More than Difficult, Short of Impossible: Party Building and Local Governance in the Philippines

Abstract

I am caught in an uncertain space between political action and academic observation. Accepting Olle Törnquist’s ‘concerned academic’ robe does not go far enough to ‘locate’ me and my observations. All the contributors to this book deserve the name. I cannot be one or the other of the introduction’s ‘strange bedfellows’ either. I need to be both. I want to give expression in this essay to being an intellectual struggling to deserve being called a political activist.