PolGov Week 6 Lesson

Philippine Politics and Governance

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​CONCEPT, ROLE, AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF CIVIL SOCIETIES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TO PHILIPPINE DEMOCRACY

by Miss Salonga

​Philippine Politics and Governance Week 6

​Civil society refers to the space for collective action around shared interests, purposes and values, generally distinct from government and commercial for-profit actors.

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Civil society includes charities, development NGOs, community groups, women's organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, social movements, coalitions and advocacy groups.

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Civil society groups include the following:

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1) Non-governmental Organizations, which are “intermediate agencies and institutions that tend to operate with a full-time staff complement and provide a wide-range of services to primary organizations, communities,

and individuals” (Aldaba, 1993: 3-5; Silliman and Noble, 1998: 4-5)

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2) People’s organizations, which are bona fide associations of citizens with demonstrated capacity to promote public interest and with identifiable leadership, membership, and structure.

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​​​3) Cooperatives, which are organized to meet common economic and social needs through the operation of a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise.

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4) Homeowners associations, which consist of groups whose members include families and households living in the same community, (i.e., common area such as a residential subdivision or condominium), the objectives of which are to uplift the welfare of their members

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​​A non-stock corporation is an organization or association in which no part of its income is distributed as dividends to its members, trustees, or officers and in which profits incidental to operations are used only to further the organization’s purpose. Under the Philippine Corporation Code, non-stock organizations are formed for charitable, religious, educational, professional, cultural, literary, scientific, social, civic service, or similar purposes.

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Examples include chambers of trade, of industry, or agriculture and the like, or any combination of these services.

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​A social movement consists of several people organized and coordinated to achieve some task or a collection of goals, often the participants are interested in bringing about social change. Compared to other forms of collective behavior, movements have a high degree of organization and are of longer duration.

​​Doug ​McAdam used the term “political process model” to designate the theory of movement emergence sketched in his 1982 book, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. In the book, he posed the theory as an alternative to two other perspectives.

​The first was what he referred to as the “classical strain model,” at the time best exemplified by the “collective behavior” perspective. But McAdam also critiqued and sought to distinguish his model from the newer resource mobilization framework.

​Over time the distinction between these two perspectives has been blurred by incorporating elements of both into a more general theoretical synthesis that emphasizes the simultaneous importance of “political opportunities,” “mobilizing ,” and “framing processes.”