Decentralization: Federal Government

I
Introduction
The Philippines as well as most countries today are all facing Global Recession. Though it may not have a fixed definition it is defined as, the point where the global economic slowdown. This states that when the economic growth of a certain Country or the world is below 3%, it’ll be considered as Recession. In the year 1974, the New York Times article by Julius Shiskin suggested rules and basis to identify Recession, which included two successive quarterly declines in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Up until now, Global Recession still doesn’t have a definite meaning.1

Experts from all over the world are trying to reach a solution to this crisis. Putting everyone else but us, the Philippines as a nation takes part to this catastrophe. The geography of the Philippines serves as a hindrance for quick development and allocation of services for the people. This setup has made the communication and the transfer of goods and services difficult to attain. Since all the goods and services must originate from the central government which is located in Manila. Thus, resulting to slow progress of development, that is supposed to be done in a quick manner. Experts then proposed a solution to this by Decentralization. They believe that bringing the government closer to the people will result to a more productive and actively participating society that will later bloom into a good economic society, where in people will be able to enjoy all the goods and services made available to them by the government. After years some experts said that Federalism should be a good response to this dilemma. The difference in the culture brought by the different people in different places will be resolved for this will bring the people together regardless of their religion and beliefs. They also claimed that with this response, the economic growth of the country will rapidly increase.

Being under a democratic government, we should be able to tell what will be the possible results of the proposed solutions to this economic crisis we’re currently facing. We should be able to figure out what kind of government is best suitable for a country with a geography like the Philippines.

The first part of the paper is about the introduction of the Decentralization and the Federalism by the experts to the country. The second part of the paper will contain the findings about the 2 topics. The third part of the paper will contain my personal reaction towards the topic discussed in the previous part. The fourth part of the paper will contain the conclusion of the said paper.

II
Findings
Being proposed as a solution for the economic issues as well as develop a more responsive and actively participating residents of the society, Decentralization played an important role.
Decentralization is the transfer of powers from central government (E.g Manila) to Lower level. It allows the participation of people and local government, also it gives up political, financial and administrative authority from central to local governments, so that the government will be able to facilitate and maximize the use of goods and services that will later on be available to the people. Decentralization has 3 components namely; (1) Political Decentralization, (2) Fiscal Decentralization, (3) Institutional Decentralization.

Political Decentralization also called as Devolution. Philippines, being an archipelago makes it hard to develop a well and good highly-centralized government to manage. This is a major leap to accord the gender-culture sensitive plans and budgets aswell. Devolution involves the transfer of the authority, power and responsibility of the national or central government to the local government or the lower level as written on the Local Government code. It also augments cooperation between executives, civil servants and citizens regarding the principles of good governance. It empowered Local Government Leaders to take greater...