Grassroots democracy and development: Learning from the Philippines

Introduction

Many of the poorest and most vulnerable urban communities in the Philippines show unusual pride in, and attachment to, their neighbourhoods. They are also unexpectedly hospitable to strangers and happy to show them around their settlements. We were surprised by our positive reception on a recent study tour of nine marginalised neighbourhoods in two cities – Manila and Batangas. This short article examines what lies behind the sanguine attitude and spirit apparent within these communities.

The foundations seem to lie in a unique Philippine institution that has been invigorated in recent years – the barangay. This currently constitutes the lowest of four tiers of government, but dates back at least five centuries (Porio and Roque‐Sarmiento, 2019). There are over 42,000 barangays in the country, ranging in size from around 500 to 5000 residents. Each comprises a small group of elected leaders (the barangay captain and other councillors), supported by a larger group of appointed officials. The barangays foster local democracy, more responsive service delivery and community engagement in civic affairs.

The strength of neighbourhood government in the Philippines is unusual in the global South. Many countries have street committees or other informal governance arrangements at this level. However, they lack the extent of state support, legal safeguards and legitimacy of the barangays. This includes leadership elections every three years and guaranteed resource allocations from national government to fund a range of public goods and services and to protect vulnerable groups from various harms and disasters.

These functions are vital in rapidly urbanising regions subject to multiple pressures and risks. Throughout the world, marginal populations live in unauthorised settlements, occupy precarious jobs and informal livelihoods, and encounter serious threats to their well-being. They are often shunned by decision-makers and face intense competition for land, housing and other scarce resources. These problems are acute in metropolitan Manila because of the scale of population growth in a region beset with major environmental, economic and social hazards (Porio, 2014; Porio and Crisol, 2004). Neighbourhood governments like the barangays can give poor and excluded groups a voice in decision-making and offer practical assistance to make them more secure.

Barangay origins and development

The barangays originated as autonomous political units governing rural villages before the Spanish colonised the Philippines from 1565 (Porio and Roque-Sarmiento, 2019). They were initially very small and comprised only 30–100 families. During the Spanish occupation, they were gradually co-opted for the purposes of social control and coercion – enabling powerful interests to dominate the weak. The strength and wealth of selected compliant families within each entity became entrenched. The barangays were used to promote the Catholic church and to collect taxes, rather than to empower ordinary people or involve them in meaningful decision-making.

Manipulation of the barangays by colonial powers and subsequent highly centralised Filipino governments reached its peak during the years of martial law (1972–1986). They were used by the authoritarian regime of Ferninand Marcos to replace the existing formal system of local government and to support his agenda of strengthening elites, cultivating sympathetic political factions and suppressing any potential forces of opposition (Rood, 1998). The barangays were unable to resist the centralising tendencies of the regime and too narrowly configured to promote the interests of their communities in economic and social development.

The overthrow of the Marcos regime in 1986 led to the reintroduction and considerable enhancement of local government. The barangays were also reinforced as neighbourhood institutions, partly through democratisation for the first time. This involved subjecting their leaders to regular elections to avoid perpetuating family dynasties. Leaders were required to be independent and not aligned to established political parties. The barangays were also formalised as discrete territorial units rather than more nebulous and overlapping political clans. State funding for them was guaranteed through a transparent formula (the Internal Revenue Allotment) based on their land area and population, in order to eclipse the previous systems that were steeped in patronage, nepotism and favouritism (Rood, 1998).

Today, roughly two-thirds of their budgets come from government transfers. The rest is raised from local sales taxes, service charges and fees, which confers useful autonomy. The barangays also have some influence over wider municipal plans and programmes through a consultative forum or council created in each local authority jurisdiction. Within each neighbourhood, public assemblies are held every six months to promote transparency and accountability to local citizens. Accountability upwards is pursued through compulsory reporting of plans and activities to municipal authorities.

These reforms were institutionalised in the landmark 1991 Local Government Code (Philippines Government, 1991) and the 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act. These established the barangays as a separate tier of decentralised government intended to deepen democracy and erode the dominance of traditional political families and other local elites (Porio and Roque-Sarmiento, 2019). Most observers have applauded the way this process has devolved power and resources from the centre, encouraged citizen participation and inserted local priorities into basic service delivery, albeit with some qualifications (Rood, 1998; Asian Development Bank, 2005; Porio, 2012).

Virtues of the barangay

The formal powers and resources of the barangays are modest compared with those of municipalities and provinces. They cover elementary healthcare, nutrition and welfare services, solid waste collection and recycling, everyday maintenance of local roads and water infrastructure, and basic recreational facilities and information services (Philippines Government, 1991). The number of staff employed to deliver these services varies between about 20 and 100 depending on the size of the barangay. Many of these staff are paid an allowance rather than a substantial salary, which means that they tend to be motivated by their commitment to the community rather than their remuneration.

The real significance of these services goes beyond the benefits to households in alleviating poverty, because they also help to unleash the agency of individuals and to foster community cohesion. Residents are drawn together to discuss local needs and priorities, and to make decisions about how the budget should be spent to fill gaps in existing service provision. Grassroots participation conveys responsibility, fosters local ownership of public resources and encourages popular support and voluntary action. We came across many members of the community who give willingly of their time to organise social events and to take part in initiatives that one might characterise as ‘place-making’. Refuse collection and recycling schemes are widespread, with the result that most streets and alleyways are litter-free and there is little graffiti visible. Every neighbourhood also seems to have some kind of basketball court, reflecting the national pastime. In short, there appear to be many active citizens committed to supporting their neighbours and enhancing their living environments.

Each barangay has its own offices within the neighbourhood offering support around the clock. These are hives of activity where local residents and officials interact and exchange information. People share their concerns, build relationships and make plans for the future. They identify urgent problems and provide mutual support and protection for specific individuals and groups at risk of harm and anti-social behaviour. The resulting connections seem to strengthen the fabric of the community and enable it cope with disasters and adapt to changing circumstances. In this way, the barangays provide a level of social organisation that can come in useful to resist external threats to the neighbourhood, to challenge powerful interests or to channel the ideas and energy of local residents in constructive directions.

One of the common threats faced by many poor communities is eviction and relocation. They often occupy vacant land or derelict buildings in well-located areas but without official authorisation. Some of these settlements are low lying and vulnerable to flooding. Others are on land earmarked for redevelopment or dangerously close to railway lines and freeways. Forced evictions were common in the past, but the law has since been changed to offer squatters some protection. The most effective mechanism for resisting relocation is a well-organised community with well-connected leaders who can use their legal rights to lobby against this. Some settlements are also able to mobilise backing from religious and business communities. We visited one area where a partnership with the Catholic church enabled a river-side informal settlement to be redeveloped into several large blocks of subsidised housing.

The formal legal status of the barangays is also important because of the recognition and respect this gives to marginalised communities. The psychological benefits of this may be even more important than the material benefits. Low-income residents seem to understand that they are more like partners than subordinates, and that they have a chance to influence decision-making and hold service providers to account. The validation of these communities by the standing of the barangays appears to instil a sense of dignity and belonging among local residents. Despite their visible deprivations and improvised dwellings, people seem to be relaxed about welcoming visitors into their homes and discussing their neighbourhood experiences.

Drawbacks and concerns

There are three apparent limitations of the barangay system. First, despite the electoral safeguards and financial protections, the institution still seems to be open to manipulation and partisanship (Porio, 2012). The extent to which this occurs requires more extensive research. Strong political families and other elites manage to co-opt the barangays in some places and to sustain traditional patronage networks at the expense of more democratic practices. It appears that some city authorities and mayors can still demand that the barangay plans follow their own plans and programmes. They can dispense favours and supplementary resources in ways that make it difficult for the barangays to shape their own agendas. This tendency in some cities and neighbourhoods seems to stifle local initiative, undermine local accountability and corrode citizen participation in decision-making.

Second, the capacity of the barangays to tackle some of the serious problems in their neighbourhoods is constrained by their restricted staffing and resources. Many of the low-income settlements suffer from obvious infrastructure shortfalls, degraded environments and resulting pollution. Inadequate sewage systems and storm-water drains are among the most acute and widespread hazards affecting the quality of life, especially given the incidence of flooding and storm surges in low-lying areas (Porio, 2011). The barangays also do not seem to do very much to improve vocational skills or to support efforts to create jobs, enterprises and livelihoods for local residents. In addition, we came across few attempts by these organisations to collect original evidence to document the hardships and suffering in their communities. Such information would help to bolster the case for more determined action by other spheres of government to tackle poverty and exclusion. Put simply, it appears that the barangays could do more to look outwards and cooperate with other organisations to address these challenges.

Third, the barangays do not seem to take the need for substantial physical improvements to their neighbourhoods sufficiently seriously. The options facing informal settlements often seem to boil down to a choice between relocation to the urban periphery, which may be 30–50 km away, and maintaining the status quo. This is clearly too limited. Many of the barangays representing well-organised communities seem able to resist relocation indefinitely. Their sense of belonging and attachment to the place means they object to moving elsewhere, far from the livelihood opportunities and amenities that they depend upon. However, the result is that they are confined to the existing state of affairs, with little prospect of transforming their living environments through in situ upgrading and reconstruction.

Some of these neighbourhoods are severely overcrowded and lack essential public services, internal roads and open spaces. They need physical restructuring to improve connectivity, ventilation and general public health. Plots need realignment to allow for more efficient building layouts and the installation of underground infrastructure. Some of the dwellings are only one- or two-storeys tall, despite being in highly accessible central city locations. Bearing in mind the potential value of the land, there appear to be excellent opportunities to consolidate separate sites, and to build upwards to create multi-storey structures, with space for income-generating activities on the ground floor. This would release some land for public infrastructure, social circulation, business premises and retail spaces in a process known elsewhere as ‘land readjustment’ (UN-Habitat, 2013). The fact that barangay communities are reasonably cohesive and have democratically elected leaders should make the task of obtaining household consent and negotiating physical reconstruction easier than where communities are riven by mistrust and conflict. It requires the barangays to broaden their horizons and start engaging with the possibilities of land consolidation and settlement restructuring. Increasing security of tenure would be an additional benefit from this process, thereby encouraging households to invest more in improving their dwellings and the surroundings (Porio and Crisol, 2004).

Conclusions and implications

The Philippines have developed a system of neighbourhood government with many worthy features that other countries could learn a great deal from. The barangays give ordinary citizens a formal stake in decision-making and devolve power and resources from the centre. This may help to counter authoritarian tendencies in national politics and make it difficult for another autocratic regime to dominate in future. The barangays also enable basic services to be more responsive to diverse local needs and circumstances. Perhaps most important, the institution recognises the valuable contribution that communities can make to a vigorous civil society. The process of participation and meaningful engagement helps to harness the agency and resourcefulness of local residents and means that communities are better organised to stand together and cope with adversity.

Preliminary observations from a recent study tour of nine neighbourhoods in two cities suggest that the barangays could be further strengthened in several ways. The most obvious extension would be for them to take on board the physical drawbacks of their areas more explicitly. This would constitute an important social innovation. Although they lack formal powers over land and the built environment, they could do more to highlight the hazardous conditions facing residents and to campaign for additional investment in infrastructure and neighbourhood reconstruction. They could do this in collaboration with other organisations – universities to gather evidence and understanding, other government entities to secure resources and buy-in, landowners to get approval for restructuring, and perhaps even private developers and financiers to negotiate selective redevelopment schemes. The formal status and authority of the barangays gives them a solid foundation from which to form partnerships with other stakeholders and take direct action. It also confers considerable legitimacy to advocate for far-reaching improvements.

This prompts a final point, namely that the barangays cannot be expected to solve the challenges in their areas on their own and in isolation of broader policies and plans. City, provincial and national authorities need to accept greater responsibility for supporting their efforts and strengthening their capabilities. This is most important in the poorest neighbourhoods where the barangays face the greatest problems and have the fewest resources. Higher spheres of government need to find the right balance between enabling local actions and unduly influencing them. This means encouraging and affirming community-based initiatives and working closely in conjunction with them. It also means resisting the temptation to impose solutions on the community without effective local engagement.