Blaming the Poor for Political Stagnation
December 13, 2025 Blaming the poor for political stagnation is a rhetorical shortcut that obscures structural failures: entrenched patronage, elite capture, and institutional weakness—real reform historically emerges from organized, resourced minorities rather than an exhausted working class. Argument and Framing The aphorism that "they keep voting for the same people" functions as a moralizing shorthand that relocates responsibility from political structures to individual moral failure. This rhetorical move simplifies complexage, coercion, and informational asymmetry into a blameworthy habit of the poor. In the Philippine case, long-standing patterns of bossism and oligarchic patrimonialism show how electoral behavior is embedded in clientelist networks that reward short-term material exchange over programmatic policy, making voting choices intelligible rather than irrational. Structural Constraints on Political Agency Voting under clientelism is not merely a m...
