A ‘Paradox’ of Governance Performance: the Case of Barangay 872, Manila, Philippines

This descriptive single-case study is a glimpse of barangay governance performance vis-à-vis the recurrent governance challenges confronting a local community mired in chronic poverty, in Manila, Philippines. The case of Barangay 872 shows an incongruous claim of ‘good' governance performance juxtaposed alongside the constituents ‘limited access to services, resources, and opportunities. With the implementation of the Barangay Governance Performance Management System (BGPMS) and the Enhanced Barangay Governance Performance Management System (E-BGPMS) as a management approach, the narratives and self-conducted performance assessments of the Barangay Council from the Year 2013-2017, extract a ‘paradox' of governance performance. Over time, the apparent ‘strength' of the Barangay Council in the governance and administrative performance sector co-exists with a stagnant economic development and lags behind the relatively slight improvements in the social services and environmental management sectors. In this light, this paper poses the question: "What accounts for the Council's inconsistent governance performance?" Employing Blumer's symbolic interactionism as a theoretical lens, in the eyes of the Council, the ‘paradox' emanates from the prevalence of the ‘weak-performing' sectors over the ‘strong-performing' sectors, which they attribute to three persistent factors: 1]. the barangay's limited economic resources and stagnant agriculture; 2]. implementation of poverty targeting policy as a ‘structural strain'; and 3]. limited institutional support from the local government units.