On January 20, 2001, the Philippines was again a witness to anotherPeople Power phenomenon, the “EDSA Dos”, which removed what was perceived as a corrupt and incompetent government under President Joseph E.Estrada and installed then-Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) to power.
While some sectors glorified this ‘miraculous’ occurrence, certain dynamics of the people power phenomenon now have become embedded in the policy process that it threatens the very nature of the process itself. In this light, the Philippines public policy process is, indeed, a very complex, yet interesting object of study. As it would have been ideal to cover both the legislative and executive policy processes, this paper focuses only on the latter with the GMAAdministration as the context of the study.
To better analyze the policy process, the Stages Heuristic framework or the Stages Approach (Jones, 1970; Anderson, 1975; Brewer and De Leon, 1983)will be used. The stages involved are: (1) agenda setting; (2) policy formulation;(3) legitimation; (4) implementation; and (5) evaluation.
