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Grassroots democracy, non-state approaches, and popular empowerment in rural Philippines

Discourses on grassroots democracy in Asia and elsewhere often focus on local governance issues such as decentralization, devolution, and local autonomy. Among social movements, discussions center on interventions in the political process through advocacies and campaigns on regime and system change or devising strategies and practices that engage the state. In all of the above, the state and state-related institutions are the central concern. There is, however, another dimension that remains relatively unexplored, one where the state recedes in importance and value. This alternative dimension looks at how poor and marginalized communities have been able to appropriate spaces and manage their own economic and political lives through mechanisms that lie outside the formal systems of governance and economics. This non-state sector encompasses political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. Utilizing notions adapted from Scott's “non-state spaces,” Migdal's “weak state” paradigm, and the concept of “popular consciousness” and bringing these to bear on Philippine case studies, the article explores non-state-centered approaches and practices in creating and sustaining viable and productive rural communities as models of an alternative grass-roots type democracy.