EMITMAG
POLITICS
Effects of Federalism in the Philippines
According to Mangsi, first effect of Federalism is financial independence and the specialization and distribution of wealth in local to national government in the Philippines. Philippine`s type of government is uniform government, where funds coming from different regions are collected and received by the national government located in National Capital Region (NCR), the center for business and commerce in the Philippines. The national government is responsible for the distribution of funds back to the regions here in the Philippines. The amount of funds that a particular region has changes when returned by the national government. These regions give their full income to the national government but only a portion from the full amount of their income returns to them. In federal government, there will be a central government responsible for national governing and political units called states/ state governments. These state governments will maintain the full amount of their income and they are also required to return a portion from their income to the central government/ federal government.
These states will spend their income to programs and policies that suits and will benefit their communities. This process of giving, funding, and spending of income will have properly established regions because there is a sufficient amount of funds for improvements of their communities. However, for states with lesser amount of income will suffer. In Philippine context, a region with this kind of situation usually depends on the funding of the national government for them to have an enough amount of fund for the needs of their community. As a result, these regions will depend on their available resources and can be left out by other developed/developing regions in the country because of Federalize system.
The central government will use the funds they have collected for national defense, foreign policy, and national health care (2017).