Political change, urban services and social movements: Political participation and grass‐roots politics in Metro Manila
| Published date | 01 October 1984 |
| Author | Jürgen Rüland |
| Date | 01 October 1984 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230040403 |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT,
Vol.
4,
325-333 (1984)
Political change, urban services and social movements:
political participation and grass-roots politics in Metro
Manila’
JURGEN
RULAND
Arnold Bergstraesser
Institut
SUMMARY
Rapid urbanization in the Third World has become one of the most pressing developmental
problems of today. Metro Manila, capital of the Philippines,
for
instance, grew from 300,000
inhabitants in 1903 to more than
8
million in
1980.
The authorities were unable to cope with
the gigantic socio-economic problems of such an explosive growth.
As
a
consequence, the
urban poor gradually developed their own strategies
for
improving their adverse living
conditions. Social movements emerged, in order
to
press the government for a more
responsive policy towards the needs
of
the poor. Although the activities
of
these social
movements culminated in the late
60s
and early 70s, the imposition of martial law on the
Philippines in 1972 had highly negative repercussions on citizen’s participation and
community organizing efforts. Since authoritarian regimes have been established in the
majority of Third World countries, the article examines the following questions by
elaborating on the Philippine experience: how urban social movements are able to exist under
authoritarian regimes, whether they are able to contribute to an upgrading of urban services
and to what extent they are able to be starting points
for
a
democratization from the grass-
roots’ level. The findings are that, without
a
minimum of constitutional liberties and
pluralism, urban social movements remain rather short-lived phenomena and that the
improvement of services through urban social movements is bound to fail under a political
climate of severe repression. Moreover, the suppression of reformist and participatory
movements fuels political polarization.
RAPID URBANIZATION
AND
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE THIRD
WORLD
Rapid urbanization in the Third World has become one
of
the most pressing
developmental problems
of
today.
The explosive nature
of
urbanization
is
highlighted by its demographic dimension. Whereas in 1975 some 840 million
people, or
28
per cent
of
the total population
of
Third World countries, lived in
urban areas, by the year 2000 the urban population will have increased to more than
2
billion, so that by then some
42
per cent of the Third World population will be city
dwellers (Jaycox, 1978). There will be no less than 40-70 agglomerations in the
Third World, each with more than 10 million inhabitants and eight
of
them will have
Dr.
Riiland is a senior staff member at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institut,
16
Windausstrasse, Freiburg,
7800, and lecturer in political science at the University of Freiburg, West Germany.
’
Revised version
of
a paper read at the Community Research Meetings
of
the International Sociological
Association; conference
Questioning the Welfare State and the Rise
of
the
Ciry,
Universite de Paris-X,
Nanterre,
10-12
October 1983, workshop on ‘Participation and Social Movements’.
027
1
-2075/84/040325-09$01
.OO
0
1984 by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
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