INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the Philippines’ government policy towards the South China Sea (SCS) dispute since 1995 in the context of bilateral relations with China as well as membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Specifically, it looks at how the country has managed its maritime dispute with China since the Mischief Reef incident in 1995 and the implications of the international court's ruling in July 2016 for its bilateral ties with China and ASEAN regional diplomacy, as well as its external defence posture. Using a neoclassical realist perspective, I argue that—despite the favourable ruling of the international court—the Philippines under the new administration of President Duterte still faces a number of challenges in managing its maritime conflict with China. These challenges include: difficulties in renormalization of relations with Beijing; the push for a regional Code of Conduct (COC) between China and the ASEAN in the SCS; and the dismal state of the Philippines’ external defence capability. This author also contends that, under new leadership, the Philippines should seriously consider embarking on developing selfreliance or self-help capability as part of its internal balancing strategy, which should have been the country's core defence strategy since 1992, to effectively protect its interests in the West Philippine Sea.

Self-help is fundamentally a principle of action in an anarchical system of states where each state actor is responsible for their own survival or security. Realists do not consider it prudent for states to rely on other states or institutions to ensure their security. While powerful states can pursue military or defence build-up when they feel threatened by other states, this may not be adequate for smaller states especially if they face a more powerful hegemonic state. To compensate, small states may resort to balance of power strategies by aligning with a more powerful state or forming alliances with other states to counter a perceived hegemony. From a neorealist perspective, states can pursue balance of power internally, by mobilizing internal resources to build economic and defence capability, and externally, by forming alliances or bandwagoning with other states. According to Waltz, power is a means to ensure a state's security and the concern of states is ultimately to maximize security.

Democratic practices of the Philippines, Asia's oldest democracy and the second most populous country in the ASEAN region, have been a puzzle to many scholars and observers of democracy. While vibrant in terms of voter turnout, civic engagement, and institutional protections, there are widespread flaws in Philippine democratic processes—illustrated by persistent pernicious elite politics, continued institutional weakness, and widespread abuse of public office.

The country's economic record is as patchy as its democracy. The long-standing description of the Philippines as the “sick man of Asia” has been rebutted by the country's rapid economic growth over the last decade (2007–17). However, with regular boom and bust cycles, and persistent deep-seated poverty and inequality, concerns remain about the equity and sustainability of this type of growth in the Philippines. Built on the legacies of Spanish and United States colonial rule, the Philippine state remains confronted by constant challenges to its legitimacy—including Asia's longest communist rebellion, Muslim separatist insurgencies in Mindanao, and large-scale public protests such as the first and second Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA 1 and 2), Philippine's People Power Revolution that forced changes in leadership through extra-constitutional processes.

“Change” has therefore been a recurring theme in Philippine political, economic, and social discourses. The discourse of change holds considerable appeal and permeates the everyday lives of ordinary Filipinos with remarkable intensity and frequency. The discourse informs the thinking of political observers who identify competing reformist and populist narratives of change in Philippine politics. Change seems to characterize the transition from the administration of Aquino II (2010–16) to the administration of current president Rodrigo Roa Duterte (2016–). Aquino II was elected on a technocratic “straight path” (daang matuwid) reform platform that challenged the widespread abuse of public office under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–10). Duterte—a maverick former mayor of Davao city in Mindanao—rode high on a campaign promise in the 2016 presidential election of bringing about law and order in a swift and decisive manner, embodied in his slogan “Change Is Coming”.

But how much change has actually taken place? What kind of change is unfolding and for whom? Are we simply witnessing business-as-usual, fragmented Filipino elite politics, as a feature of discordant democracy in the Philippines?

Dewi was born with a physical impairment and raised by a family who believed she was able to participate fully in the day-to-day activities of the family and the community. With the encouragement and support of her family, Dewi completed her education and is now the leader of the local branch of the Indonesian Association of Women with Disabilities, where she campaigns for the rights of other Indonesians with disability. By creating the conditions for Dewi to be educated and by supporting and encouraging her independence, her family challenged how most Indonesians think of people with disability—as being highly dependent, to be pitied and needing charity.

Stories like Dewi's are part of the reason that disability activists in Indonesia have campaigned so energetically for changes to how disability is conceptualised, legislated and funded by government organisations. For decades, being disabled in Indonesia, as in many other parts of the world, was seen as an impediment, a source of pity and a driver of acts of charity. This ‘welfare’ approach to disability was premised on the understanding that the source of the problem faced by people with disability was their impairments, and that support for people with disability was best delivered in the form of rehabilitation to ‘fix’ their impairments or through payments or other forms of charity. Over the course of the 1990s, the work of disability activists in the global north contributed to a significant shift in how disability was conceptualised, and therefore how support for people with disability was best delivered. The social model of disability, which places the onus of the problem not on the individual living with disability but rather on the social structures that make it difficult for those with disability to participate in society, has become the foundation for how disability is understood globally and, in turn, for how policy related to people with disability is formulated.

Minorities have been a volatile phenomenon in Indonesia's social and political history for centuries. Over time, minority identity has been shaped by the imperatives of trade, by ideas of ritual purity and power, by ethnicity, by national allegiance, by religious affiliation and by lack of access to the full privileges of citizenship. Older forms of identity have existed alongside, and have sometimes intersected with, newer forms.

In today's world, we are accustomed to seeing minorities as disadvantaged. To belong to a minority is to have less than full acceptance as a citizen in the state where one belongs. It is to be treated, at least in some respects, as being alien in one's own country. The consequences of minority status range from neglect, social marginalisation and legal discrimination to forced assimilation, exclusion, expulsion and even extermination. In understanding minorities as communities under siege by their host societies, we quite correctly invoke the language of human rights and we propose remedies underpinned by law and education. If we are to chart a way forward, however, we need to understand that, historically, minority status has sometimes delivered advantage to the minorities themselves and to the host community. Minority status in Indonesia has been the product of complex social and political forces that have shifted over time. Minorities change character and sometimes disappear as historical circumstances change. We are now in the midst of a major change in the configuration of Indonesia's minorities.

Two categories of minority—trading minorities and ritual minorities (that is, minorities defined by perceived ritual ‘impurity’)—were known in the Indonesian archipelago in early times. The more important were the foreign trading minorities. Living as small communities in the trading cities and towns of the archipelago, they prospered above all when their shared identity provided a basis for trust within the community and among similar communities elsewhere, permitting the exchange of credit and information that was crucial to commercial success (Cohen 1971). Social distance from the host community, and consequent immunity from broader social obligations, was also important. Max Weber, focusing on the example of the Jews in Europe, called such minorities ‘pariahs’, implying that they were driven into commerce by hatred and contempt on the part of host communities, but more recent research has highlighted the positive consequences of ethnic solidarity, not only in commerce but also in other occupations (Dobbin 1996; Light and Karageorgis 2005).