Essay On Local Government In The Philippines

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The local government is divided into three layers: provinces, municipalities, and independent cities where each local government unit (LGU) has an elected chief of governors, mayors, and barangay captains, respectively (Manasan, 2004). Through the Local Government Code of 1991, the provision of basic services to their constituents and generation of revenues for their targeted expenditures were tasked to LGUs (The Local Government Code of the Philippines, 1991), consequently giving them greater financial autonomy. In 2004, Manasan noted that from 1991 to 2003, among major sectors that LGU heads allocate their budgets, social welfare services expenditure had a fastest growth rate at a 21.7 percent average yearly increase. Since the adoption of…show more content…
In 2012, Rigon, having cited opposing studies by Belsey and Case (2003) and by Ferreira and Gyourko (2010), as well as difference in spending preferences of men and women, studied whether female representation in Italy’s City Councils had an effect on local government spending. The author’s results turned out to be insignificant and Rigon alluded to the fact that the results could have been due either to the small proportion of females to males in Italy’s City Councils or that, in line with the Median Voter theorem, “only citizens’ preferences matter in policy making” (Rigon, 2012). On the hand, the oppossite was reported by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (2015): gender did affect local government spending expenditures. It reported a study made in 2002 by Bratton and Ray which found that the provision of state-funded childcare increased as elected female mayors increased, as well as citing Holman’s finding in 2014 wherein greater social welfare spending and local participation in social welfare programs in the United States were correlated to the increase in female

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