(DP 2000-12) The J2K Crisis and the Economy: The Broader Context

Abstract

This Analysis views the Jueteng 2000 crisis and its economy impact in the light of the dynamics and governance of the soft state. At the heart of the soft state is the widespread marketization of governance, i.e., of rules and enforcement. The latter generates the soft state’s dominant texture: disorder. Disorder is the revenge of the market on a state that usurps the former's territory of competence. Business (i.e., the market economy) abhors disorder, which guarantee that poor economic performance and the soft state are inseparable. Disorder spikes when traditional bulwarks of the rule of law appear to sell out. The J2K appears to compromise the chief law enforcer in the eyes of business, not so much on the say so of a jueteng lord as on the litany of corroborating past misdeeds. The legalization of gambling is a correct step but a compromised president is vulnerable and invites defiance. Pandemonium followed. The removal and punishment of an erring chief executive will be a giant step in cauterizing the tentacles of the soft state. This is not about a choice between Estrada and Macapagal-Arroyo. This is about empowering institutions and self-respect. If the Senate can collectively prove to be bigger than life, then seldom would “so much (be) owned by so many to so few".