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Abstract
Development planning, generation of revenues and land use controls have been among the powers devolved to local officials by the 1991 Local Government Code (LGC) of the Philippines, which many local government units have learned to use for the benefit of their constituents, despite lingering habits of relying on the central government. This study seeks first to describe the physical and institutional manifestations of decentralisation in Tarlac, the province from which the new President Benigno Aquino III hails, and which is some 100 km north of the capital, Metropolitan Manila. It then presents a qualitative analysis of characteristic aspects of governance that have enabled and impeded the implementation of decentralisation in Tarlac province. The historical recipient of infrastructure and investment that have driven urbanisation, Tarlac is currently poised to gain more, as decentralisation, in the hands of its imaginative young leaders who have dared to experiment, often successfully, has transformed towns into hubs of activity. Among the manifestations are jointly planned highways and telecommunications, magnets of commerce, and the ordinances that enable investors to do business efficiently. Moreover, decentralisation has brought about a paradigm shift that encourages co-operation of non-state actors who wish to influence innovative development.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Michelle Miller and Dr Tim Bunnell for their patient guidance since 2011, as well as for their extra assistance, which helped the authors to hurdle the final stages of editing.
Notes
The same three-part definition of administrative decentralisation is found in the World Bank (see: http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/decentralization/admin.htm; accessed 10 November 2010).
As the citizens of Tarlac call themselves. This word is derived from a Hispanic way of indicating a person's origin.
Generally, there are six imagined planning levels in the Philippines that may or may not have actual spatio-political counterpart units: national; regional (conceptual only, except for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, which exists as a spatio-political unit; provincial; metropolitan (Metro Manila only, and a few pseudo-metropolitan governing bodies for other sites; city and municipality (collateral levels, cities are only wealthier and more populated, by law, than municipalities); and, barangay.
This is the national planning agency that regularly introduces a catchy model or visual framework for development at the national and regional levels.
Pronounced , this is a council presided over by the vice-mayor or vice-governor, depending on the level of local government.
Originally a Spanish word meaning ‘population’, this term, in Filipino, has come to refer, rather, to the central or capital town of any province, or to the central or capital barangay in a municipality or in a city, in this case, Tarlac city.
The ‘barangay’, pronounced , is the smallest political unit in the Philippines mandated by law. It is equivalent to a village, which is populated by at least 2000 residents in areas that are not highly urbanised, or 5000 residents in highly urbanised areas (Local Government Code of the Philippines of 1991). Tarlac has 511 barangays.
One example of this is the cost-sharing agreement for the conduct of large development projects, as follows: 1st and 2nd income class LGUs (wealthiest): 50–50 sharing; 3rd class: 60–40, lower percentage shouldered by LGU; 4th class: 70–30; and 5th and 6th class (poorest); 80–20.
Interview with K. V. Buenaventura and staff of the Tarlac Provincial Planning Office, 2011.