EXPERIENCES OF 4PS BENEFICIARIES IN THE CITY OF KORONADAL AND THE LIMITS OF RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS

The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), supervised by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), is considered a fitting representation of the concept of justice as fairness, given its goal of giving financial support to extremely poor Filipino families to meet certain development goals of the government. However, a knowledge gap exists between Rawls’ Theory of Justice as Fairness and the 4Ps as there has been no knowledge generated by previous studies in applying the theory to interpret the lived experiences of 4Ps beneficiaries. With this, there is a need for an in-depth interpretation of the experiences of the 4Ps beneficiaries, regarding equal basic liberties, access to opportunity, and the difference principle and how these experiences expose the limits in Rawls’ criteria of justice. An intrinsic case study was used to gather the experiences of 4Ps beneficiaries within the City of Koronadal and an instrumental case study was used to analyze how these experiences revealed the limits of Rawls’ criteria of justice. The experiences reveal practical and theoretical shortcomings in Rawls’ theory. Although Rawls argues that social and economic inequalities are acceptable if they benefit the least advantaged, the experiences expose gaps in this ideal, demonstrating the difficulties of implementing these principles in practice. Rawls’ theory does not always fully apply to real-world situations, even when certain ideas seem to align. Some experiences only partially match the theory’s principles, and others directly challenge them, revealing ongoing difficulties in putting Rawls’ theory into practice in actual contexts.