Public Administration in the Philippines: Meeting the Challenges of Government and Governance DANILO DE LA ROSA REYES
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
74 PHILIPPINE SOCIAL SCIENCES: CAPACITIES, DIRECTIONS, AND CHALLENGES Public Administration in the Philippines: Meeting the Challenges of Government and Governance DANILO DE LA ROSA REYES Public Administration1 was introduced in the community. Its vibrancy was given much impetus Philippines at a time of internal strife, transition with the increase of academic institutions offering and reconstruction. It emerged during a difficult formal collegiate and post-graduate programs period marked by unrest and rebellion in the and courses in Public Administration. These aftermath of the Second World War, and with the institutions are based not only in Metro Manila and country gripped and confronted with the nearby environs but even in far-flung regions and burgeoning agenda of rehabilitation and localities where institutions of higher learning, consolidation. Its entry into the country as a formal particularly state colleges and universities, have field of study is generally associated with the gradually recognized the viability of Public establishment of the Institute of Public Administration programs. Administration (IPA) then based at the University The expansion of academic programs in Public of the Philippines in Padre Faura, Manila. This was Administration is also enhanced by the remarkable the offshoot of recommendations of the Bell growth of research activities which, by and large, Mission, a survey team sent to the Philippines in also helped developed the publication of 1950 to study and recommend measures to indigenous literature that depicts, examines, and rehabilitate the country following the devastation explains the depths and realities of the Philippine of the war. With independence obtained from the administrative system. These initiatives have United States in 1946, the Philippines proceeded generated knowledge and viewpoints that are to uphold and pursue a democratic political system localized and localizing, providing more relevant inherited from and patterned after the American materials for better appreciation of the vagaries of model. phenomena obtaining in the Philippine From this institutional base, Public administrative system. Administration as a disciplinary enterprise grew An equally encouraging development in as a legitimate field of study, acknowledged and Philippine Public Administration is the recognized as part of the larger academic and establishment of local and international scholarly discipline in the social science institutions and linkages that help propagate 75 Public Administration in the Philippines: Meeting the Challenges of Government and Governance administrative studies, whether focusing on the and efficiency in Government…and take steps to Philippine system or seeking to develop improve training facilities for technicians in the comparative perspectives towards building Philippines” (Bell et al., 1950, p. 6; also cited in administrative knowledge anchored on shared Reyes, 1999, pp. 248-249). experiences in different socio-political and cultural The Report also “deplored the low salaries settings. Such institutions as the Association of paid government employees in comparison with Schools of Public Administration in the those obtainable in the private sector,” and Philippines, the Philippine Society for Public likewise noted the difficulty of “attracting to the Administration, and the Eastern Regional public service many able men whose training and Organization for Public Administration, among experience were desperately needed…” The others, have served to consolidate the strength of Report also decried “the lack of facilities for the Public Administration as a field of study in the training of subordinate employees for supervisory country. positions as one of the pressing problems in government administration” (Bell Report 1950, as THE INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: cited in Alfonso, 1972, p. 275).2 PIONEERING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION STUDY The findings and recommendations of the Bell IN THE PHILIPPINES Report provided for the establishment of IPA which was then set up as an integral unit of the As in other countries, the war devastated the University of the Philippines in June 1952. The IPA Philippine economy and brought about was created based on a technical assistance widespread poverty. Living conditions in the contract entered into between the University of the country following the war were desolate, and Philippines and the University of Michigan to further aggravated by brewing peasant and serve as a training center for government (Ricote, agrarian unrest. The end of the war created 2008, 2005; Reyes, 2010, 1999, 1995a, 1995b, 1979; discontinuities in the social and political order and Ocampo, 1993; Cariño, 1993; Alfonso, 1972; Ramos, escalated in its wake a powerful communist 1957; Lederle & Heady, 1955). insurgent rebellion. Manila, the country’s capital, Ramos points out succinctly that the Institute was left in total ruins. The economy was at a was “established in 1952 to be a center for research, standstill, prompting American senator Millard information and professional training in public Tydings to declare it, next to Warsaw in Poland, administration” (Ramos, 1957, p. 2). Alfonso as “the most completely devastated capital city in echoes and expands these later, saying that the the world” (as cited in Shalom, 1986, p. 33). Institute was conceived as “a center for research, This milieu of distress and conflict was further academic and in-service training, and consultation reinforced and compounded by a bureaucracy services in public administration” (Alfonso, 1972, traumatized by war, “characterized by low p. 276, ital. mine). Upon its inception, it was thus prestige, incompetence, meager resources, and a tasked with the conduct of in-service training for large measure of cynical corruption” (Corpuz, civil servants, the felt need then following the 1957, p. 222). In an effort to rebuild the nation, the effects on the civil service by the war and of the Philippine government sought the assistance of the Japanese occupation. In a survey of the growth of United States, which promptly dispatched an schools of Public Administration in the Economic Survey Mission headed by Daniel W. Philippines, Nieves in fact opines that in the early Bell to the Philippines in 1950. years of the discipline’s inception, the term That mission accordingly submitted its report, “institute” was adopted “perhaps to emphasize the now known as the Bell Report, and recommended training rather than the academic function” among others, “that public administration be (Nieves, 1972, p. 340). improved and reorganized so as to insure honesty 76 PHILIPPINE SOCIAL SCIENCES: CAPACITIES, DIRECTIONS, AND CHALLENGES The entry of Public Administration into the Before the expiration of the technical assistance veins of academic scholarship, as well as into the contract with the University of Michigan in 1956, realms of professional and extension services in IPA was able to formulate curricula for both the Philippines, was marked by auspicious and bachelor and master’s degree programs in Public ominous beginnings (Reyes, 1995a). It was Administration. In the second semester of auspicious because it emerged in the country as a academic year 1952-1953, the first graduate courses full-fledged field of study, separate and distinct in Public Administration were offered by the from its acknowledged and putative mother Institute. The enrolment in these programs rose discipline, Political Science, as was the case in the “from 68 students during the first semester of 1953- United States. As a result, unlike its American 54 to ‘well over 200’ per semester by 1955" (Lederle counterpart, it did not have to struggle for & Heady, 1955, p. 13, as cited in Ocampo, 1993, acceptance in establishing its legitimacy as an p. 6). independent field of study. It was, for all intents In time, IPA was renamed as the Graduate and purposes, brought and shipped into Philippine School of Public Administration in 1963 as an shores, packaged and assembled as a finished academic unit now formally part of the University product by professors and scholars from the of the Philippines. In 1966, it became the School of University of Michigan (Reyes, 2010, 1979; Public Administration but was again renamed as Ocampo, 1993; Cariño, 1993; Ramos, 1957; Lederle the College of Public Administration the following & Heady, 1955). year (Nieves, 1972, p. 340; Alfonso, 1972, p. 276fn).3 On the other hand, its coming was ominous In 1998, the Board of Regents of the University of because the discipline emerged during a difficult the Philippines recognized it as a “national time of reconstruction and rehabilitation, college” and added the word “governance” to burdened by dislocation and internecine conflict become what is now the National College of Public (Reyes, 1995). The discipline was brought into the Administration and Governance or NCPAG country during a period of uncertainty where an (Cariño, 2007). unstable government grappling with unrest and Cariño explains that the designation of the UP rebellion, and where too, the delivery of basic and College of Public Administration as the “national essential public services had been compromised college” derives from the fact that its forerunner, by the lack of resources and the problematic of an the IPA, “has been the first institution of higher incompetent civil service for which Public learning in the Philippines and in Asia” (Cariño, Administration was precisely called upon to help 2007, p. 685).4 The IPA, now