566 Book Reviews © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres. Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 7 No. 4, October 2007, pp. 563–576. FILOMENO AGUILAR The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines, by Walden Bello, with Herbert Docena, Marissa de Guzman and Marylou Malig. London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. £18.99 and $29.95 (pb). Pp. 360. ISBN: 10: 1 84277 631 2 and 13: 978 1 84277 631 5 This book was originally published in the Philippines by Focus on the Global South and the University of the Philippines Sociology Department in 2004, but presumably deemed to be of such critical importance as to merit global distribution by Zed Books. Thus, at least initially, it was intended for a Philippine readership. Moreover, at the core of this target readership would appear to have been those already predisposed to appreciate the book’s critique of what the authors refer to as the ‘Edsa system’, which emerged after the downfall of Ferdinand Marcos’s strongman rule in 1986. At the same time, the book serves to synthesize comparative studies in the Asia-Pacific region, on such matters as regional growth (chap. 1), privatization (chap. 5) and corruption (chap. 7), and incorporate their findings into the book’s arguments in a manner that is accessible to this core read- ership. Intellectual brokership might also explain the discussion in chap. 4 of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its various mechanisms, particularly the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), and its history from Seattle to Doha to Cancun, which by its length and manner of presentation is more a digression on the WTO itself rather than an analysis of Philippine engagements with or distancing from the WTO. It is also important to point out that, as this review is being written, the principal author, Walden Bello, is running for, and is likely to win, a seat in the Philippine House of Representatives under the banner of the Akbayan party-list in national elections scheduled on 14 May 2007. Evidently, the book’s goal is not simply to add another volume on the shelf, but to goad readers to dissent against the current system and intervene politically. Bello’s run for a congressional seat can be seen as a materialization of a core argument of the book: against the neoliberal approach that in effect disparages the state and state action, it is posited that what the country needs is a strong and effective state that disci- plines the elite and the private sector. A legislative post would be another means of engaging the state in order to transform it – although Bello’s unfolding electoral career provides a peculiar twist to what the authors describe as an Edsa system that is ‘now in terminal condition’ (p. 1). Given the book’s explicit political agenda, it may be best to approach it by reading the introduction and jumping straight to the concluding chapter, which adumbrates an alter- native path to and blueprint of development. This alternative vision responds to the book’s basic proposition that the Edsa system is inherently anti-development because it has failed to pursue internal structural change and has followed, in a doctrinaire and almost blind way, the dictates of neoliberalism. The authors consider three possible routes – constitutional reform, military coup and Communist revolution – but discount them in favour of a mass insurrection provoked by the Edsa People Power, which is to be fol- lowed by the establishment of a democratic state characterized by wealth redistribution and participatory democracy. This new sociopolitical configuration will have six key features: (a) a strong developmental state, which is not subject to elite capture; (b) an Filomeno Aguilar, Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines. e-mail: fvaguilar@ateneo.edu