The fizzling of "ceboom": how jurisdictional battles and warring factions undermined Cebu's development coalition

Abstract

Starting in the late 1980s, in a phenomenon dubbed "Ceboom," Cebu City and its surrounding metropolitan area attracted national envy and international attention as a leading centre of growth within a country facing many economic challenges. This article focuses first on the development coalition in the heyday of Ceboom (1988-1998) and proceeds through two subsequent periods in which this coalition declined (1998-2016) and then effectively collapsed (2016-present). Two important factors explain the fizzling of Ceboom. First, dysfunctional jurisdictional structures inhibit the emergence of coherent metropolitan governance; second, these underlying structural impediments feed into, and are exacerbated by, intense competition among warring factions involving city- and provincial-level politicians. Cebu's metropolitan region, we argue, will not be able to address multiple pressing development challenges without a coherent system of governance linking its many components; sadly, we do not see how this is likely to emerge in the foreseeable future.