The ties that do not bind: party affiliations and the delivery of devolved health services in the Philippines

Using a panel of province-level data, we investigate the effects of political party affiliations of local chief executives on the financing and delivery of devolved health services, where arguably the opportunities for and potential gains from inter-local governmental unit (LGU) cooperation abound. Despite these potential gains, the proportion of mayors that belong to the same party as the governor are found not to have any direct, independent and statistically significant effects on the local chief executives' ability to secure additional resources from the national government and other external sources, mobilize greater spending on local health services or improve select health service outputs. However, the re-election status of mayors and governors is found to have a direct, independent and positive impact on some of these indicators. These results support the view that narrow electoral objectives more than party platforms remain the dominant influence in local fiscal decisions under decentralization.