Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy
The Rule of the Unprincipled, Unethical and Unqualified

(click here for abstract and image)

BLURB

Dr. Steven Rood
Philippine Country Representative
The Asia Foundation

The Philippines is widely known for the high quality in the abstract of its anti-corruption frameworks and laws, and the low quality of implementation. Beginning two decades ago with investigative journalism, the civil society anti-corruption movement has had its successes from time to time, but continues to face dismal challenges. The system has not been transformed.

Ronnie Amorado is a long-time participant in this movement, and has been instrumental in some of its most significant innovations like the Ehem anticorruption initiative. He mines this experience and dedicated fieldwork to outline a theory centered on betrayals of trust. His examples, though altered to protect the privacy of the subjects, range across a variety of institutions and situations from the public to the private. He then extracts from the vignettes overall patterns which can help elevate analyses of how to transform the system.

A citizen-based strategy is proposed which involves actions that citizens can take and changes to the social context to make citizenship more active to generate trust and to preserve it. Those of us who know Ronnie Amorado can testify that he can lead by example.