MEETING: Department on Interior and Local Government-National Capital Region (DILG-NCR) Federalism Study

The UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies Program on Social and Political Change (UP CIDS-PSPC) will embark on a research project in partnership with the Department on Interior and Local Government – National Capital Region (DILG-NCR) that looks into the implications of federalism on the National Capital Region (NCR).
On March 1, 2018, UP CIDS PSPC and DILG-NCR met with prospective research partners from several UP institutions and units. Representatives from the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP), UP National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS), UP Resilience Institute – Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards Center (UPRI-NOAH Center), UP Institute for Islamic Studies (UP-IIS), UPD National Institute of Physics (NIP), UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy Department of Political Science (UP CSSP DPS), and the UP CIDS Program on Alternative Development (UPAD) discussed the prospects and potential of the project.

The study aims to assess the strong and weak points of governance in NCR thus identifying areas that need reform. It also aims to identify the functions of the national government that can devolve to regional governments, such as NCR, and functions of regional governments that can devolve to local government units (LGU).
The project will adopt a multi-disciplinary framework that will look into the political, economic, social, and environmental aspects of governance and reform. The workshop generated insights and recommendations from the participants that will propel the project forward. It was highly suggested that a review of previous studies on decentralization and devolution, specifically in the context of NCR, be produced before further studies can be developed.
A comparative study of metropolitan arrangements in other federalist countries is a point of interest as well as determining the possible general principles with which formation of states may be based on. Other proposed topics were transport planning in NCR, Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in NCR, and rural-urban linkages under federalism.