within a single province which would allow for a detailed examination of the nature and sources of variation in service delivery. This allows for fixing macro-level economic, social, and institutional characteristics than can confound the interpretation of any correlation between political characteristics and service delivery.

Two villages, or barangays as they are called in the Philippines, were selected within each municipality on the basis of population and poverty, to ensure representation of the poorer households in the municipality (who are the primary recipients of the key public services provided by the municipality, especially in health). Very small barangays were excluded from potential selection to avoid the likelihood of greater political control over household responses to the survey in closely linked small settlements. In the first stage, the poorest half was selected from among all barangays in the municipality on the basis of small area poverty estimates.<sup>16</sup> Second, the largest 2 barangays (in terms of rank of population) was selected from among this poorest half.

Households with young children were targeted by the survey to measure access to one of the key public services that municipalities in the Philippines are charged with—maternal and child health programs. From each of the barangays, a population list was obtained by the survey team leaders of all households having at least one young child (under 6 years of age).<sup>17</sup> From this list, the survey leaders made a random selection of 20 households in each village. Within each household, the survey targeted the mother of the young child (or children) as the key respondent. All the respondents were women, with the average age in the sample being 31 years. Thus, the total household sample for this study is 1200, drawn from a total of 60 villages across 30 municipalities within the same province.

_Political access to a pro-poor policy instrument_ The Local Government Code of 1991 made municipal governments critical agents in the delivery of health programs such as immunization, reproductive and child health, and nutrition. Municipalities hire and manage nurses, midwives, and community or village health workers, and provide the facilities and equipment for the frontline delivery of basic public health programs. Management of these low-level health personnel is a domain of service delivery that is the exclusive responsibility of municipal governments. Program inputs, such as vaccines, medicines, and nutritional supplements, are typically procured by national health agencies and distributed to municipalities. Higher tier politicians can, therefore, play a role in providing greater health inputs to residents in a municipality; however, the distribution of these inputs is administered through the lower-level health workers that are exclusively managed by municipal governments. Furthermore, the basic nutrition supplements for mothers and young children, that are a typical part of the primary health services provided by municipalities, are probably affordable within

> 16 However, two municipalities are treated slightly differently-- Divilacan and Benito Soliven. In both, following this procedure of selecting the poorest half resulted in the selection of very small barangays, with population below 300 for Divilacan and population much below the average of Benito Soliven. For these municipalities, the largest 2 barangays were selected from among the poorest 75 percent in the municipality.

> 17 The source was a list that national health policy requires village health workers to maintain: a population list of all households in the village that have children under the age of 6 years. In the results section further below, we discuss any potential bias arising from such sampling, concluding that such sampling is likely to underestimate the extent of correlation between reported vote buying and health services.

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