An authoritarian regime, it is claimed, may enjoy the support of the people if the people believe they are making progress. There may be some truth to the claim, but the people's belief in the benefits of authoritarian rule is insufficient to maintain an authoritarian in power.
Closely tied to the idea that order precedes liberty is the idea that nationalism requires authoritarian rule. It has only been since World War II that most Third World countries have gained independence from colonial powers. In many cases, the colonial period damaged the national psyche, and a sense of national pride was lost. Authoritarians claim that to make the nation great again, citizens must rally around a leader who will lead them to a proud and prosperous future. Authoritarians further claim that prosperity can be had only if unity of purpose is created and maintained in the nation. Internal squabbling, such as in Marcos's regime, is seen as incompatible with nationalism. Nationalism implies a certain degree of homogeneity.
To complicate things further, when the colonialists withdrew, they often left behind national boundaries that ignored the ethnic, linguistic, and religious characters of the inhabitants; so groups of peoples, with little in common except their subjugation by colonialists, would then have to make common cause. Usually, they only "made" divisiveness, so the authoritarian would establish himself as the only one who could arbitrate disputes and give the country unity. Such unity, incidentally, usually came at the expense of ethnic groups with no ties to the leader. The myth of nationalism, therefore, may foster support for a dictator, but it does not explain his staying power.
When one looks at the tactics of the Marcos regime, one sees that terror, repression, and nationalistic rhetoric about the need for order did not constitute a major source of power. Rather, they were part of a large number of tactics Marcos used to make the economic, social, and political costs of resisting his regime greater than those of not resisting. Other tactics included democratic formalities, bribes, patronage, control of the media, and consolidation of bureaucratic power. Marcos employed a mix of those tactics that, with the least possible cost to himself, enabled him to satisfy the needs of key power elites within Philippine society. The mutual support between Marcos and various power elites is the key to understanding his grip on power. As long as supporting Marcos was profitable to the elites, he stayed in power. When at the end of his rule the costs exceeded the profits, Marcos was removed.
POLITICS AS ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
Political power and its benefits (public or private) are commodities like any other. They are therefore subject to the laws of supply and demand, and of marginal utility. Further, the individual exists before the group; thus group formation and group action can be understood only as a function of the individual pursuit of self-interest by group members. Such economic explanations have proven to be powerful tools for understanding various aspects of the political process in Western democracies, shedding light on the formation of interest groups, the conduct of bureaucracies, the behavior of politicians and voters, and the role of government.
Although the Philippines is not a Western democracy, the economic insights applied to politics in the West can, with some modification, be applied to understanding the interactions of the power elites in the Philippines. Philippine politics had been largely non-ideological, consisting mainly of power groups jockeying with one another for the fruits of political patronage. Parties were just a means of facilitating bids for power. Politicians bought support with promises of benefits. Marcos made promises, but he circumvented the electoral and legal systems, appealing directly to those groups with sufficient economic and feudal power to sustain his position. As long as the needs of those groups were met, Marcos maintained his power.
Before proceeding to apply economic analysis to the Philippines, a few relevant points are necessary in order to understand how groups form in society. First, groups who successfully work together for a common good (including interest groups) are groups where the costs of membership to the individual are less than either the benefits of membership or the costs of nonmembership. Individuals will not be involved in creating a public, common good if their individual costs exceed the individual benefit from that good, nor will they willingly share in the burden of producing a common good if they can attain the good for free by letting others produce it. The ironic result is that many groups with common interests will not act together.