Federalism and Effective Public Administration

1. Federalism and Effective Public Administration
Public Administration is a multi-dimensional discipline whose rules
include bureaucratic control to ensure that the interest of the public is served
accordingly. However, the changes in the needs of the public as deemed by the
Philippine government opened the idea of the Charter Change over the past
years. With the current administration, one of its main political goals is the
conversion of the form of government from Unitary to Federal.
Federalism is a system of government in which the same territory is
controlled by two levels of government (www.law.cornell.edu,2002). In other
words, the national territory is divided into different states which are overseen
within by their local government while the predominant national government is
responsible for overlooking the issues that affects the entire country. This
enables each state to create their own laws suitable to the social, political,
technological, and economic needs of their constituents and obtain their
budget from the state’s income. This ensures that the government is close to its
people by guaranteeing that unnecessary delays are avoided in implementing
laws and projects for the betterment of the state as a whole.
Despite all these advantages, the question that remains is if this form of
government serves as a good ground for an effective public administration
considering the kind of country Philippines is. Aside from a long term
transition between the two types of government, the debts of the country and
its corruption issues, how effective can the administration be? Having national
and regional governments may lead to overlapping jurisdiction making the
passed laws contradictory to each other. Critics of federalism observe that it
results in inefficiencies, redundancy, and policy failure (dlc.dcccd.edu,). This
may lead to subsequent confusion as to who is responsible for what (UK
Essays, 2015). Aside from this, the states compete in business and
investments which may lead to downward pressure on taxes to make it better
zone for business investment over the other. States can also fight against the
existence of certain national laws by challenging them in court, or going out of
their way to not enforce those national laws, or even deliberately obstructing
enforcement of national laws (Wisemen, R., 2018).
Federalism may have several advantages considering the archipelagic
feature of the country but if it can also promote inequalities, confusion and
rebellion, how prepared is the Philippines to face such? Regardless of all the
studies conducted by the current government, the implementation and the
administration will never be assured. It poses an uncertainty as to effectiveness
of public administration in the country. It will be something that must be

2. looked into fully understand the positive and negative consequences of the
action in light with the goal of fulfilling the interest of the public as it should
be.