Power and Poverty: Political Dynamics in relation to keeping the status quo the same

By Bonn Franklin De La Mar

(This piece was originally submitted as a term paper for the author’s Fundamentals of Political Science class under the AB Political Science program of the University of San Agustin.)

An inherent quality of governance is power, and how to retain that power. Poverty, however, is the outcome of the political actions taken by one’s governance over a nation. By the addictive thrills power can give to an individual, the outcome of the attempt to keep one’s power is perilous to the greater good of the livelihoods that depend on representatives’ choices for the outcome of their futures. By keeping the status quo the same by using entrenched political systems, for the benefit of the elites and state institutions, social structures, and government systems are being put at a vulnerable point. Where the persistence of poverty will continue to endure by the methodically engineered conditions of the Political Elites, through the use of structural power, policy manipulation, and ideological narratives to protect their own interests, at the expense of the people who are the backbone of societies.

“By reproducing the conditions for poverty to thrive, the current hierarchies in power dynamics are driven to retain power. The ideas of inequality, institutional design, and ideologies work together to form a cohesive bubble that maintains the status quo, where it keeps the poor, powerless, and the elites powerful”— Thesis Statement.

Current political structures, particularly in the Philippines, form around a political leader and a representative system where the needs of the people are in the hands of the representatives. In a perfect application of such measures, the people would benefit from the decisions made by the same representatives they voted for. But the reality is far from that, the Philippines experiences Family-based politics, patronage incentivized, and culturally significant part of politics driven by fragmented political parties (Acuña et al. 2025) are adding towards the long list of why the Philippines has a democracy that is far removed from the essence of democracy itself.

Democracy, in the words of Socrates, is a flawed system, on the basis that when uneducated people vote for a common leader without a true basis for the governance of a representative. In the Philippines, the basis for one’s elective power relies on the people’s perception of the ability of the politician to feed a household, irrespective of the circumstances that they might eventually face due to the regime, policy, and economic changes the politician might bring. Mostly driven by the attempts of political actors to stay in power, in terms of lowering the accessibility to good education, and heightening the requirements for entry-level positions in the workforce(Broadsheet Asia, 2025) with the likelihood of the minimum wage being unsustainable for most of the households in the Philippines, leading to the dependency of the people in politicians with their policies and outreach programs to bolster their political hold in a neighborhood for elective capabilities.

Poverty is rampant in the Philippines, with the majority of the population considered poor (Macrotrends, 2023). The concept of poverty cannot be singled out in the Philippines, but the whole global south, experiencing the effects of desperate power struggles among the ruling classes in these developing nations. The effects of toxic democracy plague the livelihoods of these households, for when inequality becomes the social norm, its people are the ones facing its everlasting effects. Social excursions from the powerful to the common people occur by fostering inequality, marginalization, and discrimination (Philips, Nicola, 2017) to inevitably produce an asymmetrical foundation where the retention of power is kept.

By preserving the status quo, power dynamics are kept through mediums of social norms, structures, education, job accessibility, and media disinformation; a politician retains power based on misinformed, uneducated, and desperate people struggling for a living (Scott-Villiers et al., 2024). Deprivation of the common resources makes a population dependent on a representative, bolstering their political hold in the state of affairs, keeping the status quo intact by the theory of internal dependency. By keeping access to good and quality education, public facilities, and creating a deprivation of opportunities, politicians ensure the dependency of the people on the state (David, 1980).

Reformation of existing policies and painting them as “make-do” solutions for existing status quo problems using internal dependency on actors, to ensure vote mobilization, oftentimes undermining the responsibilities of the state to its citizens. This capitalist-inherent feature of democracies is their Achilles heel in providing essential features of societies to their people. The enactment of ineffective reforms ensures stability through policy and institutional mechanisms by means of controlled and incremental changes in its societies, ensuring the preservation of the status quo. Politics in the Philippines is the struggle for political families for more power in the state’s affairs, where poverty becomes an essential resource for each actor’s political agendas. Rampantization of power dynamics that gatekeep the positions in government and structuring elitist coalitions to thrive with the support of veto players that manipulate the democratic foundations of the country (Mendoza et al., 2016).

Ideologies play a vital role in shaping the outcome of a state’s policies and political agendas. With this, the shift in a democratic institution to a dynastic state of the localities set aside institutionalized systems that are in place to favor a political family(Asia Times, 2019). The lack of political participation from its citizens is a cause that contributes to the lack of political resistance from the ever-growing influences of the political families, incentivized by the political gatekeeping of positions in power, which, in itself, leads to causes in the lack of political participation in the masses.

Self-reinforcing dynamics are the outcomes of those in power designing systems that cater to their self-benefiting agendas, sustaining their power, resulting in the persistent presence of poverty that structurally embeds itself in the livelihoods of its beneficiaries. Turning the whole system into a poverty loop that feeds itself with the presence of poverty (Ordinario, 2015). The limited agency that is driven by the outcome of poverty feeds the political power of the elites, which feeds into their enhanced continuing hold on socio-economic political systems (Tadem et al., 2016). The Ideologies that they feed also play a vital role in their acceptance in a bubble that feeds to their political legitimacy, enforcing the same to the status quo, where consent stabilizes political structures (Komarudin et al., 2023).

As the most stable of structures have a shifting point, change tends to occur through the enactments of social movements; to bring light to the injustices in equality, bringing forth a new narrative that changes perceptions in the common people. Electoral realignment: a means of changing the political landscape and narratives that already exist. Economic crises that destabilize the elites, by means of the lesser economic hold they possess. And ideological transformations that would diminish the high positions of the powerful. Or the international pressure that would be brought upon the elites to instigate institutional change that affects the structural impact of the ever-existing structures present in the status quo.

The Philippines, along with reforms on education bringing light to more accessible education, with the focus on bringing more opportunities to its citizens, would broaden the perspective of the common people, bringing about the needed change for its political landscape. In its history, corrupted by colonization and oppression, the common Filipino, resulted in dependency as a means for coping with uncertainty. After its independence from foreign rule, did the Filipinos bring about sovereignty in its political systems? What followed was the manipulation of a new independence by the ruling elites as a means for preserving their powers. During the Marcos regime, institutional changes were brought about due to the families’ plunder of the Philippines, but the institutional changes were weak. Allowing political families to still thrive in the poorest of states. Now, the Philippines is laden with the oppressive structures of the elites, bringing forth a new narrative of a Neo-colonization of its people by means of internal dependency.

Power and poverty correlate with each other not as an inherent factor of governance, but as an outcome of the Power dynamics political elites have on the systems of their country. Systematic change and reform must be enacted to preserve the dignity of its citizens and lessen the power dynamics of the political elites.