Halalan 2022: A Comprehensive Philippine Elections Reading List

Every vote counts so make it an informed vote.

With the elections fast approaching, we listed down key issues and compiled reading recommendations to help inform and prepare readers in casting their votes. Reflecting upon subject matters like democracy, patronage, media, leadership, and crisis response among others should elevate the discourse and provide substantial context on present-day social and political issues.

Here is a selection of books to consider reading before (and even after) the May 9 elections. One of the books listed here may help you further your perspectives and add some fresh points to your political conversations.

Elections and Democracy

Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying

Edited by Frederic Charles Schaffer

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of this widespread but ill-understood practice of vote-buying. The authors systematically explore a series of key questions: What exactly is vote-buying? What are its underlying causes? Why does it occur in some places, but not in others? How does it affect political and economic development? Can it be taught or legislated away? Their work presents new theoretical insights, as well as historical and fresh empirical evidence that vote-buying has turned into a worldwide phenomenon.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Agenda for Hope: Democratizing Governance

Edited by Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez and Teresita Asuncion M. Lacandula-Rodriguez

The volume Democratizing Governance presents an agenda of hope for good governance in our country. The essays in this volume cohere along with one claim—our political hope lies in building a viable state that can govern us well and justly. This means that we should focus on rebuilding our governance systems so that they allow the government to be responsive to the demands of the people and allow citizens to fruitfully engage government in the shared task of state and nation-building.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

In the Name of Civil Society: From Free Election Movements to People Power in the Philippines

By Eva-Lotta E. Hedman

This book examines Philippine politics in a highly original and provocative way. Hedman’s detailed analysis shows how dominant elites in the Philippines shore up the structures of liberal democracy in order to ensure their continued hegemony over Philippine society.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Patronage, Cronyism, and Families in Politics

Patronage Democracy in the Philippines: Clans, Clients, and Competition in Local Elections

Edited by Julio C. Teehankee and Cleo Anne A. Calimbahin

Through ten case studies of political contests in various parts of the country during the 2016 and 2019 elections, this book documents how patronage takes different forms and flows through clientelistic and clan networks. It is hoped that the volume, by mapping the shifts in patronage-driven electoral politics in the country, informs future engagements and reflections on genuine democratic reforms.

Listen to the editors and chapter authors Aries A. Arugay, Mary Joyce Borromeo-Bulao, and Louie C. Montemar take part in a book talk about the electoral dynamics in the Philippines here.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

An Anarchy of Families: State and Families in the Philippines

By Alfred W. McCoy

Illustrated with original photographs, maps, and genealogies, this book explores the history of powerful families like those of Osmeña, Lopez, Pardo de Tavera, Durano, Dimaporo, and Montano.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Some Are Smarter than Others: The History of Marcos’ Crony Capitalism

By Ricardo Manapat

Manapat exercised not only intellectual passion in research but always raged at the poverty caused by government-sponsored greed, witnessing its effects on particular persons–urban poor and farmers who were his deep and life-long friends.

Get your copy at our website or Lazada store. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Territory

Rock Solid: How the Philippines Won Its Maritime Case Against China

By Marites Danguilan Vitug

This book presents a comprehensive account of the epic legal success of the Philippines' territorial claim over that of China. the arbitral ruling is paramount to the protection of Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity. Readers will appreciate the unpacking of the complex nature of Philippine national interest, stretching from fishery and natural resources to security concerns and territorial integrity of the nation.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Health

The RH Bill Story: Contentions and Compromises

By Marilen J. Dañguilan

This book details what took place during the Senate and House debates for the RH Bill. This is valuable documentation for most civil society pro- and anti-RH advocates who can only occasionally, or sometimes never, gain access to the floor debates. What was actually said, or not said offer intriguing insights into how contentious laws are passed in this country.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Economy

Philippine Economy: Development, Policies, and Challenges

By Arsenio Balisacan and Hal Hill

This is a comprehensive book on the Philippine economy authoritatively written and highly relevant for policymakers.

Get your copy at our website or Lazada store. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Agriculture and Agrarian Reform

Zanjeras of Ilocos: Cooperative Irrigation Societies of the Philippines

By Jose A. Rivera

Zanjeras are resource management institutions that have endured for centuries in the Ilocos region. This book explores whether the zanjeras will survive under new complexities. Rivera also proposes actions that governmental bodies can undertake to strengthen the adaptive capacity of zanjeras and other irrigation communities around the world.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. 

State-Society Dynamics: Policy Making in a Restored Democracy

By Jose Magadia S.J.

This book analyses the role of new societal organizations in the emergence of policy and legislative initiatives, especially during the Aquino presidency. This specifically looks at the agrarian reform, urban housing, and labor relations sectors and includes an analysis of state-society dynamics in the post-Aquino Philippines.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Media and Press Freedom

Hindi Nangyari Dahil Wala Sa Social Media: Interogasyon ng Kulturang New Media sa Pilipinas

Edited by Rolando B. Tolentino, Vladimeir B. Gonzales, and Laurence Marvin S. Castillo

This exciting collection gathers scholars and activists to look deeper into the complex layered dynamics of social media in the contemporary Philippines.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Magandang Gabi Bayan: Nation, Journalism Discourse, and Television News in the Philippines

By Estelle Marie M. Ladrido

Ladrido presents the behind-the-scenes and the push-and-pull of power within the exclusive world of broadcast news production which ultimately determines what we see on the news.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Memory, Truth-telling, and the Pursuit of Justice: A Conference on the Legacies of the Marcos Dictatorship

By the Gaston Z. Ortigas Peace Institute

“As with the Legacies of the Marcos Dictatorship, and with the fallen Estrada Presidency, it has been the position of the Project’s Convenors that memory and truth-telling are essential in the pursuit of justice. These were the themes of the Conference on the Legacies of the Marcos Dictatorship that was organized in September 1999, during the height of Estrada’s campaign to curtail the freedom of the press.” —from the Preface by Teresita Quintos Deles

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Crisis Response

Countering COVID-19: Cases in Crisis Response

Edited by Edilberto C. De Jesus, Manuel M. Dayrit, and Ivyrose S. Baysic

The enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic urgently calls for a proactive and strategic response from across all sectors at all levels: global, national, and local. This book, with its wide range of essays, makes the case for a coordinated and truly whole-of-society approach to contain, adapt to, and overcome the pandemic while laying bare preexisting systemic and structural inequalities.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Leadership

Living Constitution: The Troubled Arroyo Presidency

By Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J.

This volume is a collection of columns written during Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration that comments on events that have transpired during her watch, but the main topics are about the performance of her office.

Get your copy at our website or Lazada store. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Living Constitution: The Abbreviated Estrada Presidency

By Joaquin Bernas, S.J.

This volume contains incisive essays about issues that arose during the Estrada presidency—constitutionalism, separation of the Church and state, nature of emergency powers, peace talks, freedom of expression, human rights, graft and corruption, and, of course, impeachment.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte

By Vicente L. Rafael

Rafael offers a prismatic view of the age of Rodrigo Duterte in the contemporary Philippines. Framing Duterte as a trickster figure who boasts, jokes, terrorizes, plays the victim, and instills terror, Rafael weaves together topics ranging from the drug war, policing, and extrajudicial killings to neoliberal citizenship, intimacy, and photojournalism.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Kaya Natin! Champions, Vol. 2: Effective and Empowering Leadership with Integrity

Edited by Shylynne D. Castillo and Karla Angelica G. Pastores

In a country where graft and corruption in government has all too often become the norm, the inspiring leaders of the Kaya Natin! Movement featured here in this book show that good governance and leadership with integrity is still possible.

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

Filipino Leadership: Stories and Science

Edited by Mendiola Teng-Calleja, Ma. Regina M. Hechanova, Edna P. Franco, and Emerald Jay D. Ilac

"The ultimate test of leadership is how we act in the best and worst of times; in crucial moments in history when the people whom we pledged to serve need us the most. I hope that our current leaders and aspiring ones will be inspired by the stories and science in this book so that together, we can make our country a better place for the next generation of Filipinos." —Maria Leonor Gerona Robredo, 14th Vice President of the Philippines

Get your copy at our website, Shopee, or Lazada stores. The book is currently offered at a discount at Lazada until 30 April 2022 only.

The list above holds a small portion of Ateneo University Press titles that should help further anyone’s interest and education of our political landscape. To see more, browse our collection at www.unipress.ateneo.edu.