bureaucratic checklists and instead embracing a dynamic, relational approach to gendered inequalities. By treating agenda setting as co-creation, feminist governance values diverse knowledge at the intersections of women, LGBTQIA+ people, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities. Centering vulnerability, deliberation and civic labor in institutional processes transforms participation from episodic consultations into a daily democratic practice enacted both within and outside of formal institutions and across sites of inequality— barangay(village) halls, farms, markets and homes. This approach recognizes that democracy is not merely expressed through elections but maintained through the shared labor of governing. Upward Agenda Setting is a corrective measure for elite­driven politics through its redistributive properties: It rebalances whose priorities shape collective action and how resources are allocated and concentrated. By centering people’s vulnerability, the state affirms that legitimacy and capacity for change do not flow downward from central authority but upward from communities negotiating their realities at the margins. Through this principle, co-creation can transcend tokenism and become an institutional commitment to ensuring that governance itself is reoriented around those historically excluded. 4.2. Horizontal Accountability Horizontal Accountability within gender-just governance requires a structural reorientation of power that expands beyond legal compliance and toward institutionalizing responsiveness, equity and care as the benchmarks of evaluation. Traditional accountability flows are hierarchical, moving upward toward national oversight bodies or inward through bureaucratic audits. While these mechanisms are critical, they often exclude the very communities meant to benefit from state programs, obscuring impact beneath technical reports, bundled budgets and quantitative indicators. A feminist reframing of accountability must interrogate power within institutions, challenge existing flows of accountability and incorporate care work as a fundamental political and economic system(Lambert et al., 2023). Horizontal Accountability redistributes evaluative authority (power-to) across citizens, civil society organizations(CSOs) and local governments, positioning them as co-managers of governance(power-with) as opposed to passive recipients. This approach ensures that governance is primarily measured not only in terms of legality but also in terms of its capacity to reduce care burdens, ensure safety and expand access for women, LGBTQIA+ people, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities and other marginalized sectors. Maalat and Liwag (2008, p. 952) emphasize that identifying the“differently oppressed” provides insights invisible to those in positions of relative privilege. This methodology for accountability allows the lived effects of overlapping inequalities to surface and be addressed(power-over). The decentralization reforms of the LGC were intended to bring decision making closer to the people by anchoring subsidiarity and co-responsibility among central, regional and local institutions(Venugopal, 2016). Gender-just accountability reclaims decentralization by grounding it in participatory identification, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation(IDIME) systems wherein communities go beyond merely observing to actively shaping evaluative criteria, project timelines and success measures. Such lateral accountability frames governance as a shared, transparent responsibility with communities able to shape impact as the primary receivers of the short­and long-term effects of these interventions. Additionally, cultural perspectives and worldviews shape how value and impact are judged(Wehipeihana and McKegg, 2018). Thus, gender-just governance requires building accountability frameworks that respect Indigenous knowledge, recognize the expertise of local professionals and value the relational labor of care as a legitimate outcome of governance. Many local professionals hold technical and specialized knowledge informed and enriched by their intimate relationship to the landscape and people. Beyond merely requesting their preliminary insight, experts from vulnerable sectors should be mobilized by the government as co­creators and project managers. Close collaboration throughout the full project cycle—from the design, planning and implementation to the monitoring and evaluation stages—can ensure responsiveness and effectiveness. Such holistic systems of collaboration curb corruption by ensuring that public budgets generate material benefit for dispossessed groups instead of focusing on legality. Maladaptive projects—whether poorly planned infrastructure or securitized development initiatives—can be reined in by elevating communities as co-auditors and project managers who validate whether programs tangibly reduce vulnerabilities. In this sense, Horizontal Accountability becomes a safeguard against elite capture while also serving as a vehicle for empowerment, affirming that those who bear the brunt of policy failures must also be empowered to shape its corrections. Through shared accountability, the objective of governance shifts from procedural compliance to impact in the everyday lives of vulnerable communities. When deliberation and accountability are laterally linked across institutions, organizations and vulnerable communities, the lived outcomes of policy—reduced care burdens, improved safety, access to livelihood and bodily autonomy, among others—become the primary measures of success. Claiming Power and Reshaping Governance: A Feminist Framework for the Philippines 13