policy
Enroute to an indigenous Agta-Dumagat community in Casiguran, Aurora province in the Philippines
I began my professional life as an advocacy strategist, and today I bridge the divide between academia and the policy world through public-purpose data science initiatives that advance the social science frontier, while providing actionable knowledge for policymakers, responsible businesses, and civil society reformers. During COVID-19, I headed socio-economic modeling efforts for FASSSTER, the main epidemiological forecasting system of the Philippine government for its pandemic efforts. At present, I’m leading the OpenAudit project with a team of committed governance researchers, practitioners, and accountability advocates.
My work engages with policy challenges concerning (1) rethinking global development strategy; (2) building capable and accountable governance systems; and (3) countering democratic erosion, all in the context of the ongoing AI/digital revolution. I’m committed to supporting efforts that share these goals, so feel free to drop me a line if you’re working on the same issues.
selected commissioned reports
"The services transition, platform capitalism, and the path to illiberal populism: insights from the Philippines" in Understanding the drivers of political polarization and social exclusion in Southeast Asia. Open Society Foundations. 2023. (with Enrico Antonio La Viña)
This paper dissects the confluence of factors that led to democratic erosion in the Philippines, focusing on the interplay of premature deindustrialization, the rise of platform capitalism, and the dynamics of illiberal populism. Understanding the peculiarities of the Philippines' situation provides critical insights into the broader narrative of global democratic erosion and its economic drivers. Compared to other treatments of the populist upsurge in the Philippines, we highlight premature deindustrialization (Rodrik, 2015; Tregenna, 2015) as well as other political-economic and socio-spatial factors, as pivotal in shaping the political landscape of the Philippines. To that end, this paper delves into the shift towards a service-oriented knowledge economy, a transition that notably skipped the development of a robust manufacturing sector, resulting in the emergence of new kinds of social classes– and the subsequent political and economic implications that such a transition has wrought. Over the past decade, these newly formed classes, residing in precarious urban environments, have arisen as a fertile demographic for anti-establishment and populist appeals by outsiders to the prevailing liberal-democratic order. In shared though distinct ways, leaders like Duterte and Marcos Jr. capitalized on the insecurities and anxieties of these groups, promising discipline and order amidst economic and social upheaval.
"From Dependency to Autonomy: Local Governance, Fiscal Capacity, and the Outlook for Philippine Local Governments in the post-COVID era" in Decentralization, Digitalization, and Development: Strengthening Local Governance for Recovery, Resilience, and the Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations Development Program. 2023. (Lead flagship report chapter, with Rico La Viña)
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the Philippines have produced a report to identify the strategic areas where local capacities can be built to respond to and recover from future crises in line with the current transition of local governments to full decentralization under the Mandanas-Garcia Supreme Court (SC) Ruling, and considering the impact of the COVID-19 on local government units (LGUs). The report aims to articulate insights on the preparedness of the Philippines for the Mandanas-Garcia Supreme Ruling transition and its implications on the ability of the country to respond to -- and recover from -- various forms of crisis, identify strategic areas of development support for LGUs, citizens, and the private sector so that stakeholders stand the best possible chance of reaching the best-case scenario by 2030, and unlock investments in strategic areas of capacity-building support.
"Placing the Platform Economy: Gender, Digital Divides, and the Geography of Platform Participation in the Philippines" United Nations Development Program. 2022. (with Emille de la Cruz)
Despite long-standing barriers to the mass adoption of digital technologies, the Philippine government’s imposition of lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated a dramatic expansion of the country’s platform economy. Akin to the broader rise of the knowledge economy, the rapid growth of the platform sector could come with substantial “gender dividends”, given the greater rate of women’s participation, lower pay gaps, and increased flexibility that can allow women to finesse their care and economic responsibilities. Yet much less attention has been devoted to how geographically-embedded advantages and interventions continue to be decisive in shaping prospects for participation in the sector. Harnessing case studies of leading local efforts to promote inclusion in the platform economy, as well as empirical analysis of the Philippines’ 2019 National ICT Household Survey, we provide preliminary evidence of key forms of socio-spatial variation in the sector’s expansion as well as the ability of women and other marginalized groups to participate in it. Even successful inclusion initiatives confront a range of spatially-related impediments that go beyond the conventional digital divide, while quantitative findings suggest that surmounting digital and skills barriers remain necessary yet still insufficient for encouraging women to maximize the socioeconomic opportunities in digital platforms. The role of a more place-based, localized approach to promoting inclusion—especially critical in light of local government resources increasing due to the Mandanas transition—is likewise borne out by the Philippines’ largest success to date in encouraging the growth of knowledge economy opportunities nationwide: the business process outsourcing sector.