Assessing the Deliberative Capacity of a Barangay Assembly in the Philippines Using Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract This article aims to explore the deliberative capacity of the barangay assembly in the Philippines. Barangays are the basic political unit in the Philippines, and their devolved nature provides these units with significant autonomy to define and enact their participatory goals which include how barangay assemblies are conducted. Applying Fairclough’s (1995) critical discourse analysis, this article explores the capacity by which the discourses in the assembly are deliberative. The data used in this study were collected from the social media platform of a barangay in Pasig, Philippines during the pandemic. The findings suggest that the deliberative capacity is limited in its form and structure, but that the communicative content of these assemblies, to some extent, live up to deliberative norms.