Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Drawing on a seventeen year panel data consisting of thirteen municipal governments in the Rizal province, Philippines, this research examines the effect of political dynasties on local public social services expenditure. Particularly, the study investigates the effect of political dynasties as a homogeneous group, but more importantly, as two distinct categories: as fat and thin political dynasties, respectively. Based from the results of Panel-corrected Prais–Winsten Generalized Least Squares (GLS) estimation, this working paper finds that dynastic (fat and thin) municipal governments in Rizal invest less in social services compared with their non-dynastic counterparts. Further, when disaggregated into the two categories, political dynasties exhibit diverging effects on social services expenditure. On the average, results show that fat municipal governments in Rizal invest less, while a thin dynastic municipal government invests more in their respective constituents, both being compared with a common base group—the non-dynastic municipal governments. On the theoretical front, the findings of this working paper reinforce the view of fat dynasties as “Roving Bandits,” and thin dynasties as “Stationary Bandits.” On a public policy level, the study’s results have reverberating implications for the proposal for a total ban of political dynasties in the Philippines, as well as on other key policy areas, such as term limits, yardstick competition, and political party reforms.