Networks of Distrust: The Impact of Automation, Corruption, and Media on Philippine Elections discusses how in a Philippine context, the bureaucracy and the Commission on Elections is dysfunctional and that corruption has a ubiquitous impact on governance and administration that has defined how the state operates. Scholars and commentators have described Philippine democracy as a paradox. This book uses the unprecedented May 2010 synchronized automation of elections — an attempt at electoral engineering — to better understand the lingering paradox of Philippine politics and its public administration system.
This book reviews dominant paradigms of the Philippine state trapped in a simplistic patronage politics perspective. Using the unprecedented automation of the May 2010 elections, this book provides fresh theoretical perspectives in understanding the Philippine state as a complex assemblage of networks of distrust.
