NATURE OF PHILIPPINES

BUREAUCRACY

A POLITICAL SYSTEM DEFINES ITS BUREAUCRACY: a system of administration based

upon organization into bureaus, division of labor, hierarchy of authority; designed to dispose of a large body of work in a routine manner.

IMPORTANT CHARACTERISTICS OF PHILIPPINES BUREAUCRACY

1. Vulnerability to nepotism. Under Philippine bureaucracy

substructure of small kinship groups, members of the family groups by consanguinity, by affinity, and by ritual kinship (or compadre) give top priority to family loyalty.

Within such groupings, all of them feel that they are under obligation to help each other in a variety of ways.

Perpetuation of the spoils system Classify service, unclassified and

temporary positions which have become convenient instruments for the practice of nepotism, of patronage, and of influence peddling.

Apathetic public reaction of bureaucratic misconduct The people looked upon the

phenomenon as a concomitant result of the increasing complexity of the government, a method of political promises to the unemployed and underemployed segments of the population

Availability of external peaceful means of correcting bureaucratic weakness Devices, such as constitutional right

and privileges-freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, civic action-have been used for rectifying the defects and misdeeds of bureaucracy.

Survival of historical experience The Philippine political bureaucracy was

administered according to a civil law system which the Spanish bureaucracy as the scapegoat for all the weaknesses of the Philippines political bureaucracy. There are indications, however that the weaknesses are not to be totally and directly attributed to the Spanish government bureaucracy.

Lack of independence from politics Because of the absences of “class

consciousness” and of a feeling of unity on the part of the Filipino bureaucrats and the stigma of post-World War II ill-repute, the Philippine bureaucracy’s “merit system” was easily subject to attack and tampering by politicians. They worked through the legislative and executive branches of the national government.

Essential instrument of social change In spite of its weaknesses, the

Philippine bureaucracy’s function in nation-building will be as big, as complicated, and as demanding as the function of the whole society itself. Primarily, it will have to be a tool for innovations.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PHILIPPINE BUREAUCRACY

Bureaucratic resistance to change

Socio-economic, political, cultural and ecological constraints to administrative change

Problems in the transfer of technology and adaptation

TYPES OF BEHAVIOR OF THE PHILIPPINE BUREAUCRACY

Conformity to policies

Preference toward continuity

Loss of self-assertion

Politically supportive

THANK YOU!

Facilitator: Ms. Ethel-Veda S. Gadiano