Educ 61/MPA 614/MTE Rural and Urban Development

Course description:
The course focus on the study of the development of both rural and urban areas of the
Philippines and neighboring countries. It includes writing of proposals for community development
based on the available resources of that particular community or society.
\

Lesson 1: Development and Democracy

What do you think are the significance of the following concepts in relation to R & U Development
in the Philippines and anywhere else?

1. road accessibility
2. economic opportunity
3. fishing industry
4. transport conditions/transportation
5. markets
6. technical innovations/technology
7. available investment
8. prices of goods
9. agricultural landscape and agricultural land use
10. change from an agricultural to an urban landscape
11. housing programs/access to housing opportunities and services
12. livelihood programs
13. access to quality education
14. health services
15. employment system
 Educ 61/MPA 614/MTE Rural and Urban Development

Course description:
The course focus on the study of the development of both rural and urban areas of the
Philippines and neighboring countries. It includes writing of proposals for community
development based on the available resources of that particular community or society.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lesson 1: Development and Democracy1

Introduction
For about two decades now, democratization in the third world has been at the top of the
agenda. While development, earlier, was often assumed to come first, many then said that the two
could (and should) come together. The problems, however, have been mounting. Much of the
mainstream crafting of democracy is in crisis.
The first lesson presents a study of the dynamics of these difficulties. But it is also, and
primarily, an essay about the challenges and options for exciting popular efforts to promote more
substantial democracy in order to further attempts to combat problems of development. Lesson 1 is a
discussion of these fundamental issues.2

1
Olle Törnquist, Popular Development and Democracy: Case Studies with Rural Dimensions in the Philippines,
Indonesia, and Kerala. Occasional Paper from SUM, No. 3 (2002), pp. viii-ff.

2
The content is taken from an empirical study (Olle Törnquist, 2002) but in contrast to many of the
conventional political studies of problems of development, its point of departure is that a fruitful discussion
presupposes three partly normative assumptions—two on what development and one on what kind of politics one
should focus upon. The first assumption is that significant antagonisms between different groups and classes in society
render it impossible to discern any self-evident common interest in development issues (in relation to which special
interests can then be defined). Despite this, there are various ways of promoting development. One can invest,
certainly, in the social groups who are already strong. One can count on the likelihood, certainly, that if these people are
granted higher profits and a better business climate, some of them will also increase their investments. One could
assert, certainly, that this would improve the conditions of the common people in the end. We agree, however, with
those who argue that the result, in terms of development, would be at least as good and of greater benefit to the
majority besides—if investments were made, instead, to have the greatest possible dynamic effect on redistribution of
resources. This means investing more in the popular majority—whose aspirations and capacity for hard and innovative
labor are not fully utilized under prevailing conditions—than in the minority who are already strong. The second
assumption (which follows from the first) is that since capitalism in the third world does not just imply industrialization
and ‘modern’ services but also marginalization and the fact that so many people (especially in Asia and Africa) still live
in or depend on rural areas, the politics of developmental redeployment must also include these people. One classical
case is the redistribution of land from feudal-like landlords to industrious and independent peasants, in order thereby
to increase production, reduce poverty, prepare the way for industrialization, and create preconditions for democracy.
Another example is decentralization of politics and resources to balance the central powers and build linkages and
alliances on an equal basis between rural and urban areas and people—ideally without enabling local bosses to
monopolize the resources. A third illustration is efforts at going beyond conflicts between plantation laborers and
displaced peasant farmers by increasing and organizing their production in such a way that both can agree and benefit.
The third assumption is that even if enlightened authoritarian rule might generate development which is more fruitful in
the short run for those included, pro-people development is in the long run best served by consistent efforts at
1.1 Poor people, poor democracy?

There are four main theories that claim to be universally valid about how democratization
may come about and be promoted in late developing countries.

The first thesis, by Lipset (1959) and so many others, is that capitalist market-based
socioeconomic modernization also promotes human rights based democratization. This implies,
for instance, that marginalized and ‘informal’ and often rural sectors prevent democratization. The
second thesis is that it is not popular masses—particularly not in rural areas and particularly not when
under radical influence—but rather the urban bourgeoisie and associated middle classes, with the
support of the West, that tend to oppose state or private authoritarianism, thus promoting the
rule of law, liberalism, and democracy. In his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,
Barrington Moore Jr. concludes that peasants only contribute to democratization when they are
already independent and market-oriented, as in North America, or when they are transformed into
this type of farmer by a strong urban bourgeoisie with a greater or lesser degree of revolutionary
participation, as in France and Britain respectively. Otherwise, Moore argues, the rural poor tended
either to be subordinated to commercial landed interests and fascism, or to revolt against
economically less dynamic landlords. The latter, however, only occurred when the masses were
cohesive as a class or a group and offered efficient external leadership, such as by the communists in
China and Russia. So the conclusion reached is: “No bourgeois, no democracy”.3

Thirdly, Rueschemeyer and the Stephens, on the other hand, contend in Capitalist
Development and Democracy that it is the working class, (within the framework of capitalist
expansion) who are the only consistent pro-democratic force.4 Moore’s bourgeoisie is instead
reluctant, especially when dependent on state support. The middle classes hesitate, especially when
afraid of the laborers. With regard to rural dynamics, however, Rueschemeyer et al. do not only agree
with Moore on the anti-democratic character of the landed elites’ interests, they also arrive at a
similar conclusion concerning the democratic position of the rural poor: it rests with their
cohesiveness, their ability to organize and with their relation to other classes.

The fourth and current thesis in trend, then, is simply to avoid discussions about various
preconditions and to contend instead that poor foundations may be compensated for by foreign
support and skillful institution building—crafting of democracy—on the level of the political elite
and civil associations. This can be achieved through the promotion of human rights, ‘good’
governance, privatization, decentralization, civil society, and political pacts among the elite. The
original basis for the arguments is the transition from authoritarian rule in Latin America and
Southern Europe since the mid-70s, which gained new prominence with the fall of the Berlin wall in

promoting, and applying democratic principles, rights and mechanisms in essential sectors of society. In other words,
then: what are the problems and options of popular development and democracy with not just urban but also rural
dimensions?

3
Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the
Modern World, New York: Harper and Row (1969).

4
D. Rueschemeyer, E. H. Stephens & J. D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press, 1992.
1989.5 In conjunction with economic adjustment policies, similar ideas also spread to Africa and parts
of Asia, for example in the Philippines in 1986 and Indonesia in 1998.

1.2 The logic of the essay

In this essay, I began by expanding on the mainstream arguments that are skeptical of popular
efforts at development (with rural dimensions) and democracy. By contrast, I showed that demands
among the rural poor for land reform were a prerequisite for the initially rather influential pro-
democratic tendency within the national revolutions. This democratic character was undermined later
on, not just by Communists’ and other nationalists’ top-down politics of modernization but by the
West and their local ‘liberal’ allies as well. In the second and major empirical part of the essay I
initially argued (by drawing on case studies from India, Indonesia and the Philippines) that repressive
political promotion of primitive capitalist accumulation has generated renewed left-oriented,
instrumental, and partly rural based demands for pro-democratic popular politics. These are
reminiscent of the earlier struggles against the landed elite and colonial masters.

My initial presentation also argues against many of the recent elitist and international attempts
at not just ‘getting the prices right’ but also the political and societal institutions, with slogans such as
crafting ‘free and fair elections’, ‘decentralization’, ‘good governance’, ‘civil society’ and ‘social
capital’. Those efforts have often produced superficial forms of democratization that do not make
sense for common people, remain unstable, and open up, instead, for the return of old emperors in
new clothes.

The main (and huge) remaining problems for popular efforts, then, are their social and
political fragmentation, and their inability to transform extra-parliamentary action into
institutionalized political alternatives for popular democratic governance of society as a whole.

Looking forward: There should be a critically analysis on popular politics of democratization

(in the Philippines and other neighboring democratic countries). For me, there is a need to focus on
the missing links: the deficient aggregation of single issues and specific interests, and the inadequate
connections between central and local levels as well as civil and political societies.

So, what could (and should) be done?

5
G. O'Donnell & P. C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain
Democracies. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.