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LATEST ISSUES
LSIG WPS NO. 2022-01
The Legacy of the kilusang bagong lipunan: authoritarian Contamination in Philippine party politics
Julio C. Teehankee
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One of the puzzling outcomes in most countries that underwent democratic transitions is the return to power of parties and personalities who have deep roots in the dictatorship. Ferdinand Marcos’ authoritarian regime destroyed the postwar two-party system and institutionalized a dominant presidential party. Marcos organized the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) to consolidate authoritarian rule and serve as a focal point to dispense patronage to local warlords and political clans. Recent literature on authoritarian vestiges has focused on the rise of “authoritarian successor parties” or parties rooted in the dictatorship that has successfully transitioned into electoral democracy and the preponderance of “authoritarian diasporas” or the migration of party elites identified with the dictatorship into multiple parties post-democratic transition. This paper introduces another variant – “authoritarian contamination” personalities closely identified with fallen authoritarian infecting or contaminating “democratic parties” (i.e., parties that struggled against authoritarianism or were founded in its aftermath to consolidate democratic gains). This paper will delineate how political successors and defectors from the KBL have contaminated Philippine electoral democracy and party competition in the three decades since the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship.
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Julio Cabral Teehankee is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at De La Salle University where he served as Chair of the Political Science Department (1994-2007); Chair of the International Studies Department (2008-2013); and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (2013-2017). He also served as President of the Philippine Political Science Association (2017-2019) and the Asian Political and International Studies Association (2009-2011). Currently, he is the Philippine representative to the Council of the International Political Science Association. He is also the Regional Manager of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) for Southeast Asia. He is a Senior Fellow and former Director of the La Salle Institute of Governance (LSIG). He appears regularly as a political analyst for local and international media outlets and his YouTube channel – “Talk Politics with Julio Teehankee.”