Envisioning a responsive state and an active civil society in the Ramos government's peace policy

• Main Author: Malbarosa, Jose Maria Arcadio C.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2024
• Subjects: Fidel V. Ramos, 1928-2022; Philippines—Politics and government—1986; Political Science
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12196
• Institution: De La Salle University

This paper seeks primarily to introduce the thesis that the Ramos government's peace policy is a strategic component of the government's overall development objective. What shall be accomplished, however, in the following few pages will be limited to identifying the critical issues that relate peace and development and this will be done within the general framework of a study of state-civil society relations. The real value of this minor work will be more appreciated for its effort to contribute to the more urgent task of enhancing a "grand discourse" regarding state-civil society relations. It is for this reason that this paper ends with some provisional recommendations or insights as to how the Ramos government's peace policy can stimulate a progressive growth of our country's "social capital" understood here as the effective exercise of political will not only of the government but also civil society. This perspective is partly inspired by the view developed in a critical research on policy making in the Philippines undertaken by the U.P. Third World Studies Center. The research argues that "policy-making is not only about formal institutions. It is about state-society relations, as well as the capacity of civil society to influence policy outcomes" (State of the Nation Research Reports 1994:1)