AHC: Phillipines with similar standard of prosperity as South Korea

Get rid of Marcos, that would be a start. So maybe a strongman is not the solution.

As for bankrolling defense, I don't think that's correct. I believe South Korea always spent a far larger portion of its GDP on defense than did the Phillipines.
Part of the reason Marcos got into power was that the electorate was seeing 1968esque social disorder, and wanted a Nixon figure to set things straight. That's partly how Marcos campaigned. So we need someone in his place who can appeal to the silent najority without, you know, having dictatorial ambitions. Aquino won't fit the bill at this time, so who?
 
No you missed my point,just because it says republic on a tin can doesnt make it so,rome was just the emperor attached to a "retirement home".

The senate could never hope to get rid of the emperor and be a proper republic(yet still conquered and ran an empire spanning a continent)

You do realize that Rome was a Republic, a true functioning though increasingly corrupt Republic during the conquest of Italy, during the Punic wars and the conquest of North Africa and Spain, during the takeover of Greece and Anatolia, during the Conquest of Gaul and Egypt. Caesar was never an Emperor. He was just a very successful General who was assassinated because he got too big for his britches.

The Roman Republic ended with the civil wars in which Octavian became a Dictator and called himself Emperor. Following that, the Roman Empire staggered this way and that under the rule of various dynastic strongmen, with little in the way of sustained territorial expansion. Rome's Emperors were a late development.


They are strongman pure and simple,sure their motives are scetchy but the method is the important thing here,republics have commited attrocities as well.

So what?

Again, I'll refer you to Chile vs Peru, or if you wish, early twentieth century Paraguay vs Bolivia. In both cases, you had two very similar latin American countries. In each case, it was a relatively corrupt democracy (Chile and Paraguay) versus a caudillo/strongman ruled autocracy (Peru and Bolivia). In each case, the corrupt democracy won the wars and economically outperformed its rival.

This whole 'Reforming Strongman' shtick is very attractive and appealing. But let's face it: It's miracle based governance. The overwhelming history of strongmen is that they occupy the territory from disastrous to sub-mediocre. It doesn't work.

Once in a while, someone talks about some fluke = a strongman that actually improved their country and left things better off. Well 1) It's a fluke, not the rule, and miraculous flukes are not a good recipe for governance, ever. 2) The more we look at and carefully examine these flukes, quite often, the worse they turn out to be, their positives turn out to be either illusory or fabrications, pre-existing them, the work of successors, exaggerated, actually substandard in terms of what might have been achieved, and meanwhile a whole host of disturbing negatives show up, cronyism, kleptocracy, mass murder, all sorts of brutality, long term toxic effects on society.

After a while, I just gave up on the strongman as a viable model of governance.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Pretty much every strong man follows that model - autocracy, cronyism, crony capitalism and kleptocracy.

If the Strongman theory worked, Latin America would be richer, more advanced and more influential than Europe today.

You can't just have strongmen because most of the world had them during the 1950s-1970s, you need the sort of "good emperor" that Park Chung Hee and Lee Kuang Yew and Deng Xiaoping were. You also need the accompanying strong state and a strong bureaucratic institutional tradition like you had in South Korea or China or Hong Kong that can actually successfully drive reform rather than have the process be stifled by special interest groups like landowners. You also need them to have the right kind of ideology (so basically they can't be emulating the Soviet Union).

It's just that outside East Asia they are few to non-existent.

It's pretty interesting to compare Egypt and India and China and South Korea and see how they fit those criteria and who succeed and who didn't.
 

RousseauX

Donor
But you need a thousand for a corrupt republic with no real direction to go anywhere.

At least with the strongman the leader has to be competent enough to have even got his job let alone maintain it.

Or alternatively he screws up really badly, and ends up simply with getting overthrown and replaced by the next shitty strongman, creating political instability for decades and results in economic stagnation for decades.

See Peron in Argentina for example.
 
You can't just have strongmen because most of the world had them during the 1950s-1970s, you need the sort of "good emperor" that Park Chung Hee and Lee Kuang Yew and Deng Xiaoping were. You also need the accompanying strong state and a strong bureaucratic institutional tradition like you had in South Korea or China or Hong Kong that can actually successfully drive reform rather than have the process be stifled by special interest groups like landowners. You also need them to have the right kind of ideology (so basically they can't be emulating the Soviet Union).

Question - if you have a strong state with strong bureaucratic institutional tradition and the right kind of ideology... do you actually need a Strongman?
 

RousseauX

Donor
Question - if you have a strong state with strong bureaucratic institutional tradition and the right kind of ideology... do you actually need a Strongman?

Fukuyama has a lot to say about this and his basic thesis is that strongman run circles around democracies when you draw the "good emperor" and a "bad emperor" will trash the country and it's hard for anyone to pick up the pieces. Overall though democracies are preferable.

A strongman isn't necessary, but if you compare China and India for example, you see China making much more decisive reforms much faster than India, and whereas China's government seems to be getting more accountable there seems to be a deterioration in Indian political institutions in the last several decades.
 
Fukuyama has a lot to say about this and his basic thesis is that strongman run circles around democracies when you draw the "good emperor" and a "bad emperor" will trash the country and it's hard for anyone to pick up the pieces. Overall though democracies are preferable.

A strongman isn't necessary, but if you compare China and India for example, you see China making much more decisive reforms much faster than India, and whereas China's government seems to be getting more accountable there seems to be a deterioration in Indian political institutions in the last several decades.

India and China really aren't comparable examples though. The Chinese bureaucracy and the reach of the Chinese state has long been far stronger than India's, which has historically been quite decentralized and, in Fukuyama's own classifications, based on kinship networks.

The more relevant examples for India are all the other South Asian states, all of which - Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Nepal - have fallen into dictatorships for at least some stretch of time. None has done better than India has.

Also not sure where you get the idea that Indian political institutions are deteriorating compared to the past. The 1970s, when Indira Gandhi ran a near-dictatorship but the country completely stagnated economically? The 1980s or early 1990s, when it was wracked by separatist violence, communal riots, and then nearly defaulted? Every decade up till the 1980s, when Congress was the default choice and there was no real electoral competition at the federal level?

Corruption has flourished lately precisely because of higher economic growth and privatization. And you could argue that many of the scandals are more about things getting more easily reported these days - there's vastly more information and more transparency, which has helped expose a lot of official corruption that would have previously been swept under the table.
 

RousseauX

Donor
India and China really aren't comparable examples though. The Chinese bureaucracy and the reach of the Chinese state has long been far stronger than India's, which has historically been quite decentralized and, in Fukuyama's own classifications, based on kinship networks.

The more relevant examples for India are all the other South Asian states, all of which - Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Nepal - have fallen into dictatorships for at least some stretch of time. None has done better than India has.

Also not sure where you get the idea that Indian political institutions are deteriorating compared to the past. The 1970s, when Indira Gandhi ran a near-dictatorship but the country completely stagnated economically? The 1980s or early 1990s, when it was wracked by separatist violence, communal riots, and then nearly defaulted? Every decade up till the 1980s, when Congress was the default choice and there was no real electoral competition at the federal level?

Corruption has flourished lately precisely because of higher economic growth and privatization. And you could argue that many of the scandals are more about things getting more easily reported these days - there's vastly more information and more transparency, which has helped expose a lot of official corruption that would have previously been swept under the table.

I think that's a really good point and China and India are not comparable due to wildly different institutional histories.
 

Driftless

Donor
Philippines - 1946 & on

The U.S. retained dozens of military bases, including a few major ones. In addition, independence was qualified by legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. For example, the Bell Trade Act provided a mechanism whereby U.S. import quotas might be established on Philippine articles which "are coming, or are likely to come, into substantial competition with like articles the product of the United States". It further required U.S. citizens and corporations be granted equal access to Philippine minerals, forests, and other natural resources.[2] In hearings before the Senate Committee on Finance, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs William L. Clayton described the law as "clearly inconsistent with the basic foreign economic policy of this country" and "clearly inconsistent with our promise to grant the Philippines genuine independence."[3]

The Philippine government had little choice but to accept these terms for independence.[citation needed] The U.S. Congress was threatening to withhold post-World War II rebuilding funds unless the Bell Act was ratified. The Philippine Congress obliged on July 2, 1946

That doesn't get post-war recovery off to a good start.... Maybe something a little closer to the Marshall Plan would have been more helpful.
 
I think the best thing to happen is to have Luzon and Muslim Mindanao separate from the rest of the Philippines.

In Luzon, the people want to compromise for nation building no matter how it takes- that is the main conflict between Luzon and Visayas - So Luzon can stand on its own.
 

Driftless

Donor
I think the best thing to happen is to have Luzon and Muslim Mindanao separate from the rest of the Philippines.

In Luzon, the people want to compromise for nation building no matter how it takes- that is the main conflict between Luzon and Visayas - So Luzon can stand on its own.

Who would you see controlling the resources, especially the offshore oil sites? (Such as the Spratly Islands fields, and I believe there's other potential fields between Palawan, Mindoro, Northern Visayas & Luzon

(This map gets a bit busy...)
SouthChinaSeaDisputes.660;660;7;70;0.jpg
 
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Who would you see controlling the resources, especially the offshore oil sites? (Such as the Spratly Islands fields, and I believe there's other potential fields between Palawan, Mindoro, Northern Visayas & Luzon

(This map gets a bit busy...)
SouthChinaSeaDisputes.660;660;7;70;0.jpg

Perhaps Malaysia or the rest of the Philippines.

Luzon has its own Gold and Oil Deposits in Cordilleras which they can use.
 
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