E ARLY in 1956 the leading daily newspaper of the Philippines published an editorial cartoon depicting President Ramon Magsaysay as an animal trainer brandishing a whip at a large elephant. The elephant, labelled "Performance Budget," seemed to be standing somewhat precariously on a noticeably small platform labelled "Taxes." Members of Congress in the background were shown exchanging skeptical glances; the caption was their comment: "The same animalonly bigger."' The budget was many millions of pesos bigger than it had ever been before, and scant attention was directed at the perennial problem of an inadequate and inequitable tax base. But, notwithstanding these elements of truth in the cartoonist's observation, it was not really "the same animal." Ostensibly, this was a "performance budget," the first such governmentwide budget in the Philippines and a striking example of American success in peddling abroad a management device having substantially less than general acceptance in governmental practice at home. It seems appropriate to examine performance budgeting in the Philippines with an eye to determining its effectiveness in that setting,