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The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines. By MARK R. THOMPSON. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. xiii, 258 pp. $32.50.
In contrast to the half-dozen hasty, journalistic chronicles that followed the dictator's downfall, Mark Thompson has produced a theoretically informed analysis of the Philippines' remarkable "people power" uprising of 1986. Not only did this mass democracy movement force Ferdinand Marcos into exile, it had, Thompson argues, a powerful "demonstration effect," becoming a "rallying cry" that inspired prodemocracy demonstrators across the globe -- in Asia, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Africa (p. i).
Spanning three tumultuous decades, Thompson's account is a judiciously crafted political history framed by a deft analysis of continuities within the country's politics and a global comparative perspective. As he moves forward through each distinctive epoch of political change, the author pauses to insert, almost seamlessly, a juxtaposition of past with Philippine present and allusions to parallel events in Iran, Cuba, or Nicaragua. Instead of speaking loosely about dictatorship, Thompson problematizes the phenomenon, concluding that Marcos can best be understood as a manifestation of "sultanism" -- that is, a personalized rule that blurs the distinction between state and regime. Through a mix of cronyism, rampant corruption, and capricious violence, such sultanistic regimes compromise key elites and usually resist a negotiated exit from power. With a peaceful transition so blocked, such regimes are usually toppled through armed revolution, military coup, or mass demonstrations.
Focusing on the opposition elites who manage this transition, Thompson argues that they are, in the Philippines and elsewhere, skillful political operators who seek to negotiate the power transfer through tactical alliances with their country's dominant political forces. In his survey of the decade before Marcos's downfall,...