COMPARING DEMOCRACIES: INDONESIA AND THE PHILIPPINES

In Indonesia on the day of this talk, for the first time ever in that country, a directly elected president will be inaugurated to replace his also directly elected predecessor.  In the Philippines, in contrast, voters will go to the polls to elect their president on 9 May 2016 for the sixteenth time since 1935.  But this comparison is far too narrow to sustain a comparison of democracy’s present quality and future durability in these two countries.  Age could be a mere chronological achievement; a mature democracy could be moribund; and some argue that in both nations, overriding their different histories, crony capitalism continues to debilitate ostensibly accountable rule.  In his own assessment of democracy’s roots, results, and prospects in Indonesia and the Philippines, Prof. Mendoza will address, inter alia, these questions:  Which country is more democratic procedurally?  Which country is more democratic substantively, in terms of governance and performance?  And which country is more likely to remain democratic in times to come?  His answer to each of these questions will also call for explanation:  Why?  

Amado M. Mendoza, Jr. is a prominent political economy and policy scholar in the Philippines.  He was the lead investigator on the Philippines for the Global Integrity Report 2010.  More recent activities have included directing a course on the political dimensions of national security at the National Defense College of the Philippines and writing an on-line column at Interaksyon.com analyzing Southeast Asian issues and developments.  A piece in Iteraksyon on 6 October 2014, for example, highlighted tax compliance as a key requisite for improved governance in the Philippines.  As an unwilling alumnus of the detention centers of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s, Prof. Mendoza has a personal interest in democracy as well.