It’s difficult to resurrect a 37-year-old issue hoping something can change the configuration of Philippine politics that is dominated by so-called “dynasties” (euphemism for the rich, the influential, the powerful). Strange how it has taken a bloc of legal practitioners to forthwith compel Congress to legislate against political dynasties, as if to say that legislators have been sleeping on their constitutional mandate to do so.

Indisputably, Section 26 of Article II of the 1987 Constitution enunciates, viz., “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.” Are the proponents of this anti-dynasty move sort of saying that all the stones on the political beach are black, nothing is white? 

Otherwise stated, will those qualified to run for office be denied the privilege? Arguments in defense of anti-dynasty can only generalize that most politicians in this country, belong one way or another, to a political family or clan, hence come from a political dynasty. 

If we rigidly follow this line of reasoning, there’s no way that a virtual unknown throwing his or her hat in the political arena can rise as an elected public official. To cry about no level playing field or that the State has failed to ensure equal opportunities for public service, a noted scholar rightly described running for public office as a “zero-sum game.”

The existential battle in an election is simply a situation where one wins and someone loses. What compulsion, if any, can weigh upon the Supreme Court to demand that Congress enact a law meant to cause a “grand embargo” of all elective positions of those “tagged as belonging to a political dynasty” who won in a free, honest, and fair election?

What sound mechanism could demonstrate a High Tribunal’s rational resolve over any apparent inequality in the distribution of political power which, after all, is the basic imperfection of democratic representation? Master’s theses, even doctoral dissertations, have been written on political dynasties as a phenomenon but to engage the wisdom of such as the High Court to “discipline” what a co-equal branch of government may have failed to do, by and large, reflects what little understanding can be drawn from a somewhat “gray area” in the constitutional text.

Confined to a mere language game, how can we up the ante toward a critical discourse of this problematique? In fact, it’s pretty interesting to delve into the phenomenon of political dynasties as something present in democracies, not to speak of the prevalence of dynasties in the US Congress itself.

Mosca (1896) argued that “every class displays the tendency to become hereditary, in fact if not in law,” and that “even when political positions are open to all, a family tie to those already in power confers various advantages” (Dal Bo et al., 2009).

What about Michels’ (1999) saying on the “law of oligarchy” that even “in democratic organizations, the leadership, once elected, would entrench itself in power, undermining the democratic principle of a level playing field?”

The more respectable world view of the nature of political dynasties when raised as a societal issue must establish certain fixes upon which to plot the direction of philosophical discourse on the subject. It cannot and should not be limited by any word or phrase in the constitutional text (i.e., “as may be defined by law”).

How can something (i.e., “political dynasties”) not defined be prohibited?  Was it by design that a missing piece cannot complete the jigsaw puzzle without improvising?

“Power begets power. Theorists Mosca, Pareto, and Michels argued that political elites are largely self-perpetuating, such that “if traits such as talent run in families, this may yield persistent advantages to some families over others that are not due to their already occupying positions of authority.”

There’s evidence suggesting the prevalence of dynasties among legislators is indeed high compared to other occupations. Follow the money, you say?