The Political Economy of Political Development: a Case Study of Regional Development in the Philippines Before Martial Law
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acffic & Southeast - ian History The Australian Development Studies Centre Notional University Monograph no.21 The political economy of political development: A case study of regional development in the Philippines before martial law Mohd A Nawawi M' DOC t.No.21 1980 NAW �_.._• .___ The political economy of political development Development Studies Centre Monograph no. 21 The political economy of political development A case study of regional development in the Philippines before martial law Mohd A Nawawi Series editor Gavin W. Jones The Australian National University Canberra 1980 ©Mohd. A. Nawawi 1980 This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries may be made to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication entry Nawawi, Mohammed Ansori. The political economy of political development. (Development Studies Centre monograph; no. 21) ISBN 0 909150 96 6 1. Philippine Islands - Economic conditions. I. Title. (Series: Australian National University, Canberra. Development Studies Centre. Monograph; no. 21 ISSN 0157-5767) 330.9599 Printed and manufactured in Australia by The Australian National University To my wife and two daughters who shared the eventful year in the Philippines v Summary This study is part of a continuing intellectual explor ation of the concept and process of development. In a nut shell, its basic assump tion is that development must be llllderstood in terms of increasing availability of political goods to the maj ority of the population and the capacity of that maj ority to contribute to their provision . The bulk of the study , therefore, is devoted to a detailed determination of the extent of the provision of the most essential political goods and the total amollllts of financial resources mobilized and spent by both the central government and the local aut horities, particularly in the Philippine province of Negros Oriental . Not tmexpectedly , both the amollllt of poli tical goods enjoyed by the overwhelming maj ority of the Filipinos and the ir capacity to contribute to their avail ability were very meagre . The ftmdamental cause of this tmderdevelopment is folllld to be the stagnation of the regional and rural economy. For this reason, the persistent contro versy between the proponents of centralization and decentral ization appears to be beside the point . The significan ce of administrative re form is also basically very limited. Cl early rural poverty has resulted from, and been maintained by , the peculiar and mutually reinforcing patterns of the political and economic systems of the col.mtry . This fact is yet to be properly acknowledged even by the most thoughtful analysts. vii Contents Page Pref ace xi Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xvi Chapter 1 The setting 1 Chapter 2 The provision of polit ical goods 8 Chapter 3 The mob ilization of resources 23 Chapter 4 Public expendit ures 28 Chapter 5 Dependence and centralization 44 Chapter 6 The national picture and the significance 51 of administrative reform Chap ter 7 The political economy of concentration 60 and stagnation Epilogue 71 References 76 Map Negros Oriental, showing its location 3 in the Philippines ix x Tables Page 1.1 Philippine regions 2 1.2 Negros Oriental in comparative perspective 4 1.3 The m\lllicipalities of Negros Oriental : their 6 areas , populations and classifications 3. 1 Mobilized resources in Bacong and Tanj ay 26 during 1971-72 3.2 Mobilized resources in the municipalities of 28 Negros Oriental during 1971-72 3.3 Resource mobilizat ion in Negros Oriental, 29 excluding the cities , 1971-72 3.4 Mobilized resources of Dumaguete , 1971-72 31 4 . 1 Budget ftlllds in Bacong and Tanj ay, 1971-72 35 4.2 Public expenditure in Bacong and Tanj ay , 38 1971-72 4.3 Public expenditure in Negros Oriental, 41 excluding the cities , 1971-72 4.4 Public expenditure in Dumaguete City, 1971-72 43 5.1 Mobilization and expenditure in Negros 45 Oriental , 1971-72 5.2 Resource mobilization in Negros Oriental , 46 1970- 71 and 1971-72 5.3 Maj or public expendit ure in Negros Oriental , 47 1970-71 and 1971-72 5.4 Level of centralization in Negros Oriental , 50 19 71-72 6.1 Mobilized municipal resources in Negros 54 Oriental and Negros Occidental , 1971-72 6.2 Collect ion of property taxes and internal 59 revenues in the m\lllicipalities of Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental , before and after martial law. 7.1 GNP and employment shares of the traditional 60 sector Preface Like most academic efforts, this study grew out of dis satis faction . As a political scientist , I had of course been primarily concerned with the work of other politists. But being ab ove all obsessed with the prospects and problems of development in the Third World , particularly Southeast As ia, I had also immersed my self in the writing of other social scientists, part icularly economists. Unhappily , I had found these readings to be largely unhelpful. Undeniably, the notions of economic and political development! had recently undergone significant refinement. Mo st import antly, they had become less rigidly exclusive in disciplinary terms and less blatantly West-centric. Never theless, they had remained in my view essentially narrow and timid. Most of the politists who regarded themselves as being concerned with development had actually focused their 2 attention on the process of modernization or social change . At any rate, too many had been quite content with concentrating on the political aspects and implicat ions of social an d cultural structures and institut ions as such . Since these are obviously very slow-changing, their conclusions could always be couched either in terms of very long-range and necessarily slow , even imperceptible , changes or as declar ations of despair at the seemingly insurmotmtable social and cultural barriers and obstacles. In eithe r case, they conveniently ab solved political leaders of any real respon s ib ility for taking resolute action. 1 As I have argued elsewhere (Nawawi 1976a) developmen t should be conceived primarily in economic and political terms . This does not , however, deny the importance of social and cultural variables. 2 The necessary distinct ion between development and modern ization has also been put forth in Nawawi (1976a) . xi xii As fo r the development economists, many had simply continued to take the position of either dismissing any political implication of their analyses or taking it for granted that any necessary political act ion should be more or less painlessly forthcoming. Even the few who had begllll. to show serious appreciat ion of non-economic factors deter mining the prospect of economic development had shrunk from integrally including these factors, particularly the political ones , in their reco11DI1endations . What seemed to be very badly needed was a conception of development which would necessitate taking into accotmt both political and economic criteria in separably . In the conditions pertaining in developing collll.tries , it seemed coy for the economists and irresponsible for the political scientists to continue to plough their own respective fields . Development should at once be economic and political. In considering some of the mo st recent notions of the goal of developmen t and searching the history of political philosophy , one idea emerged as mo st promising. This is that the primary if not the only reason for social living is the tmique possibility it offers to those participating in it for the realizat ion of their human potential. In the context of a nation , this means that development requires the ut ilization of all national human and non-human resources for the benefit , and through the active participat ion , of the greatest maj ority of the cit izens. More concretely, the maj ority of citizens mu st be actively involved in the pro duction and enj oyment of national wealth . Any nation which does not make it possible for any substantial segment of it s citizenry to be product ive and to share equitably the avail ab le nat ional resources cannot be regarded as developed. A nation is developing only if more and mo re of its citizens are becoming more and more actively involved in the creat ion and enj oyment of its achievements. The most convenient way to operationalize this concept of development seemed to be to focus on the provision of political goods and the mobilization of resources necessary for it. A political good can simply be defined as any good, such as public health , which is impossible or extremely inconvenient to obtain or to provide individually and partic ularistically . Such goods are political since the need for them and their availability are necessarily the result and reward of social living, that is living in a polity. For xiii this reason , their provision and the access to them directly define one aspect of active social participation . Contributing to their product ion constitutes the other aspect. Because of this focus on political goods, it is appro priate and convenient to describe the concept as political development. Clearly the use of the term 'political' here is much broader than the conventional usage. Nevertheless, as it is essentially only a return to the original Greek notion , it should be meaningful even conventionally . At the same time , it should not be too alien to conventional econo mists. After all, the concept of political good is almost identical with that of public or government good. The principal operational difficulty with the suggested approach concerns the identificat ion and me asuremen t of political goods. The present study aims to clarify and resolve some of the problems .