Ranilo Balaguer Hermida. Imagining Modern Democracy: A Habermasian Assessment of the Philippine Experiment. New York: SUNY Press, 2015. 348 pages.

• Main Author: Van der Wall, Hidde
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2017
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/paha/vol7/iss1/4; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/paha/article/1217/viewcontent/PAHA_207.1_204_20Book_20reviews_20__20Van_20der_20Wal.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Excerpt: Ranilo Balaguer Hermida offers a fine analysis of the Philippine constitutional order from the perspective of Jürgen Habermas’s theories of law and democracy. At first sight, the concept of the book may seem rather slight—applying one particular theorist to one particular case study has the danger of offering either an unsatisfactory exemplification of the theory or a one-sided approach to the case at hand. But Hermida convincingly shows the relevance of Habermas to the Philippine case, and his analysis offers insights into and illustration of the latter.