Someone asked me once whether the Philippines had the equivalent of a ‘deep state.’ I told him I didn’t think so, not least because my impression of the bureaucracy is one of rent-maximizing machines with no coherent agenda, let alone one which could work to depose a sitting government. What we do have is what I would call an infrastructure of liberal democratic norms fully embedded in civil society, in part funded by and therefore implicated in the global liberal order. The latter may refer to big United Nations programs, for example the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are locally implemented. These are the non-governmental organizations who often advocate on specific policy issues – be it the environment, freedom of press or disaster management.

Similar to the deep state, this is a professional cadre that is unelected and are not directly responsible to the general public. Nevertheless, they do participate in governance and are important drivers in policy reform. They have formal and informal linkages to various stakeholders in the public and private sectors. These groups are well-organized and are well-connected, which makes them the ideal node to mobilize should one want to mount an opposition to a sitting administration. Often, they come from the same education institutions, the big urban-based universities. As such, they share very similar socio-economic backgrounds and political values, ones very similar to that of the post-Cold War global liberal order. These values advocate for liberal democratic norms and puts civil society on center stage as agents and drivers of progress.

The major weakness of this cadre is its lack of mass support. Its most important allies and historical standard-bearers, the middle class, are small in number. Many are overseas. This leaves mass-based politics to liberal democrats’ rivals – the organized Left. Which was why the President, despite his bluster, attempted to co-opt both its political and armed wings. Meanwhile, Facebook warriors are hard at work in building mass-based publics. Technology has now allowed the mobilization of sentiments of Filipinos abroad. Which is why our social media are looking more like platforms for trench warfare. Often, the drivers of these sentiments, well-versed not only in propaganda and the infrastructure of mass media, articulate only the interests of their immediate principals. The latter could be specific government officials, private interests, or indeed these little pockets of civil society.

I do not think that the dynamics of public opinion has really fundamentally changed. This has always been an uneven playing field, where the dominant voices, with the most influence, authority and spending power, take up the space for where mass politics ought to be. Online, some get to be citizens. The rest are trolls.