Does The Upper House Have The Upper Hand

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL
SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

Philippine
Political Science
Journal
brill.com/ppsj
brill.com/ppsj
‘Does the upper house have the upper hand?’

The Dynamics of Distributive Policies in the Philippine Senate
Rogelio Alicor Panao*

PhD; Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of the
Philippines Diliman
rlpanao@up.edu.ph
Received 11 July 2019; accepted 15 November 2019
Abstract
How does the Philippine Senate fare as an institutional check to the policy propos-
als made by the House of Representatives? The study examines a facet of bicamer-
al policymaking by analyzing the type of measures likely to receive attention in the
Philippine Senate, and the propensity by which these measures are passed into leg-
islation. Contrary to views that portray deliberative processes in second chambers as
redundant and time-consuming, the paper argues that this prerogative is institution-
ally functional as it affords a mechanism for checking the informational quality of
legislative policies skewed by particularistic demands at the lower house. Analyzing
the event histories of 10,885 bills filed and deliberated at the Philippine Senate be-
tween the 13th and the 16th Congresses, we find that policy proposals pertaining to
education, health, and public works – the most frequent areas of particularistic legis-
lative measures at the lower house – are less likely to be passed into law in the Senate
even though overall they comprise the bulk of legislative proposals in the Philippine
Congress. The findings are robust even when controlling for other political and institu-
tional determinants of legislative attention.
Keywords
bicameralism – Congress – legislative policymaking – legislative delay – Philippine

Senate
* The author is a member of the Philippine Bar.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/2165025X-12340014

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202 Panao
1 Introduction
Although bicameralism has piqued the interest of scholars in recent years,

evidence to its institutional utility remains at best mixed. Some construe sec-
ond chambers as redundant and superfluous, making lawmaking institutions
with multiple chambers susceptible to gridlock (Docherty 2002; Patterson and
Mughan 1999). Some see in second chambers powerful institutions of agenda
setting that work even in the absence of formal veto powers (Tsebelis 2002;
Tsebelis and Money 1997; Fortunato, Koenig, and Proksch 2013). There are also
those who view second chambers as check upon another policymaking au-
thority to reduce the hazard of legislative tyranny. This arguably slows down
the legislative process but nevertheless allows reflection over what the first
chamber has done. Such deliberative consideration may involve persuading or
coercing the other chamber, and recommending amendments if necessary, to
measures earlier proposed.
In the Philippines, the presence of independent-minded legislators or those
who are not afraid to express their ideological views can slow down the pas-
sage of significant legislations. Former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, for
example, created media ripples when he took a swipe at senators over their al-
leged snail-paced performance during the 17th Congress, calling the Philippine
Senate the “mabagal na kapulungan” (slow chamber).1 Then Senate president
Aquilino Pimentel III responded by saying the upper house is slow because it
is a “thinking chamber.”2
How does the Philippine Senate fare as an institutional check to the poli-
cy proposals made by the House of Representatives? Is the Philippine upper
house an effective veto player or a redundant chamber that only slows legisla-
tive process?
While deliberative processes are often seen as redundant and susceptible to
delay in a bicameral context, the study argues that upper chambers are institu-
tionally functional for they afford a mechanism for checking the informational
quality of legislative policies skewed by particularistic demands at the lower
house. For empirical support, this study analyzed a unique dataset consisting
of bills filed at the Philippine Senate between the 13th and the 16th Congresses,
and from which the researcher drew the event histories of bills to explain and
1 Ellson Quismorio, “Speaker Alvarez calls senators ‘slow’, Manila Bulletin, October 13, 2017.
https://news.mb.com.ph/2017/10/13/speaker-alvarez-calls-senators-slow/ (accessed March 25,
2018).
2 Camille Elemia, “Pimentel hits Alvarez: Senate not slow, it’s Congress’ ‘critical chamber’,”
Rappler, January 3, 2018. https://www.rappler.com/nation/192788-koko-pimentel-hits-alvarez
-senate-slow-bills (accessed March 25, 2018).
PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

‘ Does the upper house have the upper hand ? ’ 203
predict the number and types of laws that preoccupy the Senate’s deliberative
attention.
The rest of the paper proceeds by first providing a conceptual overview of
bicameralism as a political and institutional concept. This is followed by a sur-
vey of empirical studies testing the institutional utility of bicameralism as it
unfolds in modern democracies and laying down the range of features that
bicameralism offers as an institutional design. The paper then discusses the
powers at the disposal of the two chambers of the Philippine Congress and
how these are exercised in the legislative arena. This is followed by an over-
view of the Philippine Senate, its membership, and the policy issues that have
characterized members’ legislative preferences in recent years. Afterwards, the
theoretical foundation guiding the empirical models and the parameters for
interpreting the statistical results are laid down. The study then expounds on
the rationale behind event history as statistical approach and describes the
dataset and the operational constructs used to measure the variables of inter-
est. It then proceeds with a discussion of the results of Cox duration estimates,
focusing on the interesting insights derived from the models. The paper con-
cludes with a discussion of the implications of the main findings, and their
importance in understanding legislative dynamics in the Philippines.
2 Bicameralism as a Concept and as an Institution
By definition, bicameral legislatures are those which have two independent

and separate chambers that exercise lawmaking powers. Separation and in-
dependence, however, do not always imply equality. While there are systems
where both houses exercise symmetric prerogatives to introduce or veto pro-
posals, there are systems where the relationship is asymmetric or leaves one
chamber able to exercise limited powers (Rogers 2001). Moreover, in practice,
unicameral legislatures are more typical than two chamber lawmaking bod-
ies (Norton 2007). Drexhage (2015) estimates only 79 bicameral legislatures
as against 113 unicameral systems as of 2014, or a ratio of about two to three
single chamber political systems in the world. Interestingly, this has not always
been the case. At the turn of the 20th century, for instance, only about one in
five parliamentary states had single chambers, most of which were confined
in Central America and Eastern Europe (Massicote 2011). Over time, however,
states gradually shifted to unicameral systems such that by 1980 only 33 percent
of states had two tiered chambers. Formerly bicameral systems that shifted to
single chamber lawmaking bodies include Greece (1935), New Zealand (1951),
Denmark (1953), Sweden (1970), Portugal (1974), Turkey (1980), Iceland (1991)

204 Panao
and Peru (1993), and most recently, Norway (2009). Nevertheless, there were
also states which shifted from unicameral to bicameral systems, usually as an
aftermath of constitutional revisions subsequent to democratic restorations.
Of the latter, the Philippines is a textbook example.
Bicameralism has a history that predates democratic institutions (Uhr 2006).
Political power in Athens, for example, was shared between a council com-
prised of representatives from the ten tribes of Athens and an assembly which
involves its citizens. The Roman Republic, on the other hand, divided author-
ity between the senate and several assemblies. Interestingly, even though the
modern conception of second chambers are attached to the idea of checks
and balances, in the olden days they represent the interest of a privileged mi-
nority (Patterson and Mughan 1999). Membership in these parliaments, for
example, was on the basis of class or some narrow criteria other than by the
will of the majority (Blackwell 2003). For instance, citizens called to serve the
Athenian council are subjected to a rigid scrutiny covering all aspects of public
and private existence to determine fitness (Blackwell 2003). The examination
was not done by the public but by outgoing members of the council under the
supervision of nine archons, thus, exposing the selection process to potential
inbreeding. The senate during Rome’s republican era, on the other hand, had
members appointed by the consuls and censors and was widely identified as
“the aristocratic element in a ‘mixed’ constitution which balanced democratic,
aristocratic and monarchical elements” (Steel 2015).
Over time, however, the presence of multiple chambers allowed those from
various classes, occupation and regions – nobles, commoners, priests, mer-
chants, and farmers – to have a voice in the policy process. Initially, tradition
and history determined the procedures for crafting laws, as typified by the cor-
tes of Spain, diet of Germany, ting of Scandanavia, estate general of France, and
the parliament of Britain. By the 19th century, most of the ancient multicam-
eral parliaments of Europe were replaced with bicameral legislatures whose
members were selected by popular election but whose composition still re-
flected narrow representations. For example, membership in second chambers
such as the British House of Lords as well as those in Denmark, Sweden, and
France, is not only explicitly based on class but also on the basis of wealth.
The United States, a former British crown colony, adopted bicameralism
as an institutional design after its independence, primarily as a compromise
between those who clamored for absolute representation and those who in-
sisted that representation should be proportional to the size of the population
(Drexhage 2015). Unlike its English roots, however, the American version of
bicameralism is largely utilitarian. A second chamber is not only a check to
policymaking but an opportunity to examine the deliberative process (Shell

2001). Political thinkers such as John Stuart Mill had incessantly warned about
the “evil effect produced upon the mind of any holder of power, whether an
individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of having only themselves to
consult” (Mill 1861, 325).
For the rest of modern democracies around the world, the creation of an
additional chamber was driven by necessity. Bicameral chambers are thought
to minimize the risk of policymakers committing mistakes or catering to
the interests of certain minorities (Tullock 1959; Buchanan and Tullock 1962;
Mueller 2000). Although bicameral chambers in a number of democracies are
not often asymmetric, this redundancy can be valuable as a fail-safe mecha-
nism when the system does not operate as planned (Riker 1955; Landau 1969;
Patterson and Mughan 1999; Hammond and Miller 1987; Brennan and Hamlin
2000). It also provides an added layer of security against well-organized fac-
tions or minorities because requiring majorities across two chambers of leg-
islative decision makes hijacking government costly (Levmore 1992). Costs
may come not just in terms of formidable obstacles that accompany the in-
troduction of alternative policies after proposals have become law (Bottom,
Eavey, Miller, and Victor 2000; Tsebelis 2002) but also in the difficulty retracting
policies after they have been implemented as benefits (Hammond and Miller
1987; Miller, Hammond and Kyle 1996). Authors such as Hammond and Miller
(1987), Brennan and Hamlin (1992), and Riker (1992) argue that two chamber
systems promote stability by helping avoid problems with democratic cycles.
Bicameral chambers can also be used to set legislative agenda and bargain
for policy concessions. Political parties in parliamentary systems are known
to anticipate bicameral deadlock and are likely to form bargaining coalitions
in these systems to minimize bicameral conflict (Krehbiel 1998; Tsebelis and
Money 1997; Tsebelis 2002; Druckman, Martin, and Thies 2005; Druckman and
Thies 2002; Proksch and Slapin 2006). Fortunato, Konig and Proksch (2013),
for their part, believe that bicameral institutions afford bargaining leverage for
government agenda setters by minimizing the risk of proposals being vetoed.
3 Bicameralism in the Philippines
The Philippine Congress traces its institutional genesis in 1916, as a bicameral

body composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives (Gueraiche
2008). However, the first semblance of the Senate came in the form of an upper
house instituted during the Philippine Commission (1899–1916). The Philippine
Organic Act of 1902 constituted the Philippine Commission as an upper cham-
ber but made the newly created Philippine Assembly under the organic act as

206 Panao
a lower house. At that time, control of the Philippine Commission remained

with the Americans, who restricted membership in the body to appointed
American officials. However, the act allowed partial self-rule by Filipinos
through the Philippine Assembly.
Then neophyte politician Manuel L. Quezon was elected one of the
Philippine resident commissioners in 1909 though, according to accounts, he
was quick to learn the ropes in bicameral deliberative bodies. Story has it that
Quezon witnessed firsthand how the first Jones bill was stalled in the American
Senate, leading to its failure to pass (Official Gazette n.d.). This supposedly mo-
tivated Quezon to lobby for the passage of the second Jones Law which eventu-
ally allowed the creation of the Philippine Senate (Gueraiche 2008). The Jones
Law of 1916 mandated, among others, the apportionment of the country into
12 senatorial districts, each represented by two senators. Quezon, who repre-
sented the fifth senatorial district, became the first Senate president – a posi-
tion he held until the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935.
Although the Tydings McDuffie Law created a unicameral legislature in the
Commonwealth government, later amendments paved for a reversion to a bi-
cameral system. During the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, meanwhile,
the Japanese sponsored 1943 Constitution adopted a unicameral National
Assembly. When the Philippines finally became an independent republic in
1946, a two-chamber lawmaking body composed of the Senate and the House
of Representatives was instituted. Hence, the Philippines had a bicameral sys-
tem until Congress was literally padlocked when Marcos proclaimed martial
law in 1972.3
The 1987 Constitution reverted Congress into a bicameral body consisting
of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The House under the 1987
Constitution is composed of single member representatives elected at large
by voters in all 238 legislative districts of the Philippines, and Party List rep-
resentatives who make up twenty percent of the House’s membership. The
Constitution explicitly requires legislative bills to obtain the concurrence of
both the Senate and the House of Representatives before they can become law.
However, there are bills that the Constitution mandates to originate exclu-
sively in the House of Representatives, making it an important vector of dis-
tributive and constituency-oriented policies. Under Sec. 24 of Article VI, “All
appropriation, revenue or tariff bills, bills authorizing increase of the public
debt, bills of local application, and private bills shall originate exclusively in
3 Manuel Quezon III, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Inquirer.net, 29 November 2017,
https://opinion.inquirer.net/109078/possession-nine-tenths-law (accessed 01 August 2019).

the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with
amendments.” Bills of local application include public works and infrastruc-
ture projects that target the representatives’ constituencies.
The Senate, on the other hand, is composed of 24 members elected at large,
who serve staggered six-year terms. Every three years, 12 candidates who ob-
tained the highest overall votes are elected senators. Unlike the lower house
which is traditionally controlled by the president, members of the Senate are
not beholden to particular constituencies, hence, share the president’s stake-
holders and policy space. It is also not unusual for the Senate to find itself oc-
casionally at odds with the executive on many programs. In the Philippine
bicameral context, Linz and Valenzuela’s (1994) crisis of dual legitimacy be-
comes manifest when Filipino senators representing genuine ideological and
political choices oppose a dominant executive in the policy process. Due to
its independence, the Philippine Senate is regarded as a springboard for na-
tional leadership. In fact, many former senators have capitalized on their leg-
islative exposure to catapult their chances to the nation’s highest public office.
Erstwhile presidents Ferdinand Marcos, Joseph Estrada, and Benigno Simeon
Aquino were members of the Senate prior to their election to Malacañang.
4 Bicameralism and the Legislative Process
Since there are fewer senators than representatives in the Philippines, a single
member of the Senate can theoretically hold hostage a measure approved by
the House of Representatives. Moreover, considering that the origination effect
(see Rogers 1998; also Hiroi 2008) is stronger in the Senate, legislative measures
first proposed in the upper chamber enjoy greater propensity to be passed into
law (Panao 2014). Because bicameral chambers are co-equal, an action by one
chamber that tends to slow down the legislative process may be easily con-
strued as a simple exercise of institutional prerogative. The Philippine Senate
which has traditionally been equipped with a better informational and exper-
tise base, for instance, tends to be more discerning of measures produced by
colleagues from the lower house. This creates within bicameral chambers veto
players whose presence guarantees the enforcement of legislative bargains
under pain of retaliation if agreements are not honored (Bradbury and Crain
2002). Thus, even if the president’s allies dominate one chamber, as in the case
of the Philippine House of Representatives (Kasuya 2007; Panao 2014), theo-
retically the other chamber can exercise institutional veto (Riker 1992).
Interestingly, despite the Senate’s institutional resilience in a regime where
the dominance of the executive is a characteristic feature (Agpalo 1999),

208 Panao
empirical examination is scant on the interplay between the two branches

of the bicameral Philippine Congress and the implications of their diverging
preferences to policy outcomes. Extant studies are either preoccupied with the
lower house (Tusalem and Pe-Aguirre 2013; Panao 2019) as an empirical focus,
or to particular legislative areas and their undercurrents (Rebullida 2003;
Tigno 2004).
5 Theoretical Framework
In this paper, bicameral Philippine Congress is construed as two houses with

different policy preferences. Although legislative power is plenary and anything
can be a subject of legislation, for simplicity policy preference is dichotomized
as either particularistic or programmatic. Echoing Nathan (2019), particularis-
tic bills are those that contemplate private goods and utilized to create targeted
clientelistic arrangements with individuals (e.g., job referrals, cash vouchers,
scholarship grants, burial benefits), or which can be geographically distributed
as patronage to targeted communities (e.g., irrigation facilities, waiting sheds,
classrooms, hospital beds, local roads). Particularistic goods are beneficial but
only to an isolated set of voters because by definition they are designed to be
concentrated on select groups even though the burden of their provision is
shared by the rest of the population (Catalinac 2016).
Programmatic legislative measures, in contrast, offer benefits to the general
public regardless of their ethnic or partisan affiliation and even though they
may not necessarily have direct welfare effects to legislators’ districts or spe-
cific stakeholders (Wyatt 2013). It is possible that the language of policies may
specify otherwise programmatic policies to be oriented toward a certain class
of citizens who are marginalized or require special attention, as long as the
targeting of the population to be benefitted is not arbitrary or whimsical, and
rationally based on some legitimate public purpose. Of the latter, Boggs (1988)
cites as examples social welfare legislations that target school-age children,
families falling below the poverty level, and farmers.
The formulation of programmatic or policy-salient legislation is traditional-
ly attributed to the Philippine Senate although the lower house is not preclud-
ed from initiating similar policies (Brillo 2011; Kawanaka 2010). On the other
hand, by express constitutional provision, revenue and appropriation bills as
well as private bills and bills of local application must be initiated at the House
even though the Senate may introduce amendments or submit counterpart
versions (Tolentino v. Sec. of Finance, G.R. No. 115455, October 30, 1995).

While the prerogative to “originate” particularistic bills appears to give the

lower house an agenda-setting advantage, this paper contends that this insti-
tutional arrangement actually equips the Senate with a particular bargaining
leverage. There is little incentive for the upper house to prioritize particular-
istic measures since programmatic legislations are by default already for the
benefit of the general public. Members of the lower house, on the other hand,
cannot choose to be indifferent to programmatic legislative measures as their
constituencies also stand to benefit from the putative public goods. Moreover,
ambitious members of the House who are eyeing higher elective positions
must cater to the median voter’s policy preference to gain mass public appeal.
Bargaining over particularistic policies is here simplified to occur in two
stages. Neither house in the Philippine Congress must wait for the other to fin-
ish deliberations before members can make proposals, but appropriation and
local bills must be initiated at the lower house as a procedural requirement.
Thus, in the first stage a member of the lower house C proposes a particu-
laristic measure xi that allocates a peso amount of share of the budget, that
is, xi = (x1, x2, x3, x4…. xn), such that Σ n xij ≤ 1. Because a proposal competes
for the budget available to everyone else, the bill’s proponent negotiates with
colleagues for support and, depending on coalitional arrangements, may incur
delay in the process.
The deferral of bills due to intracameral lobbying and bargaining is denoted
as ti. Individual legislators prefer to receive a larger share of the budget in favor
of their constituencies with minimal delay, such that Ci = axi – bti. An indi-
vidual legislator’s preference, however, can be constrained by the preference
of the majority in the lower house, denoted by Ck. Given that budget is limited,
the majority has to balance distributive allocation among individual members
and proposes an amendment xk such that xk < xi. Such bargaining and amend-
ment prolong legislative process, such that Ck = axk – bti. Figure 1 presents a
graphical account of bargaining at this stage. The vertical axis corresponds to
the peso allocation for a distributive policy proposal by a representative. The
horizontal axis, on the other hand, represents the delay due to bargaining and
lobbying with other representatives.
The second stage is when measures proposing district-targeted programs
are deliberated in the Senate. The Philippine Senate is traditionally regarded as
more independent and autonomous than the House. Instead of adopting trans-
mitted drafts, senators tend to file their own version of bills even while these
are being deliberated at the House of Representatives. In fact, major legislation
is typically introduced with accompanying identical bills in the other chamber
to encourage concurrent attention to the subject of legislation. Companion

210 Panao
xi
Ci
xk Ck
ti tk
figure 1 Intracameral bargaining and the duration of the legislative process
bills are also introduced to highlight the urgency of an issue or court broad
support for the measure. Legislative deliberation at the Senate serves not only
as a check to an executive-dominated House but an opportunity to negotiate
with the lower house for legislative concessions.
Although constituency-targeted legislative earmarks are not among the
Senate’s legislative domains, it does not mean these types of bills are approved
automatically. The Senate can always prioritize the deliberation of policy-
salient legislation or reallocate appropriations from constituency targeted
measures in favor of programmatic legislative measures. Figure 2 shows infor-
mally that the inclination of the median senator toward programmatic legis-
lations constrains the allocation to a House member’s constituency-targeted
proposal to xj, consistent with the view of second chambers as an institutional
check on legislative policy. The Senate’s preference is represented by Cj, and
slants upward since any deliberation to reallocate previous House earmarks
from xi to xj < xi may prolong the deliberative process due to lobbying, amend-
ments, or even lack of support. In the second stage, bicameral check constrains
the equilibrium preference-delay equation from ek to ej. Although constitu-
ents incur no cost in demanding representation, legislators must weigh avail-
able resources to respond to such demand (Griffin and Flavin 2011). If a policy

xi
Ci
xk Ck Cj
Xj
T
ei ek ej
ti tk
figure 2 Bicameral bargaining and the duration of the legislative process
issue that a bill represents is salient, then it enjoys legislative attention and
becomes law faster. The deliberative process towards the passage of a measure
progresses when legislators move a policy closer to their preferred policy, say,
by proposing amendments (Hall and Deardorff 2006). On the other hand, is-
sues that are not so important or are not priority can be shelved or delayed by
the deliberating body. Hence, how long a bill is allowed to undergo the legisla-
tive process is a strategic device at the disposal of certain actors or coalitions.
Influential legislators or ruling parties with scarce majorities may resort to ac-
tions that delay or speed up the policy process to create opportunities to shape
the legislative agenda (Hughes 2015; Stiansen 2019).
Following Parameswaran (2018), the paper’s empirical focus is limited to
particularistic policies as it is more tractable to analyze bicameral constraints
within a distributive policy space. Although the approach has its limitations,
examining distributional effects under bicameralism by looking at the ear-
marks for district targeted public goods is well-known in the literature (e.g.,
Lee 2004; Hauk and Wacziarg 2007; Knight 2008; Lazarus and Steigerwalt
2009). Moreover, as money outcomes are additive, the analysis of particularis-
tic policy space allows for a simple specification of legislator preferences and
priorities across chambers.

212 Panao
6 Hypotheses
Given that particularistic policies are distant from the median senator’s pol-
icy position, it is hypothesized that constituency targeted legislative propos-
als, particularly, those covering health, education, and public works, would
have a lower propensity of being passed into law, relative to other measures.
Consequently, since the Senate can shift deliberative attention or reallocate
appropriations from constituency targeted proposals, it is also expected that
bills encompassing programmatic legislations will have a higher propensity to
be enacted into law.
Political and institutional variables which are known in the literature
to reduce the propensity of bills to become law are also accounted for in the
analysis. For instance, studies perennially point to the weakness of the party
system in the Philippines, which are either largely ethnolinguistic group af-
filiations (Montinola 1999) or “convenient, temporary alliances by elites” to
secure electoral victory (Rivera 2011, 74). In legislative bodies, meanwhile,
members of the majority are known to possess advantages beyond the powers
conferred upon committee and party leadership. The literature on legislative
politics makes extensive references to the power of the majority as an agen-
da setter (Bach and Smith 1988; Cox 2001; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Binder
1997; Oleszek 1996). Membership in the majority is here construed as an in-
stitutional “advantage” that gives members leverage over other members, re-
gardless of the volatility of the party system and the fact that the composition
of such coalitions can change with each election. We operationalize this as
a categorical variable which denotes whether a senator is a member of the
Senate majority. In the context of the Philippine Senate, the majority refers to
a loose coalition comprised of members who supported the chamber leader-
ship. Unlike in the House of Representatives, it is not unusual for senators to
become Senate presidents even if they do not belong to the chief executive’s
political party. Manuel Villar (13th and 14th Congress) and Juan Ponce Enrile
(2004–2006), for instance, share no political affiliation with the president, at
least on paper. Villar was from the Nacionalista Party while Enrile was with the
United Nationalists Alliance (UNA) during their stints at the helm of the upper
chamber.
In lieu of parties, it is also widely assumed that legislators in the Philippines
tie their political fate to the Philippine executive. Hence, we also control for
the effect of membership in the president’s political party, which we expect to
facilitate lawmaking in the Senate.
We also account for the effect of experience, which is known to allow mem-
bers access to money and media (Mayhew 2005; Epstein, Brady, Kawato, and

O’Halloran 1997), acts as voting cue when the party system has become weak
(Ferejohn 1977; Wolfinger and Heifet, 1965), and allows legislators to channel
programs to their constituencies (Fiorina 1977; Mayhew 2005). We construe
experience two ways. The first follows literature and refers to the number of
terms the incumbent has held office (Kousser 2005; Kousser 2006; Dal Bo and
Rossi 2008). In the Philippines, the constitution restricts senators to no more
than two consecutive terms. But as with other elective positions, this provision
does not bar running for the same office after the lapse of the interim. We also
use the actual number of years the incumbent senator has held a legislative
office (e.g., a member of the House or the Senate). We expect the propensity of
approval to be greater for bills filed by more experienced senators.
We also recognize that legislators’ decisions are influenced by the electoral
cycles that structure their political lives (Evans 1991; Mayhew 1991). For in-
stance, elections can grab the time and resources of legislators away from their
regular task of crafting measures (Hiroi 2008), or make politicians engage in
pandering (Maskin and Tirole 2004) and credit claiming (Kayser 2005). Thus,
we expect that bills filed during the year before elections will have greater pro-
pensity to be passed into law.
Finally, we control for the effect of socioeconomic conditions. Unemploy
ment, recession, and periodic bouts of inflation impact not only the policy
direction of governments but the behavior of policy actors. High and volatile
inflation is widely regarded by economists as having a range of economic and
social costs not just to the economy but to government. During periods of
steep or continuous upward inflationary movements, governments tend to be
more discrete in spending as a matter of fiscal policy. Hence, we expect high
inflation to decrease the propensity of bills for bicameral approval.
7 Data and Method
Testing how the Philippine Senate fares as a mechanism of policy balance re-
lies on a unique dataset consisting of a total of 10,885 bills proposed, deliber-
ated and approved at the upper chamber from the 13th to the 16th Congresses.
The dataset contains event records such as dates when the bills were filed,
when they were signed or lapsed into law, as well as their status if they did not
become law when Congress adjourned. The dataset also contains information
on the personal characteristics of the bills’ main proponents. The bills were as-
sociated with the partisan alignment, experience, gender, and term of office of
their principal authors in the Senate. Unfortunately, the data does not contain
information on whether executive veto was exercised for some of these bills, as

214 Panao
our empirical focus was limited to the deliberation of distributive measures in

the Senate. While it would indeed be interesting to determine what motivates
the president to veto measures passed by Congress, it is beyond the scope of
this paper.
Bills are then categorized into policy areas according to the primary or sec-
ondary committees that studied these proposals. For instance, bills submit-
ted to the Senate committee on justice and human rights were categorized as
having justice and human rights as policy area. Admittedly, this categorization
is simple and does not address the possible policy overlap among legislative
measures. However, bias has been minimized by basing the categories on the
specialized committees that studied them, instead of allowing individual cod-
ers to decide subjectively the salience of policy proposals.
Table 1 summarizes the areas of legislation in terms of frequency. The top
ten areas of legislation are highlighted for emphasis. By frequency, it can
be seen that the top two policy areas, health and education, coincide with
those at the House of Representatives, as shown in Table 2. At the House of
Representatives, legislative earmarks for basic education, public works, and
health are the top three priority concerns. By constitutional fiat, local laws can
only be initiated at the House of Representatives. As ultimately the passage
of laws requires bicameral concurrence regardless of their origin, it can be
assumed that these are the policy areas which the House of Representatives
consider as priority. The Senate deliberates what the House submits and it is
likely most of the bills transmitted fall under these categories. Since these bills
are likely to have counterpart versions at the Senate, they are also expected to
comprise the bulk of Senate measures.
Legislative attention to particularistic measures is operationalized as the
propensity of a bill to pass into law in the Senate. We model this as a Cox dura-
tion model where the hazard rate is given as:
hi(t) = h0(t)exp(β´ x) (1)
in which, h0(t) is the baseline hazard function and (β´ x) are the covariates and
regression parameters. Specifically, we model legislative attention as the time
it takes for the legislative process from the filing of the bill until its approval
in the upper chamber. This is expressed as a Cox hazard function of the form:
hi(t) = h0(t)exp[Β 1 PARTICULARISTIC POLICY AREAS +

Β 2 OTHER POLICY AREAS + Β 3 INSTITUTIONAL
CONTROLS + Β 4 SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS](2)

Table 1 Legislative proposals by policy area at the Philippine Senate, 13th to 16th Congress
Policy area Frequency Percent Cum. Freq
Education, Arts and Culture 1,251 11.49 11.49

Health and Demography 1,246 11.45 22.94
Justice and Human Rights 1,043 9.58 32.52
Labor and Hrd 621 5.71 38.23
Civil Service and Government 567 5.21 43.44
Environment and Natural Resources 547 5.03 48.47
Public Services 508 4.67 53.14
Trade and Commerce 469 4.31 57.45
Local Government 462 4.24 61.69
Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Laws 440 4.04 65.73
Women, Children, Youth, and Family 416 3.82 69.55
Public Order and Dangerous Drugs 352 3.23 72.78
Agriculture and Food 335 3.08 75.86
Government Corporations and Public Enterprises 314 2.88 78.74
Ways and Means 295 2.71 81.45
Public Information and Mass Media 261 2.4 83.85
National Defense and Security 247 2.27 86.12
Banks and Financial Institutions 199 1.83 87.95
Public Works 151 1.39 89.34
Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development 145 1.33 90.67
Science and Technology 131 1.2 91.87
Finance 129 1.19 93.06
Energy 110 1.01 94.07
Rules 105 0.96 95.03
Urban Planning, Housing and Resettlement 99 0.91 95.94
Electoral Reforms and Peoples Participation 93 0.85 96.79
Games, Amusement and Sports 89 0.82 97.61
Economic Affairs 57 0.52 98.13
Cultural Communities 43 0.4 98.53
Foreign Relations 40 0.37 98.9
Agrarian Reform 38 0.35 99.25
Cooperatives 31 0.28 99.53
Tourism 25 0.23 99.76
Accounts 9 0.08 99.84
Climate Change 9 0.08 99.92
Peace, Unification and Reconciliation 8 0.07 99.99
Total 10,885 100
Source: Senate of the Philippines

216 Panao
Table 2 Areas of particularistic policies in the House of Representatives, 8th to

16th Congress
Policy areas 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th Total
Basic Education and Culture 259 237 355 252 346 402 538 246 76 2,711
Public Works and Highways 16 27 110 315 264 291 335 145 29 1,532
Health 304 53 35 403 4 2 12 30 31 874
Oversight (e.g., Renaming Roads, 29 42 19 32 26 37 49 57 58 349
declaring Holidays)
Local Government 45 8 16 42 21 30 21 32 42 257
Natural Resources 2 5 7 10 22 43 53 47 46 235
Justice 1 0 19 3 18 19 21 78 26 185
Higher and Technical Education 0 0 0 31 38 33 42 21 17 182
Tourism 4 29 25 19 10 8 13 11 25 144
Corporations and Franchises 12 28 41 13 9 6 5 3 1 118
Agriculture and Fisheries 1 0 0 1 0 11 15 40 38 106
Transportation 0 0 2 1 2 2 18 33 22 80
Economic Affairs 0 2 4 1 6 9 7 0 1 30
Youth and Children 2 0 0 0 0 3 5 8 5 23
Government Enterprises 1 2 1 4 3 0 1 0 1 13
National Cultural Communities 1 1 2 1 1 0 0 0 3 9
Civil, Political and Human Rights 4 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 8
Labor and Employment 1 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 6
Dangerous Drugs 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 5
Housing and Urban Development 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 1 5
Public Order and Safety 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 2 0 5
Science and Technology 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 3
Energy 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2
National Defense and Security 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2
Veteran’s Affairs 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2
Appropriations 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Total 685 439 641 1,132 773 897 1,136 761 423 6,887

The variable time (t) refers to a fraction of a year from the date the bill was
filed until the date of its passage into law.4 If a bill survives – remains pending
when Congress adjourns – the date is reckoned at the date of the closing of
the congress. The analytical approach, in other words, takes into account
both the duration of the deliberative process and the propensity of a bill to
be approved. Admittedly, however, time as an approximation of the dynamics
of Senate deliberation has its shortcomings. This model presupposes that the
time it takes by which bills are approved into law in the Philippine Senate is
a function of the above specified political, institutional, and socioeconomic
factors, without elaborating on how concessions were negotiated or the details
of important turning points. This is a limitation which the study acknowledges
but which we hope to address in future extensions.
Particularistic policy areas refer to the top three most frequent subject of
legislation in the lower house, particularly, bills on health, education, and pub-
lic works.
Senate policy areas, on the other hand, cover bills of national significance
that are at the top of deliberative attention in the Senate, and which compete
with particularistic bills for policy space.
Institutional controls, as explained earlier, includes membership in the
Senate majority, partisan alignment with the president, legislative experience,
and election. Inflation rate, on the other hand, is used to proxy socioeconomic
conditions.
8 Results
Table 3 gives a summary of the variables of interest. The variables are mostly
categorical except for total legislative experience and inflation rate which are
both continuous variables. Education, health, and justice appear to be the
three most frequent subjects of legislative proposals. Education and health,
along with public works, typically serve as vectors of particularistic or con-
stituency oriented programs in the House of Representatives. Public works,
however, do not appear to be as pressing for senators who do not have fixed
constituencies and, in fact, comprise barely two percent of their deliberative
preoccupation. On the other hand, legislative measures that deal with improv-
ing the delivery of justice or protecting human rights appear to be those often
4 We take the date of the bill’s passage into law, if it is signed or have lapsed into law before the
closing of Congress.

218 Panao
prioritized at the upper house. On average, for instance, it takes only about two
years for a proposal creating legal remedies to hurdle the Senate.
Interestingly, out of 10,885 bills analyzed from the 13th to the 16th Congresses,
only about 3 percent (285 bills) seemed to have made it into law, suggesting
that bills in the Senate undergo greater deliberative scrutiny. In fact, the rate of
bills passed during the periods covered do not go higher than 5 percent – 1.16
percent during the 13th Congress, 2.35 percent during the 14th, 4.05 percent
during the 15th, and 2.72 percent during the 16th Congress. One in four of these
285 bills enacted into law are noticeably programmatic legislations.
Cox regression models were estimated to test the propensity of particular-
istic measures to be passed into law, under certain institutional, political, and
socioeconomic conditions. The results are summarized in Table 4. Model 1 es-
timates a Cox proportional hazard model containing the most frequent policy
preoccupation in the Senate and the three most frequent areas of legislation
in the House of Representatives – our crude proxy of the lower house’s policy
preferences. Model 2 estimates a fully specified model testing for propensity
while controlling for political variables specific to bill proponents.
The estimate for Model 1 suggests that education-related proposals have
about 38 percent lower propensity to become law, all else constant. For in-
stance, bills providing for the creation of the Osmena Agro-Industrial High
School in Marabut Samar (SB8027), the Buga National High School in Albay
(SB9582), and the Central Cotabato State University (SB839), had never gone
past committee deliberation when the 13th Congress adjourned in 2004.
Measures proposing projects on public works, on the other hand, seem to
take longer, as they are about 78 percent less inclined to be passed into law.
Bills on public works include versions providing for the conversion of the
stretch from Bongao junction to the Sumandagit provincial road in Tawi-Tawi
into a national road (SB2911), and that seeking the conversion of all roads lead-
ing to tourist destinations and ports as national roads (SB437).
Meanwhile, health-related proposed measures are about 35 percent less
likely to become law, a result that is significant at the 90 percent confidence
level (p-value = 0.064). These health-related measures include versions of bills
providing for the creation of the Samar Island Medical Center (SB2826), the
Mariveles District Hospital in Bataan (SB2824), and the upgrade of the Severo
Verallo Medical District Hospital in Cebu (SB2825).
Model 1 is a restricted model whose specification is limited to categorizing
measures into policy types. However, the results are already consistent with
the hypothesis that particularistic measures have a lower propensity to be ap-
proved into law in the Senate.

Table 3 Descriptive summary of variables
By policy areas No. of obs. Mean t Std. Dev. Min t Max t
education 1,241 2.423 0.743 0.033 3.294

health 1,233 2.335 0.801 0.268 3.370
public works 652 2.377 0.772 0.093 2.921
labor 619 2.401 0.736 0.271 2.921
civil service 563 2.396 0.780 0.036 2.921
environment 546 2.325 0.835 0.145 3.370
trade and commerce 457 2.308 0.813 0.192 2.921
local government 462 2.412 0.731 0.038 2.921
justice 1,038 2.121 0.819 0.008 3.294
constitutional revision 438 2.467 0.753 0.014 3.294
By type of principal author
Copartisan of the president 914 2.051 0.916 0.033 2.971
Belongs to Senate majority 7,570 2.305 0.824 0.003 3.370
Serving second term 5,340 2.473 0.729 0.033 3.370
Continuous variables No. of obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Author’s total legislative 10,885 8.837 5.029 0 26 yrs
experience
Inflation rate during month filed 10,885 0.475 0.422 –0.440% 1.627%
Cox proportional hazard models do not make any conjecture about the shape
of the hazard distribution so we tested if our specifications violated the as-
sumption of proportionality. Table 5 reports the Schoenfeld residuals for
each variable. Five variables appear to violate the proportionality assumption
(health, justice and human rights, membership in the senate majority, second
term, and legislative experience) and were interacted with the natural log of
time. These are variables whose effects on legislative attention vary over time.
Model 2 replicates the estimates with time interactions, including those
pertaining to political and institutional variables. The time-varying effect of
health as a policy issue suggests that even though health related measures are
about 35 percent less likely to become law when they were filed, the effect
changes sign and eventually the propensity increases by more than twice (2.21)
for each year that passes. The extent by which justice and human rights as

220 Panao
policy areas grab deliberative attention in the Senate also varies over time. In
their case, however, the change magnifies the urgency of these types of propos-
als, increasing their propensity to become law by almost five times (4.96) each
year (Model 2). Policies governing the civil service and government also enjoy
substantial deliberative attention at the upper house and are 88 percent more
likely to become law than other measures. The findings are consistent with
the theoretical conjecture on a Senate shifting deliberative attention and real-
locating appropriations from constituency-targeted policies to programmatic
policies.
However, the findings do not only provide support for the hypothesis that
programmatic policies have greater propensity to be approved into law than
particularistic measures, they also give a nuanced account of salient poli-
cies that impel the Senate to action. Policies affecting the environment, for
instance, are actually 54 percent less likely to be passed into legislation even if
they have apparent collective implications. While environmental protection is
imperative, perhaps the upper chamber does not consider it to be as pressing
as policies seeking judicial remedies and safeguarding human rights. In the
same vein, local government legislations are conspicuously 67 percent at risk
of not getting legislative approval, despite their wider institutional repercus-
sions. Senate measures related to local government are regarded perhaps as
local concerns, hence, distant from the median senator’s legislative preference.
Interestingly, there seem to be no evidence of the president’s partisan al-
lies exercising coalitional veto with respect to the proposals deliberated in the
Philippine Senate. Instead, a loose coalition consisting of supporters of the
Senate president (the Senate’s purported majority) appears to be more suc-
cessful in channeling attention towards their legislative proposals. Bills au-
thored by members of the so-called Senate majority are about 49 percent more
likely to be enacted into law, and such propensity increases astoundingly to
85 percent per year. As far as political clout, in other words, it seems to be
advantageous for a senator to be in the majority.
Senators have no particular constituency but it does not mean they are
impervious to electoral cycles. Members of the House of Representatives are
known to time their legislative activities to coincide with elections in order
to claim credit or to make themselves visible to prospective voters. Yet, sena-
tors themselves appear to maximize the timing of their legislative output. In
fact, measures filed the year prior to the election are 13 times more likely to be
passed into legislation, suggesting election’s very strong hastening effect on the
legislative process.

Table 4 Cox hazard model of legislative policymaking in the Philippine Senate
(Model 1) (Model 2)
_t _t
Main
House top 3 areas of legislation
Education –0.478 (0.235)* –0.478 (0.238)*
Health –0.436 (0.255)† –0.481 (0.260)†
Public works –1.527 (0.510)** –1.535 (0.510)**
Priority areas in the Senate
Civil service and government 0.454 (0.224)* 0.633 (0.227)**
Labor –0.307 (0.295) –0.257 (0.295)
Environment and natural resources –0.772 (0.391)* –0.775 (0.394)*
Trade and commerce –0.0559 (0.305) –0.0648 (0.308)
Local government –1.195 (0.510)* –1.107 (0.516)*
Justice and human rights 1.089 (0.162)*** 0.867 (0.166)***
Constitutional amendments and law revision –0.737 (0.421) –0.666 (0.419)
Other institutional and political variables
Membership in the Senate majority 0.403 (0.189)*
Membership in the President’s political party –0.259 (0.221)
Electoral proximity 2.571 (0.182)***
Senator is serving second term –1.061 (0.166)***
Total years of legislative experience 0.0645 (0.0167)***
Socioeconomic conditions
Inflation rate (month) –0.939 (0.196)***
Time varying covariates

Health x time 0.794 (0.388)* 0.891 (0.407)*
Justice and human rights x time 1.553 (0.340)*** 1.602 (0.358)***
Membership in the Senate majority x time 0.616 (0.240)*
Senator is service second term x time –0.588 (0.219)**
Total legislative experience x time 0.0445 (0.0214)*
N 10820 10820
AIC 5083.0 4718.5
BIC 5170.4 4871.6
Standard errors in parentheses

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Time varying covariates are interacted with the natural log of time

222 Panao
Table 5 Schoenfeld residual test
Time: Log(t)
variable rho chi2 df Prob>chi2
education –0.00571 0.01 1 0.9228

health 0.1171 4.03 1 0.0446
public works –0.02006 0.11 1 0.7348
justice and human rights 0.29392 24.05 1 0.0000
civil service and government –0.03945 0.45 1 0.5012
labor 0.02334 0.16 1 0.6917
environment 0.00837 0.02 1 0.8877
trade 0.00137 0 1 0.9814
local government –0.00107 0 1 0.9855
constitutional revision –0.08755 2.2 1 0.1382
membership in the majority 0.16651 8.25 1 0.0041
membership in the president’s party –0.01766 0.09 1 0.7594
total legislative experience –0.13497 6.59 1 0.0102
second term 0.10562 3.79 1 0.0515
electoral proximity 0.0261 0.21 1 0.6442
inflation rate 0.0345 0.42 1 0.5169
global test 67.65 16 0
More experienced legislators appear to be slightly more capable of courting

support for their legislative proposals in the upper house than younger mem-
bers. But senators on their second term and are not up for reelection seem to
become either less zealous, less influential, or less vague about their real leg-
islative preferences. The bills they propose show a 66 percent less propensity
to become law.
The Cox estimates suggest a significant negative relationship between wors-
ening socioeconomic condition and lawmaking. The result fits squarely with
the assumption raised about legislature’s exercise of fiscal restraint during
times of economic difficulties. In the Philippines, as earlier shown, the most
common areas of legislation are those that program the allocation of public
spending or appropriation. The results imply that during times of economic
hardships, legislators tend to be more circumspect in their deliberation of bills
and prudently weigh the benefits and the cost of public policy.

8 Conclusion
How does the Philippine Senate fare as an institutional check to the policy pro-
posals made by the House of Representatives? Despite the notion that delib-
erative processes are redundant and susceptible to delay in a bicameral setting,
this study finds that in the Philippines, the Senate affords a mechanism for
checking the informational quality of legislative policies skewed by particular-
istic demands at the lower house. District representatives are known to legis-
late measures providing particularistic legislation or intended to benefit their
narrow constituencies to strengthen reelection prospects. However, erstwhile
bills railroaded or surreptitiously passed in the House are subjected to greater
scrutiny in deliberations undertaken in the Senate. Hence, although bicameral
scrutiny and the ensuing delay constrain the legislative process, it also paves
for more salient policies that in the long run may be more beneficial to the
interest of the Filipino public. The findings provide evidence of the Senate’s
preponderance to shift legislative attention from particularistic to substantive
legislation in its deliberations. In particular, we find that policy proposals per-
taining to education, health and public works – the most frequent areas of
legislative proposals at the lower house – are less likely to be passed into law in
the Senate even though they comprise a considerable bulk of legislative pro-
posals in both chambers of Philippine Congress.
The findings highlight how second chambers in modern democracies can
minimize the risk of rushing into legislative action and affording the whole
process a crucial second look. Since particularistic goods can buy votes, when
left alone lower house legislators would simply engage in a divide-the-money
policy and drive legislative priority towards their respective distributive allo-
cations. During the first two years of the 17th Congress, for instance, the lower
house already filed some 5,800 measures that have undergone committee re-
views. Most of these bills are of local significance – the renaming of govern-
ment infrastructure and highways, the declaration of a local holiday, and other
constituency related concerns.
Be that as it may, the findings need to be qualified by certain limitations.
For instance, event history in the study has been restricted to the duration of a
congress even though a bill may have had origins that stretch earlier. Although
subsequent studies might want to reckon from the date the very first version of
a bill was filed, it may be difficult to trace which particular version of a proposal
actually became law if there are multiple versions that have been consolidated.
Future extensions may also need to come up with a more salient distinction
between programmatic and particularistic policies beyond a categorization
based on deliberating committees.

224 Panao
Ultimately, it is a matter of appreciating how bicameral legislative processes

are complementary. As constituents, we naturally want our legislators to bring
pork and other district-oriented bills and it is fine to root for representatives
who can bring the most projects to the district. As citizens, however, we must
also be conscious of larger public policies whose benefits trickle to everyone
regardless of loyalty or location.
Acknowledgments
This project received generous support from the University of the Philippines
Diliman’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development through
PhD Incentive Award No. 151506. The author also acknowledges the comments
of two anonymous reviewers but take responsibility for errors and omissions.
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Does The Upper House Have The Upper Hand

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PHILIPPINE POLITICAL

SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

‘Does the upper house have the upper hand?’

Rogelio Alicor Panao*

Received 11 July 2019; accepted 15 November 2019

bicameralism – Congress – legislative policymaking – legislative delay – Philippine

* The author is a member of the Philippine Bar.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/2165025X-12340014

Although bicameralism has piqued the interest of scholars in recent years,

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

2 Bicameralism as a Concept and as an Institution

By definition, bicameral legislatures are those which have two independent

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

3 Bicameralism in the Philippines

The Philippine Congress traces its institutional genesis in 1916, as a bicameral

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

a lower house. At that time, control of the Philippine Commission remained

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

4 Bicameralism and the Legislative Process

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

empirical examination is scant on the interplay between the two branches

In this paper, bicameral Philippine Congress is construed as two houses with

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

While the prerogative to “originate” particularistic bills appears to give the

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

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PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

7 Data and Method

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our empirical focus was limited to the deliberation of distributive measures in

hi(t) = h0(t)exp(β´ x) (1)

hi(t) = h0(t)exp[Β 1 PARTICULARISTIC POLICY AREAS +

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

Policy area Frequency Percent Cum. Freq

Education, Arts and Culture 1,251 11.49 11.49

Source: Senate of the Philippines

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Table 2 Areas of particularistic policies in the House of Representatives, 8th to

Source: Senate of the Philippines

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Table 3 Descriptive summary of variables

By policy areas No. of obs. Mean t Std. Dev. Min t Max t

education 1,241 2.423 0.743 0.033 3.294

Continuous variables No. of obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Source: Senate of the Philippines

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

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Table 4 Cox hazard model of legislative policymaking in the Philippine Senate

Time varying covariates

Standard errors in parentheses

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

Table 5 Schoenfeld residual test

education –0.00571 0.01 1 0.9228

global test 67.65 16 0

More experienced legislators appear to be slightly more capable of courting

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL 40 (2019) 201–229

Ultimately, it is a matter of appreciating how bicameral legislative processes

hi(t) = h0(t)exp(β´ x) (1)