Is the Filipino Diaspora a Diaspora?

ABSTRACT:

Despite the widespread popularity of the discourse on diasporas since the 1980s, the recognition of a Filipino diaspora in the wider Anglophone scholarly world did not occur until the mid 2000s. A major factor for this recognition was the considerable number of scholarly works on Filipino Americans produced largely by Filipino American scholars who used diaspora as theoretical frame starting in the late 1990s. Grappling with the realities of the global migrations of Filipinos, the Philippine state and Filipinos in the Philippines and in other parts of the world also began to deploy the diaspora discourse. This article analyzes the ways in which the discursive fields in the US and in the Philippines have converged or diverged. Although diaspora can be a problematic concept, the author examines methodological issues that focus not so much on identities but on the imagined and constructed collectivity within which the putative diasporan identity of Filipinos is embedded. Without reducing diaspora to a reifying checklist, the author explores the Filipino diaspora discourse along these five dimensions: (a) population dispersal from an original homeland, real or imagined; (b) a process of diasporization; (c) ongoing relationship with the homeland, nurtured by collective memory or mythology; (d) idealization of return to the homeland; and (e) self-awareness or collective consciousness that is intergenerational and interrelated to coethnics and compatriots within the diaspora.     

The county perspective on intergovernmental relations and government capacity

This analysis examines the issues of state and federal responsiveness and state and local government capacity from the perspective of county officials. Using data from a national survey of county administrators, elected executives, and commission chairpersons, the study finds that county officials are: (1) very confident of their own capacities to respond to local problems, but not as confident of local fiscal capacities; (2) very concerned about the responsiveness of state governments, particularly state legislatures, to local needs; and (3) not confident of the responsiveness of federal government to local needs either, but desirous of federal fiscal support. The assessments of state responsiveness appear related to state efforts to expand the policy making, taxing, and borrowing authority of their county governments.     

A decade of decline: a longitudinal look at big city and big county strategies to cope with declining revenues

Many local governments have now endured a decade of fiscal decline due to periodic reductions in external funding (federal and state and slowdowns in the rate of growth of the state and local government sector. This research examines the extent to which six large jurisdictions (three cities, three counties) under fiscal duress avoided political conflict and prevented further fragmentation of their authority between 1978 and 1987. The results showed that local officials generally chose retrenchment strategies (revenue, expenditure, and borrowing) with the least anticipated political opposition; but where hard choices had to be made (personnel reductions), they were made without hesitation. The timing of politically unpopular choices to coincide with downward trends in the private sector reduced the level of political fallout, even in heavily unionized, socioeconomically diverse communities. The results also showed that local officials strongly endorsed, rather than opposed, strategies that further fragmented their authority (privatization, intergovernmental cooperative agreements), because these approaches produce significant personnel and capital savings in the short term. Finally, the results indicated that the long-term cumulative effects of short-term decremental decisionmaking on the quality of life (as measured by drops in bond ratings) were negative in only one-third of the jurisdictions.     

After the fall of the soviet union: the changing status of local governments in the republic of latvia

When the Republic of Latvia gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, one of Latvia's first priorities was to rebuild its system of local government. This article describes many of the problems local governments in Latvia faced after 50 years of communist rule. The article also discusses the new Latvian laws which changed the structure of local government in that country. Also discussed are Latvian central government institutions which impacted on local governments in general and local government finances in particular. The unique status of the Capitol City of Riga, Latvia's largest municipality is also reviewed in detail.     

The fiscal risk of all-hazards emergency management or the political hazards in rational policy

The professionalization of emergency management and the adoption of all-hazards policies mean fundamental changes in agency constituencies and budgetary politics. Professionalization can increase the distance between emergency managers and the public they serve, expand the need for scientific and technical knowledge among generalist administrators, and fragment the disaster community. The more “rational” approach to disaster policy may well alienate the supporters of disaster-specific programs. Fiscal risk may result, particularly at the state and local levels where there are fewer opportunities to secure funding and to cultivate political support.     

Women's labour force participation and child care in Romania

This article examines market-led agrarian reform (MLAR) and its variants in the form of voluntary land transfer schemes under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines. Analysis of MLAR variants in the Philippines offers a preview of what is likely to happen when the MLAR model currently being pushed by the World Bank is implemented in the real world: Not only do MLAR and MLAR-like schemes fail to promote redistributive reform, they also undermine potentially redistributive state-led land reform policies.     

Short notes on some books received

This article challenges the thesis that local‐level bureaucrats need be part of any ‘dominant coalition’ at the village level. Based on a case study of Egyptian agricultural officials, the paper argues that local bureaucrats may well be more useless than dominant in any political or economic sense. In rural areas in which local officials lack the resources (supplies, funds) to do their jobs, they may well be quite inconsequential. In such situations their position as ‘public servants’ may be appropriated by members of the rich peasantry, who have no particular need to work closely with resource‐poor local government staff.     

The social science of human rights: the need for a ‘second image reversed’?

What are the causes of state-initiated human rights violations? Are intra-national factors alone causally responsible for the emergence of human rights crises in the developing world? This article critically examines contemporary social science literature on the causes of human rights compliance and violations, particularly in the fields of international relations and comparative politics. It underscores the finding that the current research agenda on human rights has yet to fully recognise the causal and constitutive links between transnational and domestic factors in generating variations in states’ level of compliance. The main goal of the paper is to analytically explore the possibilities of generating social scientific research that recognises the interactive causal dynamics among extra-national and domestic variables as they jointly produce cross-national variations in the quality of a state’s compliance with human rights norms. Based on a critical analysis of the current scholarship in human rights research, the paper offers several pathways the academy must traverse in order to enhance our understanding of the causal underpinnings of human rights violations in the global South.     

Comparing General and Political Discussion Networks Within Voluntary Organizations Using Social Network Analysis

Political discussion networks are influenced by the opportunities for political interactions within our larger social environments and more general discussion networks. In this study we compare general and political discussion networks using full sociometric social network data from a probability sample of voluntary organizations—specifically, intact student activity groups from a large Midwest research university. We find that even within these “weak tie” voluntary associations, general discussion networks clearly constrain the characteristics of the political discussion networks. However, political discussion networks appear to be less dense and more likely to be broken up into disconnected components than the general discussion networks. But, general and political networks do not appear to differ in their structuring by perceptions of discussant knowledge. And, most interestingly, we find that on average neither general nor political discussion networks are characterized by political homogeneity.     

Book review

Gerard Hogan and Clive Walker, Political Violence and the Law in Ireland (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989).