Quality of Governance and Local Development: The Case of Top Nine Performing Local Government Units in the Philippines

There is a large body of literature that studies the link between good governance and development in a country level. However, only a few have exploited the same study in the local government unit (LGU) setting. This study attempts to establish the relationship between the quality of governance and the state of local development of the Top 9 Performing LGUs in the Philippines (La Union, Albay, Cavite, Ilocos Norte, Makati City Valenzuela City, Taguig City, Davao City and Angeles City) as measured by the Local Governance Performance Management System (LGPMS), the nationwide governance performance evaluation and management tool used in the Philippines. I used the data generated by the LGPMS, particularly the state of local governance and the state of local development, to see if there is a relationship between the two variables using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Results revealed that that there is no relationship between the quality of governance and the state of local development in the consistently top performing LGUs in the Philippines for the period 2009-2011. The findings of this study will be useful to government officials such as public administrators, LGU executives, policy makers, researchers, and students of public administration in addressing the issue of good governance and local development in their respective LGUs.