Abstract -- The paper is a survey of the Filipino Nation’s effort towards nation building. It highlights the socio-historical unfolding of the nationhood of the country -- Philippines. The paper answers the basic question on what paved the way to the formation of the Filipino Nation and why it remains to be a neo- colonial outpost to the US even in the 20 th century. It also provides reasons on how and why Filipinos had shaped the kind of institutions that operate the present state as it is now. Using Comparative Historical Analysis (CHA), the paper elaborately accounts on what turning points served as the watersheds of nationhood to Philippine political history. Likewise it employs historical institutionalism as well as the new institutional economics. It emphasizes on property rights, transaction costs, modes of governance, social norms, ideological values, enforcement mechanisms, and others that paved way to what Philippine politics and governance came to be as it is historically traced to its present formation. The study engages scenarios on what it had been in the past and what it might be in the years to come given the path that it has tread from colonial times to to its neo-colonial position at present. Keywords- Philippine political structure and culture; Subnational Politics; Filipino Nationhood; Formation of the Filipino Nation; Philippine Developmentalism I. Studies on Politics in Cebu Extensive scholarly work has been done on Cebuano politics. These include the well-known edited volume An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines by Alfred McCoy. The volume presents key sources on the dynamics of traditional political families, such as chapters by Michael Cullinane, “Patron as Client: Warlord Politics and the Duranos of Danao” (in McCoy 1998:163-243), and by Resil Mojares, “The Dream Goes On: Three Generations of the Osmeñas” (1998:311-347). These works explored specific cases that show the historical development of political structure and culture operating in Cebuano local politics and the role of political families. More discussions on Cebuano political dynamics can be found in the works of John Sidel in Capital, Coercion and Crime Bossism in the Philippines (1999), of Michael Cullinane in “The Changing Nature of the Cebu Urban Elite (1982),” of Alfred McCoy and Ed de Jesus in Philippine Social History: Local Trade and Global Transformations (1982), and of Concepcion Briones in Life in Old Parian (1983). Literature shows that Cebu province’s local political history consists of structural layers of supra-local or supra- municipal organizations of patron-client relations, of machine politics, and of bossism. Prominent political leaders derive popular support from leaders of major townships, cities, and barangays who can promise and deliver to the patron the bulk of voters to ensure victory. This means that leaders who represent major political clans get support through a network of small town bosses that govern urban and rural communities. Sidel’s work (1999) Capital, Coercion, and Crime Bossism in the Philippines demonstrates the distinctive organization of Cebuano political settlement through web-like connections of small town, district, and provincial political organizations. It shows the interplay of political clans and political dynasties at the district, town, and provincial levels. This arrangement also shows political compromise among elites as mechanism for them to accumulate proprietary wealth; where inter-familial, economic, and political competition has taken on a more paternalistic and less violent exchange and indicates how politicians rely on the skillful use of state offices and the construction of a political machine (Sidel 1999). Cebu as an island local government unit is a dominant player in economic trade among island provinces and LGUs in the Visayan region. Cebu’s economic development can be traced to its history of class formation and land settlement that enabled its transformation from agricultural entrepot, an intermediary center of trade and trans-shipment, into a regional center of export industries at the turn of the 20 th century (Sidel 1999:81,128; McCoy 1998:7; Cullinane 1982:273). The dominant business and political clans, rich families or personalities of Cebu’s rural townships sustained themselves in power since the 1940s as they are mostly scions of pre-war local landlords and politicians. Sidel’s (1999) work also accounts for institutions of multi-tiered networks of small town bosses in cohorts with district patrons who collaborate with provincial patrons, who in turn also commit to national patrons. Furthermore, in Cebu City, the political and economic dynamics sustained electoral competition and capital accumulation of a network of Chinese mestizos who settled in the heart of the City such as the Parian District (Briones 1983). The political compromise agreement appear as a mutual development sponsored by a community of mixed Chinese and Spanish mestizos who dominated the island’s political dynamics and mode of political reproduction remained unchanged (Briones 1983). Tracing the history of people in control of political positions when Cebu City was still a Spanish ayuntamiento, Cullinane (1981) describes leadership at the local junta de GSTF Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS) Vol.6 No.1, 2017 Cebu’s Subnational Politics: A Survey of Philippine Political Structure and Culture Prof. Phoebe Zoe Maria U. Sanchez, Ph. D. College of Social Sciences University of the Philippines Cebu Gorordo Ave., Lahug, Cebu City, Philippines pusanchez1@up.edu.ph ©The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access by the GSTF 1 DOI: 10.5176/2251-2853_6.1.202