Governance and Development: The Case of Top LGUs in the Philippines

There is a large body of literature that studies the link between good governance and development in a country level. However, only a few have exploited the same study in the local government unit (LGU) setting. This study attempts to establish the relationship between the quality of governance and the state of local development of the Top 9 performing LGUs in the Philippines (La Union, Albay, Cavite, Ilocos Norte, Makati City Valenzuela City, Taguig City, Davao City and Angeles City) as measured by the Local Governance Performance Management System (LGPMS), the nationwide governance performance evaluation and management tool used in the Philippines. The author used longitudinal data generated by the LGPMS, particularly the state of local governance and the state of local development, to see if there is a relationship between the two variables using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Results revealed no relationship between the quality of governance and the state of local development in the consistently top performing LGUs in the Philippines for the period 2009-2011. The results of the study will be helpful to policy makers, public administrators and researchers.