01878pab a2200193 454500 180718b1999 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Montinola, Gabriella R. Politicians, parties, and the persistence of weak states: lessons from the Philippines 1999 p.739-74 Oct Under what conditions will politicians strengthen state capabilities through bureaucratic reform? This article presents a principal agent model of state capacity that shows that unless competition to influence policy is largely confined to a single dimension, politicians have no incentive or `political will' to adopt bureaucratic reform. The validity of this model is tested using the experience of the Philippines in the period 1946-72. It is found that politically relevant groups in the Philippines were competing to influence policy over issues of social welfare, economic nationalism and control over public spending, and that groups' demands over these issues failed to align along a single dominant dimension. Consistent with expectations derived from the principal-agent model, there were numerous calls for and attempts to improve bureaucratic performance, but the calls went unheeded and the attempts failed miserably. The study highlights a lesson of potential use to countries currently undergoing democratization. It argues that state capacity is not a function of insulating the state from societal forces, but rather of clarifying lines of authority and accountability in the hierarchy of principal-agent relationships between society, politicians and bureaucrats. - Reproduced Politicians - Philippines Political parties - Philippines Philippines - Politics and government Politics and government Development and Change 47832 47832 47832 0 0 0 0 IIPA IIPA 2018-07-19 Volume no: 30, Issue no: 4 AR48260 2018-07-19 2018-07-19 AR