Unlocking the Pangulo: Revisiting Remigio Agpalo

and the Filipinization of Political Science

MICHAEL ANJIELO R TABUYAN
MA Philippine Studies (Socio-Cultural Studies)
Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman
Report delivered for the PS201 (Philippines in Asia) class
of Prof. Jose Wendell Capili, PhD on 12 May 2018

INTRODUCTION
In 1965, during the golden jubilee of the University of the Philippines (UP)
Department of Political Science, a professor delivered a paper that questioned the
existing moorings of political science in the Philippines. Questioning the traditional,
legalistic analytic methodology that is usually associated with the discipline, he thus called
for the adoption of the modern ways of studying politics. He said (Agpalo, 1984):

…The old kind [of studying political science] is essentially

legalistic in approach. It is legalistic because it studies the
juridical concept of state…when it studies the dynamics of
government, it studies procedures…the interplay of social,
economic, political and other forces in the political system is
not stressed and may even be ignored. Thus, all the life,
complexity, grimness, grace, confusion, and dynamism of
politics are underplayed or disregarded…

The new political science, on the other hand, is essentially

sociological and dynamic. It studies the political system and
the political processes instead of the state. It stresses…actual
political behavior and the social, economic, ideological,
geographical, and other dynamic factors that affect it. It
emphasizes political interaction and actual participation
instead of legal relationships…The old political science lays
much emphasis on library study, analyzing legal

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 documents…the new political science frequently makes use
of field survey, observation, and interviews…

With these new developments in the field, the presenter, Professor Remigio
Agpalo, then Department Chairperson, further suggested a revisit of the goals of
Philippine political science. He argued that:

In our post-independence era, the state-focused kind of

political science is no longer appropriate. Our problem is no
longer how to gain independence, but how to modernize as a
nation – economically, socially, and politically. It is not the
rights and powers of government agencies and the people
legally defined that ought to interest us primarily now, but the
ways and means to develop and mobilize the resources of the
nation and integrate the various sectors and groups which
constitute the Philippine social and political system…

Little did Professor Agpalo know that the call for the adoption of modern political
science and recalibration of its goals that he advocated will be the start of his long
adventure in the world of Philippine political science.

ABOUT THE SCHOLAR

Born in Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro, Agpalo received his basic education from
the local schools, which was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. During
the Liberation period, wanting adventure, he ran away from their house and served as a
kitchen boy for the American soldiers stationed in the area, where he became friends with
them. With a desire to study in the United States, these war veterans eventually helped
him to gain a scholarship in the University of Maine, where he finished his BA in
Government, with highest honors in 1952. He soon returned to the Philippines where he
worked as a faculty member of the University of the Philippines from 1953 to 1984,
eventually reaching the rank of Professor VIII, then the highest academic rank and step
in the University (Agpalo, 1996).

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 Impressed by his intellectual prowess, then UP College of Liberal Arts (now UP
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy) dean Tomas Fonacier sent him abroad for
advanced studies. Thus from 1955 to 1958, he returned to the US to take his graduate
degrees in Indiana University, on which he received his MA in 1956 and PhD in 1958.
Afterwards he resumed his teaching career in UP, where he was appointed Academic
Officer-in-Charge (OIC) of the Political Science Department from 1961-1962, and later its
Chairperson from 1963-1966. In the 1960s and the early 1970s, he became a visiting
professor in the University of Hawaii and the University of South Florida, and a fellow of
the East-West Center, also in Hawaii.

It was during his tenure as Chairperson that he became active in the practice of
political science research and education in the Philippines. Aside from his usual
university positions, he established the national association of political science scholars
in the country, the Philippine Political Science Association (PPSA) in 1963, where he
became its Charter President from 1962-1966. Under this capacity, he organized the first
national research conferences in political science in the country, drawing various scholars
from different parts of the country and of Asia. Using political modernization and
development theory, as the UP’s Manuel Roxas Professor of Political Science in the
1970s, he became active in the attempts to adopt Filipino sociocultural perspectives in
the study of Philippine politics. As a result, he then eventually came up with the ideas of
Pandanggo sa Ilaw Politics (1963), Organic Hierarchical Paradigm (1973) and Societal
Pangulo Regime (1981), thereby cementing his reputation as one of the country’s top
political science scholars (Ronas, 2007). He further explored Philippine politics by
studying the political ideas of Filipino historical figures, specifically Jose P. Laurel (1965),
Jose Rizal (1969), and Emilio Jacinto (1976).

He retired from UP in 1984, where he was eventually conferred the title of

Professor Emeritus. After his UP stint, he became a faculty member of the De La Salle
University Manila, where he continued his scholarship by studying the Filipino
perspectives on leadership, and the future role of Political Science in the Philippines.
Retiring from DLSU in 1988, he continued to advance political science research by tracing
the origins and historical development of the discipline in the Philippines. He died in 2008.

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 Among the works he authored are The Political Process and the Nationalization of
the Retail Trade in the Philippines (1962), The Political Elite and the People (1972), and
Adventures in Political Science (1996).

MAJOR WORKS OF AGPALO

Among Agpalo’s research interests are the study of political development and
modernization and its application to the study of Philippine society and politics. He
defines political modernization (1973) as the process of change from a minimum to a
maximum level of rationalization of authority, national integration, and popular
participation. Political development, on the other, pertains to the process of change that
the political system undergoes from lack to full flowering and fruition of the rule of law,
civility, and social justice.

He utilizes the use of structural functionalism and political culture as analytical

lenses in analyzing Philippine politics and society. Political culture is described by Mark
Hooghe (2010) as the political attitudes and behavioral patterns of the population. It
assumes that this culture largely determines the relation of citizens with the political
system. It further claims that specific elements of that culture have an impact on the way
political institutions function. On the other hand, structural functionalism refers to the
belief that society is like a fit life form that is composed of several parts combined in larger
systems. These systems, each with their own particular use or function, operates
together with others (Jose and Ong, 2016).

The results of these studies will be discussed in this portion, to wit are: (1)
Pandanggo sa Ilaw Politics, (2) Organic Hierarchical Paradigm, (3) Societal Pangulo
Regime, (4) Typology of Filipino Leaders, (5) Political Philosophy of Filipino Intellectuals,
and (6) Political Science in the Philippines

Pandanggo sa Ilaw Politics

Pandanggo sa ilaw politics is one of Agpalo’s (1963) earliest works. Inspired by

the politics of his home province, he studied its political dynamics and compared it akin
to the Filipino folk dance pandanggo sa ilaw, where each dance elements represent a
particular element of Occidental Mindoro politics:

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 …This folk dance [pandanggo sa ilaw] may be described in
terms of the (1) participant dancers, (2) the objects of the
dancers carry or hold, and (3) the way how the participants
dance. The participants are male and female, two or more of
them, who carry lighted glass oil lamps on their heads and at
the back of the hands. Dancing to the rhythm of lilting music,
they sway and balance, go around the stage or dance floor,
intermingle, manipulate the glass lamps with amazing and
spectacular dexterity, and maneuver for dramatic and
arresting position on the floor. Agile of hands and nimble of
feet, the pandanggo dancers do not tip or drop the glass lamps
they carry.

In pandanggo sa ilaw politics, there are elements analogous

to those found in the folk dance. Similar to the pandanggo
dancers are the political actors – the citizens and the
government officials; to the glass oil lamps, the power of the
political actors. Corresponding to the stage where the
pandanggo is danced is the political arena. The movement of
the political actors can be compared to those of the
pandanggo dancers; these consist in skillful manipulations
and maneuvering. For this reason, the political actors, like the
pandanggo dancers, are fascinating to watch….

Agpalo finds pandanggo sa ilaw distinguishable with other political styles as it is

characterized as “personality, practicality, and material-based” political stance. He
describe this by saying that:

Unlike the politics of ideology where the ideological doctrines

guide, direct, and dominate the political process, there are no
doctrines guiding and directing the political actors in
pandanggo sa ilaw politics…instead they are moved by
personalistic, concrete, material, and non-ideological ends or

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 things. What interests them are personal and practical
matters – what favors can be allocated to supporters and
burdens imposed on non-supporters; what personal traits
certain public officials or citizens have or do not have; what
party can grant favors and what group cannot give patronage;
and the like. In other words, pandanggo sa ilaw politics is
oriented towards personality, practicality, and material goods.

He also noted that such system exists in a traditional system where superordinates
and subordinates have well-defined and accepted statuses and roles. Given this premise
therefore, there is no opposition or broad public opinion existing.

Organic Hierarchical Paradigm and Societal Pangulo Regime

The results of the studies of Agpalo on the politics of Occidental Mindoro formed
the building blocks of his next major Philippine political perspective. Realizing that the
Philippine society is formed from the blueprints of the traditional perspectives of the
Filipinos on the family, Agpalo then built the premises of his theory on Philippine politics.

Agpalo (1973) posits that Philippine society is structured like the human body on
which every element has a particular function in the society, with the functional elements
of the society as the ones who are incorporated in this body politic. Calling it as the
Organic-Hierarchical Paradigm, he then describes this political set up as:

…an organism, with a head, body, arms, legs, hands, feet,

fingers and toes. The body grows through the ingestion and
absorption of external elements which can be incorporated.
Those elements which it cannot incorporate, because they are
destructive or cancerous, are purged, rejected, destroyed or
neutralized. Its politics, therefore, is a politics of incorporation.
The principal components of the political system are the
political elite and the people, the political elite acting as head,
and the people serving as the body, together with its limbs and
other organic parts. The political elite are recruited from a

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 principal part of the body, the principalia, which incorporates
into itself all emerging socio-political forces which can be
incorporated into the political system. The relationship
between the political elite and the people is not a conflict or
enmity relationship, On the contrary, it is one of symbiosis and
paternalism….

This structure, apart from being organic and hierarchical, must be governed by the
pagdamay principle, which is characterized by the maxim ang sakit ng kalingkingan dama
ng buong katawan.

This organic-hierarchical paradigm, as Agpalo (1981) claims, is the blueprint of the

pre-colonial Filipinos in forming their communities called as barangays. He then now calls
it as pangulo regime, where the head of the polity is called as the “pangulo,” with the
entire polity as its body. Such pangulo, according to Agpalo must be paternalistic, and
thus characterized as a strongman leader. However, due to the modernization of the
society, he advocated for the adoption of what he calls as the “societal” pangulo regime.
He outlined the powers of the Pangulo under this regime as:

…Chief of State (ceremonial executive); Chief Executive (real

executive); Chief Administrator; Chief of Foreign Relations;
Grantor of Pardons, Reprieves, and Commutations and
Remitter of Fines and Forfeitures, as well as Grantor of
Amnesties, with the concurrence of the Legislature; and
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces…

…the Pangulo should be a Chief Legislator. This provision

entails the scuttling of a fundamental characteristic of the
presidential regime pro- This means that the Pangulo will not
be a mere participant in the lawmaking process as the
President was under the 1935 Constitution; instead he will be
a director and controller of the legislative process as the Prime
Minister under the 1973 Constitution… the veto power of the

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 President should be given to the Pangulo; and it ought to be
made absolute, i.e., it cannot be overridden by the legislative
body even if it musters at least two-thirds of the votes of its
members…The fact that the Pangulo is made a Chief
Legislator does not mean that the legislative power vested in
the National Assembly under the 1973 Constitution is
transferred to the Pangulo. Under the societal pangulo regime
envisioned in this paper, the legislative power remains vested
in the National Assembly. The legislators continue to exercise
the power to introduce bills and resolutions, to discuss and
deliberate on them, to conduct committee hearings, to
investigate various matters in relation to legislation, to approve
or disapprove legislative measures, and others related to
legislation.

Given the immense power that the Pangulo possesses, Agpalo is thus aware that
it may be used to perpetuate dictatorship, which will then trigger social unrest. To prevent
this, he then suggested that the Pangulo must subscribe to the pagdamay principle, which
will be operable by the adaption of:

…principles of liberal democracy…namely: 1) popular

sovereignty; 2) inviolability of the bill of rights, which must
include civil, political, and social rights; 3) the independence
of the judiciary and the rule of law; 4) the separation of church
and state; and 5) the supremacy of civilian authority over the
military.

With these, the pagdamay principle shall serve as the check and balance
framework of the Pangulo as to make him accountable for his actions as the “father” of
the country.

Adoption of the Pangulo Regime, according to Agpalo (1973), will make a true
Filipino liberal democracy: Filipino in the sense that it adopts to the means of the Pangulo

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Regime, and liberal-democratic as it adopts to the liberal ideas of the Filipino heroes.
However, Agpalo (1999; 1981) is quick to point out that this setup is distinct from the
parliamentary and presidential models that the Western colonizers have introduced, as
the Pangulo Regime is rooted in the Filipino culture. He explains that (1999):

…the three regimes – the parliamentary, the presidential, and

the pangulo – are similar in some aspects, but in other
aspects, they are vastly different from each other. All three
regimes are democratic, for all of them believe in and practice
the principle of popular sovereignty. In all these regimes the
people control the government, for their fundamental laws
provide that the people (demos) are the ultimate source of
authority (kratos). All these regimes are also libertarian (from
libertas, liberty or freedom), for all these regimes provide for a
bill of rights in their constitution. Finally, all three regimes
believe in the three great values which the French Revolution
recognized -liberty, equality, and fraternity). All the three
regimes recognize liberty as a value because as pointed out
earlier, all three are libertarian. All these three regimes also
recognize the value of equality, for as pointed out earlier also,
all three regimes are democratic. Democracy implies that
each individual in the political society is equal to each of the
other individuals constituting the political society. This is
enshrined in the doctrine of democracy – one man, one vote.
And finally, all three regimes recognize the value of fraternity,
for all of them are Christian, believing in God as the common
Father and Creator, and, therefore, all the children of God are
brothers (fraternity= brotherhood)…

Typology of Filipino Leaders

Apart from theorizing the ideal Filipino political system, Agpalo (1989) also
investigated on the typology of the Filipino leaders. In this study, he created the typology

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based from the concept of leadership, ideology, and organization. He defined leadership
(citing James MacGregor Burns, 1978) as the ability of a person to mobilize institutional,
political, psychological and other resources to arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of
its followers; organization (citing Plano et al, 1973), on the other hand, organization refers
to the goal-seeking collectivity of individuals that has a structure designed to help them
to achieve their collective goals. Ideology refers to the consistent and integrated pattern
of thoughts and beliefs that explains a person’s attitude towards life and his existence in
the society, and thus advocates a conduct or action responsive to them; these ideas helps
the members of the society to interpret the past, explain the present, and visualize the
future (citing Loewenstein, 1957; Easton, 1965).

Given these ideas, Agpalo created a four-square typology of Filipino leadership

(see Figure 1). Persons having presence of ideology and strong organization are called
“supremo leaders,” while those leaders whose organization is weak but has ideology are
called as “visionary” leaders. Leaders who have strong organization but do not have
ideology are called as “organization man” leaders; and those who do not possess both
strong organization and ideology are called as “paradux" leaders.

Figure 1: Remigio Agpalo’s typology of Filipino leaders

Applying these to the Filipino leaders of the time, he concluded that Ferdinand
Marcos is an example of a Supremo leader, Jose Rizal as an example of a Visionary
leader, former Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Fabian Ver as the Organization Man,
and Corazon Aquino as the Paradux leader. Agpalo explained that by establishing the
New Society and having successes in both domestic and foreign policy, Marcos
exemplifies the qualities that describe a Supremo president: strong decisive leadership
guided by an ideology. On the contrary, Aquino was seen as a Paradux leader because

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of her inability to solve the then-military coups led by the Reform of the Armed Forces
Movement (RAM) and inability to forge solidarity among the factions that led her to power
during the 1986 EDSA Revolution.

Political Philosophy of Filipino Intellectuals: Jose Rizal, Emilio Jacinto, Jose P.

Laurel

Apart from analyzing Philippine politics from the point of view of comparative
politics, Agpalo also studied the political philosophy of Filipino intellectuals, in particular
Jose P. Laurel, Jose Rizal, and Emilio Jacinto using the lens of political modernization
and political development. In analyzing Rizal’s political philosophy, Agpalo (1969) noted
that he is the exponent of political modernization by:

…exposing the anachronism and the dysfunctional role of

superstition with vigor; and he advocated the transformation
of the parochial culture of the Philippines into a participant
culture…he stressed the use of rationality and science in
dealing with the multifarious problems of the country…

Furthermore, Agpalo, upon his analysis of Rizal’s works, stressed that the hero
envisions a new Filipino order led by Filipinos who are national participants who are free,
science-oriented, and dependent on themselves to solve the social problems, thereby
rejecting the parochial, superstitious, medieval-oriented people whom he described in his
novels. This new order advocates the development of commerce, agriculture, and
industry, with a just and libertarian government, and people who are participant in the
nation building. This may happen only through education, and not revolution.

Emilio Jacinto, on the other hand, is seen by Agpalo (1976) as an exemplar of

political development. Analyzing his works Kartilya ng Katipunan (1896), Pamahalaan sa
Hukuman ng Silangan (1898), and Liwanag at Dilim, it embodies the goal to unite the
Filipino people as a community of “brothers in everlasting happiness” where equality is
present; Agpalo interprets this as indication of Jacinto’s vision of civil society, social
justice, and rule of law. These things are manifested in the form of government that
Jacinto formed in his Pamahalaan sa Hukuman ng Silangan, where it is a government

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formed by the People, and adheres to the principle of centralization and respect to human
rights.

Agpalo also studied the political ideas of Jose P. Laurel. In a treatise (1965), he
discussed that Laurel views the government as an institution formed to promote human
dignity, and to advance it further, a popular government is the best form possible. Such
government is grounded on the idea of representation, renovation or the fixation of tenure
of government officials, and popular control, and must be the balance between
authoritarianism and libertarianism. Supporting this is the idea of regulating capitalism
and advancing social justice.

STUDIES ON PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE

Apart from being a political scientist, Agpalo was also the first scholar who traced
the origins and evolution of the discipline of political science in the Philippines. According
to Agpalo (1984), while the modern study of political science was a legacy of the American
colonial masters, there has been Filipino precursors to the discipline, as manifested by
the political writings of the ilustrados during the Propaganda period. Filipino heroes such
as Jose Rizal and Marcelo H. del Pilar, who wrote articles in La Solidaridad analyzing the
political, economic, and social situation in the Philippines, Emilio Jacinto and Apolinario
Mabini who wrote political treatises about the formation of a post-colonial Philippine polity
became the foundations of the discipline and thus regarded by Agpalo as the founders of
Philippine political science. Their approach in politics, according to him, is normative, and
focuses on the methods and principles of philosophical inquiry, being most of them
educated in the European tradition.

The resulting American colonization set the need for the discipline as a foundation
to educate Filipinos for self-rule, thus, the discipline was established in 1915 at UP, with
Dean George Malcolm as the founding chairperson. Malcolm established political
science on the lines of legal institutionalism, mainly as a preparatory for Filipinos who
wanted to pursue a legal career. State-centered and legalistic, it highlights the powers
and structure of the state, and theories on political and civil liberty. Malcolm was
succeeded by Maximo Kalaw, a former pensionado who also continued the practices set

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by his predecessor. His brother, National Library director Teodoro, wrote the first
Philippine book on political science, which is the Manual de Ciencia Politica (1918). The
influence of Malcolm and the Kalaw brothers established legal institutionalism as the
dominant approach in studying Philippine politics during the American and early post-
colonial period, as manifested by the textbooks published during those period about this
subject matter.

However, the 1950s and the 1960s saw the reorientation of the discipline from its
legalistic methods towards sociological and behavioural lens due to the emergence of
Filipino political scientists who were educated in the United States and were exposed in
the behavioural revolution started by Charles Merriam. Scholars such as Onofre Corpuz
(PhD, 1956), Cesar Majul (PhD, 1957), and Agpalo himself advocated towards the use of
political sociology as the main analytical tool in Philippine politics, which manifested in the
political research outputs on the said periods. Moreover, the discipline was able to spread
to schools outside UP, thus increasing the number of graduates. It also saw the
diversification of the discipline through the introduction of public administration and
Foreign Service degrees during the 1950s. Outside the academe, political science
scholars were able to influence government policy making by becoming government
officials, such as in the case of former UP professors Pedro Baldoria and Bernabe Africa,
who were seconded to the then-fledging Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). The
increasing number of scholars in the 1960s prompted the formation of the PPSA and its
subsequent inclusion to the Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC).

The 1970s called for the change in the methodology as younger scholars wanted
to veer away from the political sociology school established by Agpalo and his
contemporaries. Francisco Nemenzo Jr, a young political science instructor in UP during
the decade, called for the reorientation of the discipline towards the ranks of political
economy and Marxism. He also advocated for the use of the dependency theory as the
main analytical frame for Philippine politics.

CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF REMIGIO AGPALO

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 There is no doubt that Agpalo revolutionized the study of political science in the
Philippines. Considered as the “father of Philippine Political Science (De La Salle
University Library, 2013),” he pioneered the analysis of politics not from the point of view
of legal institutionalism but from the point of view of what we call today as political
sociology. Being one of the pioneers in this field, he liberated political science from its
conceptual and methodological straitjackets and made its scope of discipline more
diverse and comprehensive. It thus began the scientification of political science in the
country, and inspired other scholars to look politics not from the prism of the law but from
the lens of political dynamics.

Agpalo also institutionalized further the study of political science in the professional
level. By establishing the PPSA, he created an organization that will coordinate all efforts
on political science research in the country. He has thus made a great contribution to the
body of knowledge about Philippine politics, as the PPSA still continue to study Philippine
politics in relation to the changing times and dynamism of the society. He thus opened a
great floodgate which introduced the scholarship of the Filipinos in the field. It thus have
broken down the notion that the Westerners have the monopoly to the body of knowledge
in this specialization.

However, Agpalo’s studies also bring controversy. His studies on the Pangulo
Regime brings forth the notion that the Filipinos are leaning towards autocratic regimes.
In effect, the theory gives the impression that Agpalo justifies and defends the actions of
Marcos during the Martial Law period. While he categorically distances himself from the
Marcos regime, with his ideas, he thus became an unwilling co-opter in the schemes of
the dictator. His ideas were used by Marcos and his cohorts to build the foundations of
the authoritarian regime, give a false image that the Western model of democracy is
inefficient and inapplicable to the Filipinos, and thus a strong-man rule under the guise of
the Pangulo is necessary. In the period where the idea of Asian democracy is not yet
conceptualized, Agpalo is years ahead in his contemporaries, yet limiting himself in the
study of the Philippines.

These achievements and thrusts make Agpalo a founding father of Philippine

Studies. In his introduction to Agpalo’s Adventures in Political Science, Dean Zeus

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Salazar (1996), the father of Pantayong Pananaw, recognizes him as a contributor to
Pilipinolohiya by saying that:

Dr. Agpalo’s book can also be considered as an example of

Filipinology. The study of the politics and government of the
Philippines by means of indigenous concepts and frameworks
is Filipinology. Owing to this reason, it can be said that this
volume is a contribution to the development of Filipinology of
our College – even if only on the level of dissociating the
discipline from the customary conceptual frameworks of the
Western authors.

What is needed today is to go full blast in FIlipinology. Such

a policy is truly required in Philippine political science which
examines a favorite Filipino activity – politics.

Agpalo has indeed made a great adventure in political science, and by effect,
making its liberation from the Western notions of the discipline possible.

REFERENCES

Agpalo, Remigio (1963). Pandanggo sa Ilaw: The Politics of Occidental Mindoro. In

Adventures in Political Science (pp. 107-140). Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press.

______________ (1965). Pro Deo et Patria: The Political Philosophy of Jose P. Laurel.
In Adventures in Political Science (pp. 77-103). Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press.

______________ (1969). Jose Rizal: Filipino National Hero and His Ideas of Political
Modernization. In Adventures in Political Science (pp. 45-62). Quezon City:
University of the Philippines Press

______________ (1973). The Organic-Hierarchical Paradigm and Politics in the

Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Phillippines Press.

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______________ (1976). Liwanag at Dilim: The Political Philosophy of Emilio Jacinto.
In Adventures in Political Science (pp. 63-76). Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press.

______________ (1981). The Philippines: From Communal to Societal Pangulo Regime.

In Philippine Law Journal 56 (1), 56-98.

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TABUYAN, Michael Anjielo R. (2016-89501) PS201