抄録
Many political studies of the Philippines share the assumption that the poor have been subordinated by the order of local elites and have functioned as a hotbed of the oligarchic democracy, and that if civic organizations are to help the poor they must be independent of local elites. However, one problem with this kind of assumption is that it ignores how the agencies of the poor negotiate with the dominant order of the oligarchy. I will present a framework showing how the various agencies of the poor struggle over social order, and demonstrating how the local power orders of local elites, the state control projects of state leaders and the social reform projects of civic organizations compete against each other.
To make this clear, this paper also focuses on the struggles between the various forces over how street vending and city order in metropolitan Manila should be organized. One state leader tried to get rid of street vendors from the city (state control project) because he regarded the ubiquitousness of street vendors as a symptom of a weak state that cannot enforce law and order.Mayors have tried to maintain autonomous order in their bailiwicks (local power orders), and a civic organization has tried to legalize the interests of street vendors by lobbying the state (social reform project). Street vendors’ organizations have desperately defended street vending.
Through this case study, I argue the following: first, in contrast to the dominant assumption of passivity of the poor, street vendors have influenced and constructed part of the contested social order by negotiating, resisting and cooperating with the practices of the state leader, local elites and civic organizations to create their own favorable order. The street vendors’ strategy of organizational bribing to avoid state control means that they have constructed an informal order vis-à-vis state control. Second, I also argue that there are dilemmas in the various expressions of agency available to street vendors. In particular, their practices to construct an informal order to avoid state control have prevented the social reform project which tried to legalize street vending because the informal order created stakeholders among the state officials. Finally, these ambivalent characteristics of the agency of street vendors indicate the difficulties that lie in constructing a democratic order in which the poor can uphold their interests and identities without being harmed by authoritarian orders of strong local elites and state leaders.
