Policy coalitions and ambitious politicians: a case study of Philippine social policy reform

The Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino administration witnessed a series of social policy reforms such as Republic Act (RA) 10533 (K-12 Law) and RA 10354 (Reproductive Health Law). The political process of this reform is full of intellectual puzzles considering the conventional knowledge on Philippine politics, which is mainly shaped by the framework of weak state. Why was the administration able to carry out the reforms despite the strong opposition from vested interests sustaining the weak state? This paper argues that ambitious politicians, i.e., those who differ in policy positions and seek to challenge the existing power structure, can work with policy advocates both in public and private sectors and create policy coalitions which result into policy reform. By tracing the political process of forming the policy coalitions, this paper aims to reveal the dynamic aspect of Philippine politics which has been neglected because of the dominance of the weak state framework.This is one of the products of the Emerging State Project under the Grant-in-Aid research projects No. 25101004 and the Leading Initiative for Excellent Young Researchers of the Japanese government.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/takagi_yusuke