Political culture and state in Latin America and the Philippines.

Abstract

The Latin American political model – and Brazilian one in particular – has often been attributed by local scholars to an Iberian heritage, and also by current researchers. This variable is also seen in the Philippines, former Spanish colony in Southeast Asia whose politics and culture have much in common with Latin America. These countries share social and political inequality, patronage, clientelism and challenges such as dissatisfaction with the political elites and high levels of urban violence. Although with institutional and cultural patterns that date back to the Iberian past, Latin American countries and the Philippines have faced opposite dilemmas. While corporatism and excessive statism are seen as problems in Latin American main economies, the main problem in the Philippines indicated by the literature is the state’s atrophy and inability: there would be excessive state in former colonies in the Americas and less state in the former Asian colony. We explore this coexistence of similar societies and different states to discuss causal arguments mobilized in Brazilian and Latin American literature. To support our approach among Latin American cases and the Philippines, we compare survey data and explore the contrast between the historical development of the Philippines and Brazil, considered here as a typical case of Latin America.