of incompatibility with sustainable democratic development. Indeed one might recall in this regard the old adage that the road to perdition is paved with good intentions. Much better, it appears to the authors of the present volume, to hew closer to the truth – la verità effetuale della cosa (the effectual truth of the matter) in Machiavelli's words – as it is this truth that probably will free people from predatory politics and help them nd their way into freedom and democracy. It is in the context of these deliberations that the present authors explore the absorbing issue of whether the Philippines qualies as a modern democracy. After devoting a full chapter on the issue of conceptualizing and measuring democracy, seven more chapters follow in which structural-processual probes are focused on several dimensions of Philippine democratization. The formal, constitutional and the operational, historical dynamics of the Philippine executive, the legislature and the judiciary are explored in a chapter probing the likelihood of horizontal accountability – a democratizing outcome – arising to mitigate the preeminence of the executive in Philippine governance. Vertical accountability, another democratizing element, is also considered by other chapters in the present volume examining the historical record of elections, political parties, media and civil society; these institutions are looked into and their historical effects and future implications for political participation, public accountability, dynastic politics and democratic decentralization are assessed. The critical role that an uncompromised media could play in anchoring democratization initiatives on truth-oriented, responsive and responsible public information and communication is also a major interest of the present volume. A most provocative study included in this volume looks into the issue of how Filipino children and young adults learn about democracy, an acknowledgement of the important role that political socialization play in