The great German sociologist Max Weber once defined the state as the institution that has a legitimate monopoly over the use of force. This definition is inadequate when it comes to the Philippines, where the state maintains as well a monopoly or near mo nopoly over illegitimate services. Crime and corruption are prominent features of governments the world over, but in the normal state, the sources of corruption are forces that subvert the machinery of government from without. In the Philippines, on the other hand, organised crime external to the government apparatus has been rare. Of course, small-time crooks and gangsters have always existed outside the officialdom.
Syndicates are, however, another thing.
The loss of competitive politics at the national, regional, and local levels led to the erosion of the already inadequate checks tha t the government machinery posed to regional and local political clans bent on expanding their access to the social surplus via criminal methods. With the traditional elit es maintaining tight control over land and the private sector, the state became the choice arena for entrepreneurship by restive and ambitious elements from the more modest classes. Syndicates or Sindicatos not only flourished in the traditional c esspools of corruption like the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Department of Public Works and Highways but emerged in other agencies such as those on top of agrarian reform, energy, education, and natural resources. The economic crisis that brought economic growth to virtually zero from 1983 to 1993 made the government's position even more attractive as a site of private capital accumulation, despite the personal probity of the top people in government like Presiden ts Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos. Indeed, it was under Aquino that a government reorganisation was undertaken that, unwittingly, created a massive new site of graft.