Senate and in 2000 when the party in power changed (for the first time in 71 years) and yet the winning party did not capture a majority in the congress, the bill enactment rates still remained 10 times higher than in the Philippines. One of the reasons is because the well-organized parties (Mexico today is essentially a solid 3-party system) could coordinate legislators’ law-making activities to reduce transaction cost involved in having a large number of individual legislators file bills separately. Even the bills introduced by the opposition have much better rates of being enacted into laws than the bills in the Philippines.

**Table 9:  Bill Enactment Rates in the Mexican House of Deputies, 1991-2006**

|Year|Government bills<br>(Passed/Introduced)|Enactment rate|Opposition bills<br>(Passed/Introduced)|Enactment rate|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|1991-94|133/154|86.4%|16/89|18.0%|
|1994-97|90/103|87.4%|18/148|12.2%|
|1997-2000|43/118|36.4%|94/488|19.3%|
|2000-03|115/326|35.3%|160/881|18.2%|
|2003-06|72/400|18.0%|207/1,573|13.2%|
|Total|453/1,101|41.1%|495/3,179|15.6%|

Source: World Bank (2007) Another striking difference is the absolute numbers of bills filed in the two countries. In the Philippines, the legislators appear to file an inordinate number of bills despite the historically low enactment rates. Based on interviews of some legislators, it is evident that a primary reason why they file bills despite the near-zero probability of having them enacted into laws is political posturing before their constituents. Some legislators prepare “accomplishment reports” which, among other items, list all the bills they have sponsored. Voters have few reasons why they should care about most of these bills because even though most bills filed, especially in the Lower House, address local matters, few of them touch constituents’ lives directly. Following the long-established tradition of clientelism, it is faster for voters to approach local politicians for specific help when they are in need than waiting for some national legislation to be enacted and begin to have policy effects on their daily lives. Once filed, the bills require aggressive lobbying efforts by the sponsoring legislators to move up the deliberation processes of each chamber. Certain officers of both chambers, such as the chairman of the relevant legislative committee and the Speaker of the House/the President of the Senate yield considerable powers over the fate of individual bills. Individual legislators will have to exert significant personal efforts to follow up with these officers and others if they truly seek to have their bills passed into legislation, a high transaction cost as well as use of political capital vis-à-vis fellow legislators, which no one can absorb very frequently, especially given limited pressure from their constituents makes such efforts less electorally worthwhile.

Not only are Filipino legislators relatively poor at having their bills passed, those bills they file appear to be extensions of local constituency work rather than attempts to craft national policies. The data in Table 8 show that, except for the 12<sup>th</sup> Congress, far more local application bills (i.e., those intended to address matters specific to certain localities without nationwide implications) were filed and hence approved in absolute terms, indicating the legislators’ tendency to use national legislation to cater to their local constituents rather than addressing national issues. This contrasts with data on legislative 21