REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES

PROVINCE OF NORTH COTABATO

MUNICIPALITY OF MAKILALA
MAKILALA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPCION, MAKILALA, COTABATO

Program: Bachelor of Public Administration

Course
PA 223 – POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION
Number/Title:
Credit: 3 Week #: 5 (March 15 – 19)
Instructor: Mr. John Martin P. Alvero

Contact Email: [email protected]

Information: Messenger: JOHN MARTIN P. ALVERO

General instruction: Read the content of the module carefully. This will help you
understand the topic for each module and will greatly help you answer the
exercises or activities at the end of each module. Each module is assigned within
a specific time period. You are expected to finish the module within the period
allotted. Should you have any queries and clarification regarding the module,
use the contact information available above. Kindly reach the instructor during
working hours from Monday to Friday. Do not forget to be courteous when
addressing your questions.

MODULE II. SOCIAL FACTORS AND FORCES

Overview:
In order to explain changes in political behavior and political culture we need to
understand the roles of social forces and of political socialization as well. We can
identify five important developments, or social factors, which have become very
significant in the last 20 years.

I. Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this Chapter, you are expected to:
1. Determine and Analyze factors in the development of political
culture and political behavior; and
2. Examine the effects of these factors.

II. TOPICS
Lesson 1: Social Factors and Forces
Subtopic 1: The Rapid Rise in Levels of Education
Subtopic 2: Access to Information
Subtopic 3: Population Movements
Subtopic 4: Rapid Urbanization
Subtopic 5: Opportunity Structure
III. REFERENCES

 Munroe, Trevor (2002), “An Introduction to Politics: Lectures for First-year Students”, Third
Edition. Stephenson’s Litho Press.

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 1. COURSE CONTENT

TOPIC I. SOCIAL FACTORS AND FORCES

A. The Rapid Rise in Levels of Education

On this module we will try to analyze what are the factors that will greatly affect
our political mind. This is very important for you as a student because this will
enlighten you (if you are not yet enlightened) of the factors that has led to your
criticisms towards political individuals and the government. I know that some of
you have differing political ideologies (for those who do not have political
ideologies, you can just sit back and watch impotently how people walk all over
you) that would result into arguments if you talk with other people, but these
arguments are actually normal. Just like how different style of clothes are worn on
different occasions, effectiveness of forms of government relies on several factors
such as education, access to information, economics & population, urbanization,
and availability of opportunities, which will be discussed in the succeeding parts
of this module.

The general level of education among most populations has risen extremely
rapidly within the last decades. Fifty years ago in the Philippines approximately 20
percent of the people had secondary education. In other words eight out of
every ten did not have any secondary education. Fifty years later now, the
Philippines is now almost 90 percent of the secondary-school age population has
had some secondary education. And more than 50 percent of the secondary
graduates are pursuing higher education. This is a great leap from the mere 20
percent half a century ago. Some of these factors leading to higher education is
the recent support on the education programs of the government, form the free
basic education to pushing laws to increase budget for tertiary education and
strengthening subsidies on tertiary education scholarships and programs.

In industrialized countries these figures are more dramatic. Education is very

important because, generally, the less educated we are the more willing we are
to defer to someone else. As a general rule the less educated a population the
more deferential it tends to be and the more educated a population the less
willing the individuals will be to simply accept what they are told to think, do or
say. This has a great effect on our political minds as we tend to be more critical
on the government and even on the critiques of the government.

Reflective Writing.
Write about the importance of education and how it shaped your understanding
on the politics here in the Philippines. Limit your answers to 200 words and use a
separate sheet.

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B. Access to information
We have often heard it said that we live in the information age. What this means
simply is that information is coming to us from every direction, from all sorts of
mechanisms, even when we may not be educated. Therefore, more and more
of the populations in the individual Southeast Asian territories as well as regionally
and globally now have multiple sources of information available, which reduces
their inclination to accept information from only one source. For example, among
the least educated in formal terms in the Philippine population, say on a sugar
cane plantation or on a banana plantation, you would find that despite the
relatively low level of education most have access to cable television. Many of
them have travelled and are exposed to influences from abroad. Therefore, in
contrast to 20 or 30 years ago, when many of them would never have questioned
the leadership, these individuals are now able to say, “but I heard something
different”, or, “I have seen something else.” This makes them less open to being
ordered about and to following orders in the way that they may have been in
earlier times.

Generally introduced in the Philippines no more than 60 years ago, the radio
became a general item in most homes. At the time of Second World War,
television had just been introduced, and very few homes had a television set. Very
small percentages of the population had access to television. Then came the
telephone – land lines first of all and then cellular and, most recently, the Internet.
Today also, cable television allows real-time, visual access to events taking place
in any part of the world. The first war that was ever televised in real time by cable
around the world was 10 years ago, the Gulf War. Therefore, the citizen in any part
of the world in the year 2002 has access to information, has means of
communication far greater than at any previous time in modern history. The more
sources of information there are, the less dependent the population has to be on
one source of authority.

In this context, (using data for the Caribbean countries since there are data for
the Southeast Asia) it is interesting that Caribbean countries have a
communication and information profile far above the rest of the developing
world (see Table 1). For example, the average number of radios per thousand in
1995 in the Caribbean was about 620. The average for the developing world was
185 radios per 1,000 people. The Caribbean people are much more informed and
have much more access to modern means of communication than elsewhere in
the developing world. In one respect, the Caribbean is ahead of the industrialized
world in terms of utilization of means of communication. We are ahead of the
industrialized world and far above the global average in relation to international
telephone calls. Table 1 shows that in the Caribbean the average time spent on
international calls annually is 74 minutes per person. The average for all
developing countries is 3 minutes, while the average for industrialized countries is
41 minutes. The Internet is the next phase of this revolution which will have a much
greater social impact because what the use of the Internet does is to close the
gap between experts in all kinds of areas and the ordinary person. For example,
if you are suffering from diabetes you can learn so much about diabetes from
Internet Web sites that it narrows the gap between you and your doctor. This
applies to any field of endeavor. To give an example related to political science,

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you can log on to a Web site that deals with information on Islam and you can
soon learn more than I know in that particular area. This means that now we are
as likely to be less naturally deferential, accepting all that we hear and see,
because we now have greater capacity to evaluate things much more for
ourselves than was possible in previous generations.

Even without data, we can also see this similar trend in Asia, wherein people have
access to information through the internet, radio, televisions, and computers.

C. Population Movements
Population movements by way of travel, migration, and tourism have increased
immensely in the last decades, due to the technological revolution in
transportation, which has made it much cheaper and quicker to travel from
place to place, from country to country, from region to region. The net effect of
increased travel, migration, and tourism is greater exposure to different ideas, and
to different ways of thinking and acting and an undermining of that which was
considered traditional. More people are now seeing and experiencing directly
what they may not even have heard about before.

Some of the most important leaders of change, not only in Southeast Asia but
elsewhere, have been persons who were exposed to other more modern ways of
thinking and acting. For example, since the Spanish time, it has been widely
accepted to be educated abroad than here in the Philippines. Before it was only
the rich who can send their children to study abroad but since the 1950s, a lot of
Filipinos have migrated to the US and to Europe to work and be educated. This is
because of a number of opportunities brought by scholarships and more open
policies for immigrants. This has changed the notion that education abroad is for
the privileged and has contributed to the idea that education abroad has
become very possible.

The powerful effect of travel, migration, and exposure to other cultures, which is
now within the grasp of tens of millions more because of the cheapening of
various forms of transportation, should not be underestimated. In that context, we
should notice that in the Philippines, not only does the largest percentage of the
people live outside of the region but also that the people at the bottom of the
social structure can travel more.

D. Rapid Urbanization
Rapid urbanization means that fewer and fewer people are living in villages and
districts of rural areas and more and more people are concentrated in cities. For
example, in 1975, only about a quarter of the population of developing countries
lived in urban areas. By 1998, that had changed to about 40 percent living in cities
and urban concentrations.

Within that context, the Philippines is one of the most rapidly urbanizing countries
in Asia. Urbanization invariably means over-crowding. As the urban population
expands more rapidly than the infrastructure, it means that there are inadequate
housing, inadequate sewerage facilities and the growth of inner-city ghettos. This
is a radicalizing influence, when people come to town from country expecting

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that it will be relatively easy to make good and discover that town is often harder
than country. That is why this phenomenon of urbanization has carried with it
everywhere a certain radicalization, of the youth in particular, and especially the
unemployed or the underemployed youth. That radicalization of the young
people in the adverse conditions of urbanization in turn generates a culture that
reinforces the radicalization (for example through the phenomenon of inner-city
music). In Jamaica, that is one reason why Bob Marley's Trench Town music
became not just a Jamaican phenomenon but the music grabbed the attention
of so much of the world, where it resonated in the ghettos and with
disadvantaged people around the world. One of the reasons for that is that the
lyrics, the message, and the music spoke to the conditions of inner-city young
people all over the world. In the context of the Philippines, social media has
become a forest-fire. Filipinos put great importance on their social media
identities and image so much that almost anything is shared, from memes to live
local events, to personal problems & issues and mundane, everyday tasks being
vlogged.

Reflective Writing.
Using what you have seen and read in the internet, how should we interpret these
information? Limit your answer to 250 words. Use a separate paper for your
answer.

E. Opportunity Structure
In the last 10 to 15 years there have been increased inequalities in almost every
single country. This means that in the last 10 to 15 years worldwide the way
economies have been restructured and the way societies have reorganized have
widened the gap between the few at the top and the majority in the middle and
at the bottom. Consequently, the availability of opportunity for those at the base
of the social pyramid has been negatively affected. As inequality has grown, so
has dissatisfaction.

The inequality to which we refer is not just inequality within countries, but it is also
an inequality based on other criteria, such as race and ethnicity so that the gap
between black and white has widened globally. Gaps between different regions
of the world have also widened and as people try unsuccessfully to close them,
resentment grows. Resentment, envy, and discontent contribute to changes in
the way people think and how they behave.

We conclude that as a result of a range of social forces affecting different

countries, different regions, and different peoples to one degree or another,
changes in attitudes and behavior have been triggered. One of the changes that
we see is that dominant social ideologies (the set of ideas that prevail in a
particular country) begin to be radicalized because more and more the inherited
structures and traditions are questioned, whether these are based on education,
income, or religion. In that context we can think of Islam as one of the world’s
religions in which a section is becoming more radicalized from the main stream
and is distorting and deforming the main stream message of Islam.