54 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition indicators based on the HDI rankings of provinces in 2006, this study also shows that incumbent reelectionist governors win not only in high HDI provinces but also in the worst provinces. For instance, in the 2007 gubernatorial elections, eight out of the ten incumbent governors in the ten top-ranked provinces by HDI won their reelection bids (one ran for Congress). These top ten provinces were Benguet, Rizal, Cavite, Bataan, Laguna, Pampanga, Ilocos Norte, Batanes, Nueva Vizcaya, and La Union. But as in the 2004 study by Virola et al., eight out of the 10 incumbent governors also won reelection in the worst 10 provinces by HDI ranking (Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Maguindanao, Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Masbate, Sarangani, Eastern Samar, Zamboanga del Norte and Romblon). The study of electoral outcomes between 1987 and 2010 show little evidence that elections have served as accountability mechanisms either from a “mandate” or “sanctions” point of view. A mandate system of accountability assumes that citizens can use elections to select “good policies or policy-bearing politicians”. On the other hand, a “sanctions” view means that voters use elections “to hold governments responsible for the results of their past actions”. However, the low turnover rates for representatives and governors across all provinces, regardless of socio-economic conditions, suggest that neither of these accountability mechanisms seems to work. Moreover, the ability of incumbent political families to win even in the provinces with the worst governance and socio-economic outcomes stress the fact that there are deepseated structural problems (such as poverty and lack of education) and backward political-institutional practices (such as patronage networks, unregulated use of violence and coercion, and electoral manipulation) that systematically undermine the potential of elections to serve as accountability mechanisms. One obvious effect of this overwhelming clan dominance over our governance system has been a highly elitist and narrow pool of leadership recruitment, disabling potentially more progressive and transformative leaders from winning elective positions. Furthermore, continuing clan dominance has severely weakened public accountability mechanisms especially in the context of other institutional inrmities such as the weakness of “horizontal accountability” mechanisms, the limitations of civil society organizations and the process of decentralization and the absence of well-institutionalized political parties. Political Parties and Democratization Electoral practices in normally functioning democratic systems are usually complemented by a party system that enhance the accountability process and help in more effective governance. As Hagopian points out, “political parties are the most important agents of political representation in modern democracies” (2007: 582). The comparative literature on elections and parties, for instance in Latin America, show that institutionalized party systems facilitate effective governance by providing structure to democratic politics in