CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | De Vera, Anton Miguel |
|---|---|
| Title | The Faces of Philippine Agency in Foreign Affairs: The Philippines and the United States Security Alliances |
| Summary | Why did the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. choose to compromise its own agency in favour of its realignment with the United States in 2022? The thesis investigates how the Philippines through its leaders perceive its own agency or the capability to act independently towards a certain objective such as its recent realignment to the US with the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2022. Certain scholars who follow agent- centric and relationalist approaches contend that agency derives from within agents and in their interactions with each other. In the Philippine case, this thesis argues that when considering the role of structures, the Philippines foreign policy, exemplified by the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States, exercised a form of agency that is constrained rather than fully realised. Using discourse analysis, findings show that the Philippines through its leaders created three interconnected identities and realities by using selective language in justifying their foreign policies such as the EDCA: firstly, a pragmatic Philippines, secondly, a cooperative Philippines, and lastly, a vulnerable and dependent Philippines. By justifying the EDCA as a pragmatic and cooperative-driven foreign policy, the Philippines, through its leaders, were able to self-ascribe their own agency. The leaders of the Philippines perceived EDCA as an exercise of actual agency. However, in doing so, Philippine leaders undermine their vulnerable and dependent identity which perceives Philippine agency as constrained. This particular identity underscores a reality where the leaders of the Philippines were compelled to act due to existing structural factors. |
| Supervisor | Large, Daniel |
| Department | Undergraduate Studies BA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/de-vera_anton-miguel.pdf |
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