Entrenchment and Expansion: How Political DynastiesAffect Poverty Within and Between Philippine Provinces

The persistence of poverty in the Philippines is linked in the literature to the prevalence of political dynasties, yet the precise mechanisms of this relationship remain underexplored. This study sought to disentangle two distinct phenomena: the effect of long-term dynastic entrenchment (structural, between-province differences) from that of dynamic dynastic expansion (changes within a province over time). To do so, this paper employed a within-between panel data model on a unique dataset covering 80 provinces from 2004 to 2021, with the Political Concentration Index (Political HHI) as the primary measure of dynastic power. The results showed that while dynastic entrenchment and expansion are both linked to higher poverty at the national level, the within-effect was about 1.5 times the between-effect, suggesting that the process of a dynasty consolidating its power has a stronger adverse association with poverty. This effect was also highly contingent on regional context. The finding was driven almost entirely by provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao. In Luzon, the relationship was statistically insignificant, suggesting that local institutional and economic factors may mitigate the effects of political dynasties. This study concludes that the dynasty-poverty link is not uniform and that policy interventions must be tailored to the specific regions where dynastic capture most negatively impacts development.