Within the context of the late twentieth century, one of the most interesting political revolutions has been the attempt for the people of the Republic of the Philippines to establish a democratic government. Even a cursory overview of the previous authoritarian government in the Philippines, under the leadership of Ferdinand Marcos, shows that there were "progressive steps by which Marcos deliberately discarded the principles and practices of democracy and proclaimed martial law. Neither total power and total responsibility nor constitutional authoritarianism were any more successful than the traditional patterns of Philippines democracy in giving the people the security and standard of living they had a right to expect."1 It was left to the leadership of one Corazon Aquino, wife of democratic advocate Ninoy Aquino, who was assassinated in August, 1983, to help focus the country in the direction of democratic self determination. Of course, the political and economic problems that beset the Marcos regime are still present, and an urgent task in the Philippines is the restoration of law, order, and a system of democratic justice.
1 Claude A. Buss, "Cory Aquino and the People of the Philippines," (Stanford: Stanford Alumni Association, 1987), 2.
Under the rubric of the Philippines as a test case, this paper will begin by examining the theoretical origins of democracy in the modern world using the works of Dahl, Lipset, and Huntington. Once the theoretical basis is established, the paper will present a five part analysis of the Philippine Revolution, from the formative years, through the 1960s and 1970s, the rise of the Communist Party, the Marcos regime and responses to democratic reform, and finally the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and the rise of Cory Aquino and Philippine democracy. The concluding section of the paper will use the Philippine experience as related to Dahl, Lipset, and Huntington, and will then examine and an...