Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
What I think you're missing here is that the local elites control the Manila government. They dominate the legislature and virtually everyone in the executive and judicial branches has their roots in that class. They're good at talking about reform, making a gesture here and there, and making very sure that any program threatening their power never gets off the ground. They also tend to stick together. Once in a while someone will become a liability and be tossed to the sharks, but for the most part they close ranks against any effort to diminish their power or bring them within the rule of law. They're generally pretty effective at it.

I think in the case of the American south you may be glossing over some things. The moves from the top didn't emerge from a vacuum and they weren't initiated from the top. They were a response to a whole lot of agitation from Americans who found that old order unacceptable. The moves came from the top, but they came because of pressure from the bottom.

Of course there was "pressure from the bottom." That is the essence of insurgency. Sometimes it is primarily illegal and violent; sometimes it is primarily illegal and non-violent; usually it is some mix of legal and illegal, violent and non-violent approaches that ultimately lead to change.

But if you don't think local elites have a major impact on US politics, you haven't been paying attention. This is true in every country to some degree, and in a country with any form of republican democracy it is very true and significant. Lyndon Johnson showed tremendous selfless moral courage in ignoring what all of the polls, advisors, and his own political instincts were warning him about what would happen to his political career if he insisted on pushing for civil rights reforms, but in the face of all of that, push he did. Many experts believe that it was this, far more than the nature of events in Vietnam, that was the primary factor in his decision not to run for a second term. The three landmark civil rights bills that he pushed through congress changed America forever and for better. It all looks so benign and obvious now in retrospect, but at the time it was HUGE, not obvious at all, and stirred up tremendous turmoil.

As information technology continues to empower populaces and non-state actors there will be increasing demand for political elites and their backers to take note of what the people are telling them and to actually address reasonable concerns that they may well have been ignoring and suppressing for generations or even centuries. The tide is turning. Those governments who recognize this and evolve will prevail and endure; those who think that they are somehow immune to this powerful dynamic will ultimately implode. Even those that may seem so stable on the surface today. The signs are there for those who are willing to pause and read them.

The instinct of most such governments is to double-down on internal security and intel in an effort to suppress the growing resistance. While this can have a very real temporary effect on suppressing the symptoms, it at the same time exacerbates the root causes, and makes the problem worse. Inevitably at some point this approach collapses.

Americans may well cheer when a Qaddafi is dragged from a sewer pipe and riddled with bullets. Will they cheer as loudly when these scenes are of leaders we see as critical allies?? Just as national leaders must evolve and be more in tune to their populaces as a whole (and not just the traditional powerful elite), so too must powerful nations that may well be stable at home be more in tune to such perceptions among the populaces of the nations we engage with and rely upon for economic or security interests that we perceive as vital.

The world is evolving at an unprecedented rate on the back of technology. Those governments who are willing to evolve with it will prevail. Those who cling dogmatically to the status quo will struggle or fail.