Reforming Institutions

When I hear the word “political institution” images of the Roman Coliseum and the Greek Parthenon come to my mind. To me they represent an entrenched arrangement of powers that governed their respective societies. Rome was not built in a day; neither did these powers spring overnight. Roman, Greek and present-day political institutions came to be after years of political and economic maneuvering. They will evolve after more of that.

Jaime Faustino defines political institutions as “rules of the game in a society - and the nature of political and power struggles that lie behind them”.  Some of the most powerful rules are formally legislated or ordered; many more, just as powerful, are unstated, assumed, and still strictly observed.  Like the rule that says you don’t give the politician’s relatives any problems when they apply for business permits. 

Informal rules often trump formal ones. The Local Government Code says national agencies can only implement projects that are endorsed by local governments. This may lead you to the mistaken idea that local governments determine what national government agencies do in the former’s turf. The reality is that Congressmen decide, more than any Local Development Council does, which projects gets funded by the national government. Specially infrastructure projects.

Institutional bias may be implicit. There is no law that says it should be more difficult for poorer citizens to secure titles for lands. But because procedures for titling, as established by laws and policy, have been difficult to understand, expensive, and took inordinately long periods of time, they have effectively discouraged those who did not have the education/information/knowledge, money, and time to get their lands titled.

Because of these biases, political institutions must be recognized, from the beginning, as political actors. They are neither objective nor neutral. They take sides. Or to paraphrase Mr Faustino, they tend to preserve a status quo or promote changes according to the inclinations of those who are powerful enough to control or influence them.

To which I must add, “or smart enough to influence them.”

Development Entrepreneurs are not as powerful as the forces behind political institutions, but they can be smarter.  DE’s know that the elite in this country is not one monolithic whole. It is instead a hodgepodge of fractious families, parties, businesses, constantly struggling to gain advantage over each other. Within the space constantly contested by factions of the elite, DE’s find the opportunity to implement reforms favoring the rest of the country.

To reform political institutions, DE’s must discern the political settlement behind institutional arrangements.  They must understand the “business model” by which some of the elite extract benefits from the system and divide the surplus among themselves. Understanding this requires astute political economy analysis, studying the way power and benefits flow within and outside the institution. DE’s have to see the code behind The Matrix.

Only then can he gains insights about possible areas of reform and postulate theories about technically correct and politically acceptable changes. He tests the theory; if it turns out to be correct, he pursues it further. If not, at least he has secured good data - mainly, that the theory does not hold water. He uses this information to look for another theory.

DE’s know better than to fight institutions alone. They form tactical alliances with individuals and organizations who want to achieve the same reforms. While he tests theories of reform, he must also keep intact his coalition of partners and fellow travelers - which, because they can come from different backgrounds and have varied approaches or styles, can be feel like herding cats.

The odds are not always in the DE’s favor, but sometimes circumstances accelerating desired reforms just happen to fall into place. Mr Faustino calls these events “reform conjunctures”. These are seemingly random events, usually not instigated by the DE’s or their allies. Like when a President fails to contact a female acquaintance who’s subscribed to a different telco, which led to policies mandating interconnectivity among the telcos. Or when another President needed to court the Mindanao vote, giving advocates of Roll-on Roll-of transport systems an entry point to push for a “nautical highway” (the RoRo system allows Mindanao farmers and businessmen to bring their produce to Manila at greatly reduced cost).

These then are three things needed to reform political institutions: discernment of the political economy behind existing arrangements, discernment of reform opportunities that are technical correct politically acceptable (within the space contested by factions of the elite), partnership with other actors pushing for the same reform, and a capability to spot and take advantage of reform conjunctures. All these will take time, effort, persistence, and DE smarts.