The Curious Cases of Philippine Civil Society and Decentralization 171 More important than the staffing pattern of LGUs, development planning at the local government level has not generated the involvement of private sector and civil society groups as mandated by the LGC. As TAF's RFA states: The expectation that the Local Development Council would serve as avenues for citizen participation has largely been unmet with the Council barely meeting the required number of sessions provided in the Code, although other specialized bodies like Local School Boards and Local Health Boards have continued to be more functional. Earlier assessments of the participation of CSOs in local governments point to a common denominator that restricts such participation—the disposition of local officials (Panadero 2006) (Capuno 2005). Aside from not being too receptive to the participation of CSOs in development planning, in particular, and to development planning itself, in general, we go back to examine how local chief executives have also contributed to the flypaper effect. As the BLGF (2008) study noted: Expenditure growth is greatly influenced by the behavior of local bureaucrats. In the case of the Philippines, this can be intensified with the power of local chief executives in the budgeting process. Account manipulations can be a common activity to accommodate the preferences of local chief executives. In this light, the bureaucratic model of the flypaper effect is applicable in understanding the unexplained growth of provincial spending. Although provinces may lack financial resources based on a revenue and expenditure mismatch, local officials could still influence the priority programs and projects significantly using the modest available resources.24 Systemic constraints As a political economic reading of the backdrop to decentralization, the World Bank-Asian Development Bank (2005) document on fiscal decentralization noted: The institutional environment at the sub-national level mirrors that at the national level…local governments display a subjugation of the public administration to the dominant political power which—as at the national level—has led to…a complex and enduring web of connections between political executives, civil servants, and business interests…It is important not to underestimate such obstacles in the quest for improvements…The workings of intergovernmental (fiscal, administrative, and political) relations are particularly vulnerable to the instability induced by an excessively politicized system of rewards and allocations, and by uneven institutional strength and resourcefulness among national executive, congressional, provincial, and city or municipal actors.