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A Political Analysis of the Philippines' Katarungang Pambarangay System of Informal Justice through Mediation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

G. Sidney Silliman
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Abstract

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This article analyzes the Philippine system of compulsory conciliation both in terms of its significance in the context of the political system as a whole and in terms of its operation at the village level. I argue that the mediation structures established by national law are part of a pattern in which the Philippine state is incorporating within it the various sectors of civil society, but that the cooptation of the customary method of dispute processing is not meeting resistance from the rural Filipino. This analysis supports the more general argument that systems of informal justice operate to enhance centralized political authority, yet it reveals the dialectical nature of such arrangements for dispute processing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 1985 , pp. 279 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association in Denver, Colorado, June 2-5, 1983. The research upon which the article is based was supported by a 1981/1982 Senior Fulbright Research Grant. I would also like to acknowledge the generous support provided by the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, during the tenure of the grant. However, the findings and conclusions drawn in this article are my own.

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