The Correlates of Local Government Responsiveness Under Decentralization: Do Performance Ratings Matter in the Philippines?

Abstract

To improve local service delivery under decentralization, performance ratings are often introduced. In this article, performance ratings and other correlates of the citizens’ assessment of the responsiveness of their local governments are investigated with a regression analysis of survey data collected during the pilot test of a performance rating scheme in 12 Philippine cities and municipalities in 2001–2003. The local governments in the eight sites where the ratings were announced are assessed less responsive by their own constituents than those in the four control areas by theirs. Possibly, the citizens exposed to the ratings expected better performances from their officials.

Keywords:

• local government responsiveness
• performance ratings
• accountability
• decentralization
• Philippines

Notes

¹ The Good Governance and Local Development Project is described extensively in Capuno and Garcia (2010). We draw from this article some details to provide a short, self-contained backgrounder of the project, and the dataset used in this article.

² We use average awareness of the other performance indicators rather individual awareness since the latter maybe endogenous.