Religious Actors As Epistemic Communities In International Regime Compliance:Philippine Socialization To The Progressive Norms Of MDGs And CEDAW

The role of religion and the application of constructivist approach in exploring Philippine International Relations(IR)are underexplored areas.This is the relevant reason why did the researcher m ade this study.The Philippines is a unique case among countries with dominant Catholic population especially of those in Europe and Latin America.The reason for this claim is due to its governm ent's slow response to the socialization and pressure im posed by other Western liberal states,international organizations and transnational advocacy networks to institutionalize progressive laws to address specific human security issues.Scholars from the disciplines of political science,sociology,economics and international relations tagged the influential role of the Roman Catholic Church in Philippine politics.This research looks on the role of progressive religious actors during the Benigno Aquino administration on two different cases,namely,the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill and th e non-passage of Divorce Bill.Contrary to usu al studies,these two proposed policies are not issues of dom estic political dynamics but part of a wider global soci alization in International Relations.These tw o proposed policies are part of the requirem ents of two international regimes.The Reproductive Health Bill is a requirem ent for the Philippines in order to meet the expectations and objectives of the UN-led and USAID f acilitated Millennium Development Goals while the Divorce Bill is an optional requirement of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against W omen,another sub-regim e of the United Nations.On the upcoming third and fourth chapters,the study will reveal how international organizations,liberal Western states and transnational non-governmental organizations socialized Philippine political elite and Philippine civil society in order to institutionalize these two proposed measures.The activities of the three sectors will be viewed under the lenses how a hegem on state socializes a global norm to a secondary state based on G.John Ikenbe rry and Charles A.Kupchan's article,“Socialization and Hegemonic Power”.On the other hand,since this research is a comparative study,this work argues that it is the progressive religious actor s who are responsible for the different outcomes of the two cas es amidst their similarities both in the exte rnal and domestic environments.The approval and disapproval of these progressive religious actors serve as the independen t variable of this research because their different degree of support towards Reproductive Health and Divo rce Bills is the only relevant factor why the former was institutionalized as a law for MDGs compliance while the latter met an opposite fate which served as a form of non-compliance to the CEDAW.In the case of the for mer,progressive religious groups have a unified support towards the passage of Reproductive Health Bill and this unified stance is a reflection of a global religious norm by progressive Christ ian groups both from Catholicism and Protestantism.On the other hand,progressive religious groups showed a fragm ented support towards Divorce Bill.This lack of unity is also a reflection ab out the nonfavor of international religious norm towards this proposed measure.The first chapter discusses the research background of the study.This chapter has a two-fold objective.First,it attempts to prove and contextualize the two cases as an international phenomenon by relating them to the issue of human security and regime compliance.Second,the chapter introduces the epistemic communities approach to explain how these progressive religious actors behaved and became influential during the Reproductive Health and Divorce Bill.The chapter also explains the methodology and research design of the comparative study under the lens es of John Stuart Mill's method of difference.The second chapter introduces the epistem ic communities approach in international cooperation by tracing the developm ent of the literature ranging from the nature of professions involved up to the ro le of the internal com position of an epistem ic community.The chapter also provides the reason why progressive religious actors are considered as an epistemic community and why they surpassed the expertise and potential influence of other scientific communities present during the discourse suc h as economists,medical doctors,and lawyers.The third and fourth chapter is written in a parallel format.Their first subsection will discuss the international socialization to the Philippines based on the tw o methods of hegemonic socialization,namely,normative persuasion and external inducement.The former refers to all m ethods where information is passed from one entity to another.These method include direct contact between political elite,student exchanges abroad,and the role of other media platform s to share information.On the other hand,the latter involves the use of econom ic resources and other for ms of incentives.T he second subsection will discuss the domestic environment in detail as a response to the international socialization.The third section will show the reasons why progressive religious actors approve and disapprove Re productive Health Bill and Divorce Bill,respectively.The fourth subsection will trace how the progressive religious approval and disapproval channeled both to the Philippine political elite and civil society which lead to the passage of Reproductive Health and shelving of Divor ce proposal.Lastly,the final sections of these two chapters di scusses how relevant and influential these progressive religious actors to the P hilippine elite through a content analysis why did the President and m embers of the Phili ppine Congress supported the form er and disregarded the latter.The fifth chapter summarizes the flow of the whole study by applying the causal logic of the epistemic communities approach.In terms of the uncertainty stage,the study identifies the threat of the conservati ve Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines(CBCP)to the po liticians and pub lic supporters of the tw o proposed policy measures.These threats inclu de spiritual and material persuasion against the political elite and public opinion.On the othe r hand,in terms of interpretation stage,the section will show how relevant prog ressive religious actors in providing an alternative progressive public theology which serves as an antidote to negate the threats provided by the CBCP,and how did they re-interpreted the Sacred Scripture of Christianity and other Catholic docum ents in favor of Reproductive Health and their dormant position when Divorce was introdu ced on the 16 th Congress of the Philippines.For the institu tionalization stage,the se ction shows how did th e alternative progressive religious discourses provided serv ed as a justification for politicians and public supporters of Reproductive Health.The sixth chapter outlines the conclusion and recommendations of the study.The research concludes that the Philip pine socialization to polic ies related to hum an security are still dependent on the religi ous sector of the c ountry.The research proposes that internat ional organizations and Western states should set aside their secular bias in persuading developing countries in Asia to follow the lead they want in addressing human security issues.Developing countries is still religious and reverent to their ado pted centuries old relig ious institutions both fr om their colonizers and missionaries before the Age of Explorati on in Europe.Interna tional organizations such as the agencies of the United Nations and Western states should be eyeing the correct faction inside a c ountry's dominant religion.Th e study also serves as a warning to transnational religions such as Catholicism and Islam to check th eir internal ranks.Schism s and internal oppos ing factions reduces the relevance of a religion both in the international and domestic political spheres.