Augmented Polit ical Opportunit ies

and Enhanced Civil Society Participation

• Recent government regulations like the Smoking Ban in Metro Manila and the No Plastic campaigns of some local government units zero in on environmental issues

• Popular campaigns like the “No to Mining in Palawan” among others is also gaining currency in policy advocacy networks

• Generally, after Ondoy, there seem to be spike in the number of groups carrying environmental issues in their agenda

“How do civil society organizations influence state programs and policies particularly on climate change?”

• What mechanisms do they use to influence?• Does the influence come from the group as a collective or from individual members comprising the group?• What are the overt indicators of this influence?• What is their degree of influence relative to other groups with different advocacies?• Why is the influence seemingly more apparent just recently?

• Foremost, to provide some explanation to the phenomenon of “enhanced” civil society participation on issues related to the environment particularly on climate change

• To examine the result of the “enhanced” activity based on the response of the state as the main political actor in policy formulation and implementation

The significance in understanding this interplay of political opportunity, mobilization and political influence is that “it is important, both as scholars and citizens, to understand how activists can make the most of their opportunities and maximize their influence under particular historical circumstances”

(Meyer and Minkoff 2004)

•Period starting 1986 when democratization opened the room for more political participation

• Extensive data gathering will have to be employed in so far as for example, getting the number of environmental organizations formed on a yearly basis

• Limit to a qualitative comparative case study of the enactment of the Climate Change Act of 2009 vis-à-vis older landmark legislation

• Governance Framework of Policy Formulation (i.e. State-Society Nexus)

There is an interplay between two main parties: the “non-state actors were able to develop access to power and resources and interacted with the state on their concerns” and the state, on the other hand, uses “its powers to accommodate and respond to non-state actors according to its constitution, laws, policies and administrative system”(Rebullida 2003:39).

• Polit ical Opportunity Theory of Social Movements

In brief, this theory assumes that movements increase when there are favorable exogenous opportunities and conversely, they fade when there are increasing constraints.

• “…it is a contested term with many definitions. Even after 25 years of debate, there are still almost as many notions of what civil society actually is as academics who have tried to ‘tame’ this concept” (Thomson 2006)

• In general though, civil society is usually held to be the collective intermediary between the individual and the state (Whaites 2000)

• It is “the arena, outside of the family, the state and the market where people associate to advance common interests.” (CIVICUS Civil Society Index 2006:11)

• Social movements as organized collectivities aiming at some social change or resisting that change (Kourvetaris 1996)

• They are “an organized and sustained effort of a collectivity of interrelated individuals, groups, and organizations to promote or to resist social change with the use of public protest activities.” (Neidhardt and Rucht)

“What distinguishes social movements from their institutional counterparts is their political situation, that is, their relative lack of direct power in the government which causes them to rely heavily on a repertoire of disorderly tactics such as strikes, demonstrations, violence, and protest activities to accomplish political ends.”

(Morris and Herring 1987: 145)

“Movements are better defined as collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities…they are created when political opportunities open up for social actors who usually lack them and that triggered by the incentives created by political opportunities, combining conventional and challenging forms of action and building on social networks and cultural frames is how movements overcome the obstacles to collective action and sustain their interactions with opponents and with the state.”

(Tarrow 1994)

• Primacy of power struggles• Assumes a pluralistic structure where there will always be political realignment because there will always be a ground for discontent and protest• Pluralistic nature of society accords it with the necessary resources for mobilization• Competing social movement organizations continuously interact, realign and even transform each other• Social movements have organizational bases and a definite leadership • Participants are rational decision makers who analyze their collective action efforts by weighing cost and benefits and therefore that goals are worth pursuing

“The active role of civil society groups specifically in policy formulation, the collaboration between state and civil society actors and the strong support of the administration are three important factors in the making of the IPRA.”

(Lusterio-Rico 2006)

• Historically though, the governance framework that is currently at work did not emerge until the more democratic 1987 Constitution was framed and more recently, and to a greater extent, until the enactment of the Local Government Code of 1991.

“In the governance framework, a new power relationship has taken place between the people and the state, between civil society and the state. Through its organizing and mobilizing efforts, civil society has developed access to governmental decision making and the people have become empowered to participate in government. The 1987 Philippine Constitution and especially the 1991 Local Government Code established a more people-oriented governance system by mandating governing principles and the mechanisms for civil society participation in the government. In this new democratic space, the urban poor sector’s coalition and network of non-government organizations and people’s organizations succeeded in exacting state response… by breakthrough and landmark legislation and executive policies at national and local levels of government. “

(Rebullida 2003)

“The state as a caretaker of the public domain and provider of access to natural resources, nevertheless, still determines the boundaries by which resources could be used either in a sustainable or unsustainable manner. Thus, the nexus of interactions and transactions between the state, on the one hand, and politicians, private interests, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and local communities, on the other, would have to be taken into account in any thoughtful assessment of the trajectory of environmental politics in the Philippines.”

(Magno 2003)

•“Four decades of environmental awareness-raising and campaigns for various environmental causes” (Efreneo 2010)

• The democratization following the end of the period of martial law opened more doors for political participation and from that point on, the environmental movement emerged to grow and succeed in the arena of policy formulation.

• when social movements that were initiated during martial law became legal organizations with more definite structures that address the environmental agenda• the theme of environmental organizations shifted from environmental conservation to sustainable development• the congregation of different environmental groups into larger alliances within the movement

(Leonen 2000)

In summary, the researchers, labeled the groups as “new environmental movement” since they go beyond the fundamentalist norms of using only unconventional tactics and instead use a large degree of variation of activities which include the conventional mode like contacts with the government.

•“Environmental groups have asserted that the environmental issue in the Philippines is, more than anything else, an equity issue.”

• “Among the essential purpose of the environmental movement therefore is to ensure that management of resources is given to the small communities who should be the main managers of the resources within their localities.”

(Magno 2003)

The basic premise of the Political Opportunity Theory in Social Movements is that exogenous factors enhance or inhibit prospects for mobilization, for particular sorts of claims to be advanced rather than others, for particular strategies of influence to be exercised and for movements to affect mainstream institutional politics and policy

(Meyer and Minkoff 2004).

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES

STRUCTURAL

ISSUE-BASED

MOVEMENT ACTIVITY

POLICY OUTCOMES

In the Political Opportunity Theory of Social Movements, augmented political opportunities, whether structural in nature or issue-based, opens a space that is more conducive to political participation of movements and advocacies which in turn lead to the effective integration of these policy platforms into actual policy outcomes like Republic Acts and Congressional bills or resolutions.

• The structural model includes variables that track formal changes in rules and policies affecting political access, as well as the changed practices that follow from them.

(Meyer and Minkoff 2004:1467-1468)• “Activists and officials monitor changes in the political environment, looking for encouragement for mobilization and for advocating policy reforms. The model includes issue-specific and general opportunity variables that savvy activist entrepreneurs could read as invitations to mobilize” (Meyer and Minkoff: 1470).

VARIABLE DATA NEEDED AND HOW IT WILL BE GATHERED

Political Mobilization

Number of events and activities initiated by environmental organizations in relation to their environmental advocacy; this will be gathered through organizational records through interviews

Organization Formation

Number of environmental organizations that are formed on a yearly basis; this will be gathered through records from the Securities and Exchange Commission where most NGOs are registered as a matter of protocol

Policy Outcome

Number of laws related to the environment that are enacted per year; this can be taken from either the journals of the House of Representatives or the Senate or from the committee report of the concerned legislative committee

• This proposed research will use both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools but will be centered on a quantitative epistemological position based on the Poisson regression analysis patterned after Meyer and Minkoff’s study of the relationship between political opportunity and the dependent variables of political mobilization, group formation and policy outcome.

• A qualitative study based on Meyer and Minkoff’s Poisson regression analysis will be conducted on the data that will be gathered.

• From this quantative analysis where we aim to highlight the correlation of Ondoy as an independent, issue-specific variable of Political Opportunity on mobilization, formulation and policy response, we will take off to a comparative qualitative analysis to further elucidate our findings.

• The comparative case study will look into how the Climate Change Act of 2009 was enacted after Ondoy vis-à-vis how an older similar landmark legislation (like maybe the Clean Air Act or the Renewable Energy Act) was passed. In this qualitative comparative analysis, we will look into the significance of the variations in the elements of the policy formulation process (i.e. which groups were active in the enactment of the bill, how did these groups lobby for the bill, what were the issues at that time, how was it covered by media groups) as can be explained by issue-specific political opportunities that could largely determine political mobilization and the resulting policy response of the state.

• Level of Analysis: National in scope (but may cover several significant legislations at the local government level in line with the decentralization of some policy formulation process after the passing of the LGC of 1991, as the case may apply)

• Units of Analysis: Environmental Organizations that are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (some analysis may also focus on the works of broader alliances of these Environmental Organizations as parts of the Environmental Movement, as the case may apply)