Sideways strategies: civil society-state reformist crossover activities in the Philippines 1986–2010

Studying individuals who move from civil society into government in an effort to pursue reform agendas provides important “bottom up” insights into the complexity of policy processes. Using a set of original life history data collected in the Philippines, this article analyses the experiences of such crossover reformist efforts in post-Marcos Philippines in the field of agrarian reform. Taking each of the four governments of the period in turn, a set of themes are discussed including entryism as a political strategy, political patronage, organizational culture, role transitions and activist identities. The article concludes with the idea that the boundary between state and civil society is an important, relatively unexplored area of political activity. By opening up this area as an arena of contentious politics, an ethnographic approach tells us more about the challenges and complexity encountered by those attempting to influence policy processes from the inside, and about the policy process itself as a non-linear phenomenon.