Revolutionaryor insurrectionary movement - Essay Example

In Iran and Nicaragua in 1979 and in the Philippines in 1986, multi-coalitions joined forces to oust dictators, who once had America’s long-standing support (Goldstone, 2009, p.320). This essay provides an overview of the 1986 Philippine Revolution, also called People Power Revolution, or EDSA Revolution. It also discusses democratic socialism and its application, or lack thereof, on the case of the People Power Revolution. Democratic socialism partially supports class-based problems that produced wide-scale social discontent, but it disregards the religious ideology, nationalism, and culture, as critical defining features of the 1986 peaceful revolution in the Philippines.

The EDSA Revolution, like other social revolutions, arose from long-standing social, political, and economic injustice in the Philippines. The Philippines had been under American rule for almost fifty years. After the U.S. granted independence to the Philippines on 4 July 1946, the latter preserved democratic through its Republic government system. Despite the democratic government structure, the Philippines experienced widespread political and socio-economic equality, due to the rise of patronage politics (Putzel, 1999, p.199). Patronage politics combined with clan politics, where political dynasties became the norm.

Soon, the educated and land-owning elites dominated the lawmaking and administrative bodies of the government, specifically Congress (Parsa, 2000, p.45). Populism, for some time, enforced the power of the elites. The masses supported these political dynasties because of pervasive vote buying practices and the former’s lackadaisical approach to political participation and empowerment (Parsa, 2000, p.45). The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and other political organizations/groups, however, gained increasing populist support, due to their propaganda of