22 An Anarchy of Parties The Pitfalls of the Presidential-based Party System in the Philippines Julio C. Teehankee Introduction Despite a long and rich history of democratic practices, party politics, and elections, the Philippines has institutionalized a clientelistic and patronage- based democracy within an underdeveloped economy. 1 Since the first party, the Partido Federalista, was founded in 1900 during the American colo- nial regime, political parties have existed in some form or another. Soon aſterward, from 1907 to 1941, the Nacionalista Party (NP) became the ruling party. Between 1946 and 1972, a formal two-party system devel- oped, with the NP and its breakaway faction, the Liberal Party (LP), alternating in power. Under his Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL; New Society Movement), Ferdinand Marcos destroyed this party system and replaced it with a one-party dictatorship from 1972 to 1986. In 1986, a fluid multi-party system emerged following the restoration of formal democracy (Teehankee, 2020a). While the country reverted to the pre-authoritarian presidential form of government, a multi-party system emerged during the democratic transi- tion. The shiſt to a multi-party system with a plurality-based electoral system runs counter to the classic tenet of Duverger’s Law that argues that plurality- based elections tend to produce two-party systems (Choi, 2001). However, the post-authoritarian period saw the rise of ‘an anarchy of parties’ in which inter-party competition became more fluid and fragmented, especially under Rodrigo Duterte’s populist presidency. This chapter will delineate the pitfalls of the post-authoritarian presidential-based party system in the Philippines. Julio C. Teehankee, An Anarchy of Parties. In: Political Parties and the Crisis of Democracy. Edited by: Thomas Poguntke and Wilhelm Hofmeister, Oxford University Press. © Julio C. Teehankee (2024). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198888734.003.0022