Probabilistic Predeterminism in International Security: Historical Institutionalist and Path-Dependent Perspective on the U.S. Colonial Institutions and the U.S.-Philippine Alliance.

Abstract

This research presents a fresh perspective on the nature of the U.S.-Philippine alliance outside of political actors and threat-centric explanations, which presently dominate international security literature. It proposes that “colonial institutions” and “history” matter in the alliance’s formation and persistence, where the existence of such colonial institutions predetermined historical political choices throughout time. It answers the question of how the U.S.-Philippine alliance persisted despite anti-American political actors such as Rodrigo Roa Duterte and varying levels of existential threats throughout history. The research findings of this study suggest that the U.S. colonial institutions, using the method of descriptive inferences, perennially increased the probability of both the United States and the Philippines maintaining a political trajectory toward security alliance, often manifesting through restricting effects where the existence of prior colonial institutions, including its effects, deterred deviant political actor from deviating. This is due to the existence of mutually reinforcing security dependencies that the colonial institutions caused, making it costlier to leave the alliance and, therefore, effectively increasing the probability of the two states choosing an alliance over another alternative, given the predetermined cost of choosing the latter due to the colonial institutions’ existence.