A Historicised (Re)Assessment of EDSA ‘People Power’ (1986)

The EDSA ‘People Power’ of 1986 stands out in iconography and ideography of democratisation, both within and beyond the Philippines. Having paved the way for restoring democracy after over a decade of Marcos’s authoritarianism, conventional wisdom takes it as a critical turning point in Philippine political history. This is the idea that this paper seeks to re-assess by looking at the socio-political and discursive contexts within which it developed. Exploring two pathways to re-assessing EDSA ‘People Power’, it shows, firstly, that the extent to which the EDSA revolt may be considered as a critical conjuncture depends significantly on the assessment of, and meanings attached to, the Marcos years. In other words, that this event looms large as a critical turning point notwithstanding the ‘return to good old days’ in Philippine politics that it ushered, is a reflection of two parallel and mutually reinforcing developments: (1) the hegemony of global discourse on democratisation (2) and the strong anti-Marcos sentiments in the post-EDSA years that the segments of the elite, civil society and international players promote for their interests, both altruistic and self-serving. Secondly, this paper argues that EDSA cannot be assessed simply in terms of its immediate effects on formal economic and political structures. One has to look at democratisation process “from below”, which necessarily takes time and away from formal democratic institutions, to see the spaces it opened and the political energies it strengthened. A set of broader analytic lenses – ones that consider discursive resonances, that de-centre analysis from central state institutions, and that consider long-term changes in political culture – must be deployed in order to uncover the changes set in train by this event.