Fragile Reciprocity and Reformist Politics: Everyday Authority in Pasig City

This article examines how authority in Pasig City’s barangays is enacted and sustained amid the city’s reputation as a model of reformist governance under Mayor Vico Sotto. Drawing on participant observation during the 2025 election season, we show that legitimacy at the grassroots hinged less on institutional reforms than on fragile performances of recognition, care, and reciprocity. Residents judged leaders through culturally resonant idioms like malasakit (concern), pagpapakita (visible presence), and loob (moral intent), evaluating sincerity and intent in everyday encounters. We conceptualize these dynamics as mutual recognition, moralized care, and the fragility of reciprocity, extending debates on trust, legitimacy, and affective governance. While reformist politics reshaped expectations and closed off older forms of patronage, they did not displace the cultural grammars of recognition through which authority is continually made and unmade. Authority in Pasig was therefore both durable and reversible, highlighting reciprocity as a constitutive feature of Philippine democracy.