Co-Production as a Driver of Urban Governance Transformation? The Case of the Oplan LIKAS Programme in Metro Manila, Philippines

Social movement-initiated co-production has been increasingly described as an approach that enables urban poor communities in the South to gain wider access to urban governance. However, with a predominant focus on project-level interventions, the case studies in which movements truly affect governance matters in a metro scale are rare. One of the examples involving such an achievement is the activism of civil society organisations and urban poor groups in Metro Manila, Philippines, which have succeeded to have a major impact on the housing and resettlement programme; the Oplan LIKAS. This article analyses how the civil society was able to gain such a position and the way it utilised it. The documentation of the challenges experienced by the civil society reflects the nature of co-productive engagement in the South and shows that it may easily reach its limits in an exclusionary governance setting.