Political dynasty in the local governments of Metro Manila
Date
2013-10
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Abstract
This paper contributes to the existing literature of political dynasties by providing a
quantifiable and comparative measure on the intensity of political dynasties within the local
governments of the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Although there is currently an
extensive literature on political dynasties in the Philippines, none have yet quantified the
magnitude of political dynasties based on the scope and successions of power of dynasties at
a geographical level. We created a Political Dynasty Index to measure the intensity of
political dynasties per city through a set of multidimensional criteria: Type of succession,
scope of current term, distance between terms, and degree of relation. Using the NCR local
government elections results since 1988 from the Comelec on Elections, we identifY the
political dynasties per city and score them according to the point system given by the index.
We find that out of the 17 cities in NCR, Las Pinas scored the highest as the city with the
highest intensity of political dynasties while Taguig scored the lowest as having the least
intensity of political dynasties in its local government. In addition, a large weight of a city's
score was greatly influenced by only one or two dominating political families in each city.
These dynasties continue to grow as they maintain their hold on key positions in local
government. Particularly, dominant political dynasties head both the executive and legislative
branch of the city, which are ideally meant to check and balance one another. Moreover,
officials elected into high positions in local government are found to start political dynasties
while in power as they are succeeded by another family member before their term ends.
Description
Keywords
Political dynasty, Local government, Metro Manila