Philippine Populism: Local Violence and Global Context in the Rise of a Filipino Strongman (original) (raw)
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To explore the overlooked role of political violence in global " populism, " the essay explores the rise of Rodrigo Duterte from long-serving mayor of a provincial city to an exceptionally powerful Philippine president. Using an analytical frame that juxtaposes localized violence with international influence, the essay examines not only the political dynamics that elevated Duterte to power but the tensions that are already circumscribing his authority after only a year in office. Application of this model to comparable cases could both highlight the parallel role of political violence in contemporary populism and indicate the forces likely to lead to its decline.
Global Populism: A Lineage of Filipino Strongmen from Quezon to Marcos and Duterte
The rising global phenomenon of populism has been framed as a reaction to the unmet promises of globalization in nominally democratic nations. Rodrigo Duterte has similarly been positioned along this trend. This article traces the lineage of Filipino strongmen from Quezon to Marcos and Duterte and shows that they emerged through juxtaposition of skilled diplomacy and local controls. This situates Duterte at an intersection of global trends and local political tradition, beyond the flat application of the term populism to the Philippines. Studying these Filipino strongmen reveals the role of performative violence in projecting domestic strength and a complementary need for diplomatic success to demonstrate international influence. These overlooked aspects of global populism can be used to speculate about the political fate of populist strongmen in disparate corners of the globe. KEYWORDS. Manuel Quezon · Ferdinand Marcos · Rodrigo Duterte · populism · strongmen
The Duterte phenomenon as authoritarian populism in the Philippines
The Routledge Handbook of Populism in the Asia Pacific, 2023
There has been growing interest among journalists and social scientists in covering and studying contemporary Philippines as news about the controversial President Rodrigo Duterte frequently hit world headlines. Duterte, who has assumed international notoriety yet national popularity since his astounding election in 2016, is often presented in political analyses as Southeast Asia’s representative strongman in the recent wave of global populism sweeping democracies from the West to the East. However, as this chapter explicates through an analytical framework, the Duterte phenomenon as a case of authoritarian populism, in which undemocratic politics is gaining popular legitimacy, has its own historical and conjunctural particularities. Specifically, a dozen of key defining dimensions have become manifest—in actual, conceptual, and discursive terms—during the six-year tenure, from candidacy to presidency, of Duterte’s authoritarian-populist regime.
Flirting with Authoritarian Fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the New Terms of Philippine Populism
This commentary aims to take stock of the 2016 presidential elections in the Philippines that led to the landslide victory of the controversial Rodrigo Duterte. It argues that part of Duterte's electoral success is hinged on his effective deployment of the populist style. Although populism is not new to the Philippines, Duterte exhibits features of contemporary populism that are befitting of an age of communicative abundance. This commentary contrasts Duterte's political style with other presidential contenders, characterises his relationship with the electorate and concludes by mapping populism's democratic and anti-democratic tendencies, which may define the quality of democratic practice in the Philippines in the next six years.
Journal of Contemporary Asia , 2020
Among contemporary illiberal populist leaders, only Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has instigated mass murder under the guise of a "war on drugs." Attributed to "penal populism," it must be explained why Duterte won the presidency despite limited concerns about crime, why he organised extrajudicial killings, and why this continued despite domestic and international criticism. As president, Duterte nationalised the violent populism he had first developed locally which wooed rather than intimidated voters with promises to protect "good people" against drug-induced evil. His appeals resonated given the failures of liberal "reformism," with a "proletarian" populist alternative undermined. Using nationalism to respond to global criticism, he put opponents on the defensive. Breaking with the left, he has not undertaken major socioeconomic reforms and his anti-oligarchy rhetoric benefitted his cronies. Despite killing thousands and revelations of police corruption, as a legitimation strategy Duterte's drug war has proved successful, diverting attention from the "death of development" with poverty levels high despite rapid growth. The Philippine case shows extreme dichotomisation of "good people" and criminalised "others" can legitimate mass killings with a populist breakthrough in a weak state captured by a narrow oligarchy with a poor record of human development.
Philippine Political Science Journal, 2020
Two influential explanations of Duterte’s surprising rise and rule are his “penal populist” leadership style and a structural crisis of oligarchic democracy. The populist leadership perspective explains “too little” about the extreme violence of Duterte’s illiberal rule and the vulnerability of the prevailing political order to it. The oligarchic-democracy-in-crisis view, on the other hand, explains “too much” because it is overly generalized and determinist, thus unable to account for what in particular triggered Duterte’s rise despite political stability and economic growth. The article offers a third explanation that integrates a leadership perspective into an oligarchic framework using a “structuration” approach. It focuses on how Duterte’s leadership style enabled him to take advantage of a disjunctive moment in the country’s “liberal reformist” political structure, a distinct subset of oligarchic democracy.
Populism, executive assertiveness and popular support for strongman-democracy in the Philippines
PRIF BLOG, 2019
17. Januar 2019 Peter Kreuzer Populists are supposed to thrive on their ability to mirror, condense and radicalize popular demands ignored by establishment politicians. This sketch on the election-promises and later policies of Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte suggests that their success is less dependent on any pre-existing radical popular demands, but on their authenticity as leaders who get things done and realize a government that is perceived to work for the people. The "success" of and widespread approval for Duterte's deadly anti-crime campaign suggests that Philippine democracy is at a crossroad. On May 10, 2016, Rodrigo Duterte gained a resounding victory in the elections for the next President of the Philippines. This was generally attributed to his populist appeal, his contrasting himself as a representative of the people against a dominant elite that held Philippine democracy hostage to its political and economic interests. Of equal importance was his image of a politician, who was willing and able to implement his promises against resistance if necessary, a politician that would not succumb to the eternal woes of Philippine democracy: corruption and clientelistic exchange of favors amongst the dominant families. The largest attention, however, caught his repeated promises to eradicate drugs and drug crime (https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/02/20/1555349/duterte-vows-end-criminality-3-months) from the Philippines within three to six months, if necessary by killing criminals and druglords (https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/129520-rodrigo-duterte-anti-crime-plan). After his election, he acted on his promises by instigating an anti-drug campaign in which several thousand suspects were "neutralized" by the police in so-called armed encounters. Even though Duterte was elected by only 39 percent of votes, public support for his campaign has been overwhelming at around 80 percent and more. Source: Pulse Asia Research Inc. Ulat ng Bayan. Various surveys (http://www.pulseasia.ph/databank/ulat-ng-bayan/) Was Duterte elected for President, because he successfully "politicized latent anxieties about crime and social disorder […] to argue […] that progress would have to come at the price of liberal rights (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/philippines/2018-10-09/why-duterte-remains-so-popular)?" I argue that this understanding takes for granted what actually needs closer inspection: the temporal order of a pre-existing popular demand for a tough anti-crime policy that is ignored by the establishment-elite and only taken up by a revisionist leader. First, one should remember that Duterte was elected on an eclectic policy platform that was much broader than the single issue of a deadly war on drugs. Duterte united a host of seemingly rather incompatible political positions, as self-proclaimed Socialist (https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/779984/duterte-im-a-socialist-not-a-communist-last-card) with good contacts to both the Muslim and the Communist rebels, as a critic of the Catholic Church and champion of LGBT rights, and a supporter of federalism with his image of a no-nonsense politician devoted to eradicate crime. This made it possible vote for him "because he is the most progressive presidential candidate that this country has ever had (https://www.huungtonpost.com/jan-albert-suing/why-i-am-voting-for-rodri\_b\_9684538.html)." His swearing, blaspheme, public threats and vulgar demeanor could be reinterpreted as going against the exclusionary cultural practice of domination through social habits and education. This made it possible to imagine Duterte as an organic intellectual (http://www.berkeleyreviewofeducation.com/cfc2016-blog/the-role-of-organic-intellectuals-in-the-era-of-a-trump-presidency) who "aims to win consent to counter-hegemonic ideas and ambitions (https://www.huungtonpost.com/jan-albert-
"Discussion of populism often reduces it to the actions and rhetoric of individuals. President Duterte has become the latest populist bogeyman a fashionable object of analysis. As a result, discussions on the Duterte phenomenon has remained disjointed and unclear with multiple distinct labels such as fascist, strongman, nationalist, and Maoist. The different labels hurled at Duterte’s politics can only be analyzed effectively by utilizing the concept of ideology. Furthermore, Populism’s challenge against the supposed global hegemony of liberal democracy can be traced back to the internal contradiction between liberal and populist principles underlying all modern democracies. This review synthesizes contemporary discussions of Duterte reintegrates their findings with the literature and ideology while contextualizing his brand of populism with the paradox of liberal democracy. By returning ideology as a political concept, political scientists may new insights in understanding contemporary political divisions and realities along with more precise methods necessary in engaging them."
The Philippines 2017: Duterte-led Authoritarian Populism and Its Liberal-Democratic Roots
Asia Maior, 2018
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte led a phenomenal campaign to win the 2016 national election. During his first two years in power Duterte as become the protagonist and exemplar of a key new development – the social formation of a regime of authoritarian populism. Based on an analysis of news reports, public debates, survey results, and official policy documents from 2017, the article examines various features of this emergent regime and then illuminates the historical-institutional mechanisms that brought it about. The inquiry is predicated on an understanding that the old EDSA Republic’s liberal-democratic regime has been marked by intractable socio-economic crises since its installation in 1986. This triggered different political tendencies and trajectories that Duterte has been able to mould into a new mode of regulation and governance. The central discussion elucidates some of the significant features that constitute the process through which the new regime of authoritarian populism is taking shape. The conclusion highlights the mutually reinforcing features of the dying EDSA-type liberal democracy and the emerging Duterte-led authoritarian populism. This suggests that the former has been a spawning ground for the latter.
Demystifying Duterte's Populism in the Philippines
Duterte is drawing global media attention. This is mostly due to his dirty mouth and his deadly war on drugs. Yet, there is something in the Duterte phenomenon that offers insights into a particular type of populist politics that has hit the Philippines. Duterte-style populism cuts across classes, genders, generations, and the political spectrum. The societal results of which are contradictions and conflicts.