The development strategy or model that the Philippines has employed in her postwar socio-economic development efforts is basically anchored upon the free market principle. The Philippine government has pursued the `free market devel-opment strategy` more vigorously since Corazon Aquino`s regime superseded Marcos`s authoritarian on in 1986 through the `People Power` revolution. Notwithstanding the fact that the postwar Philippines followed this market-orient-ed development trajectory, it wasn`t able to escape the economic crisis that mired most Southeast Asian economies in the late 1990s. In this paper I argue that one of the many causes which goaded this country into the cul-de-sac of socio-economic turmoil should be found in the problems and limitations of the state and politico-economic system in the Philippines and that we can identify at least three salient features in this regard: (1) the limitations of the postwar Philippine state as a `weak` state, (2) problems as a `patrimonial` state, and (3) the postwar Philippine economy as the `rent-seeking capitalism`. This study reveals that these three features not only encroached upon the state system and political leadership of the Marcos regime, but they have also entangled those of the Aquino and Ramos regimes. Among their many ramifications are the national crisis and the downfall of the Marcos regime in the mid-1980s and the economic difficulties that the Philippines had to face in the late 1990s.