Democracy and “Right” Populism in the Philippines: The Rise of Rodrigo Duterte
Since becoming Philippine President in July 2016 Rodrigo R. Duterte has launched a violent crackdown on drugs, with over 8,000 people killed (as of April 2017) from police “encounters” and vigilante killings. Elected in a free and fair election in May 2016, Duterte’s regime is post-liberal but not (yet) explicitly anti-democratic, with the press still free and the powers of Congress and the Courts not yet formally curtailed. Duterte’s appeal differs from “left” populist politicians in the Philippines who have focused on social remedies for poverty and inequality. Although Duterte has had close ties to the communist left, promised greater commitment to solving socio-economic problems, and taken a nationalist stance against the U.S., he has implemented the sub-national authoritarian “Davao model” nationally, using “violence as spectacle” to discourage investigation of the killings and to convey the political message that he will punish “evil” while protecting ordinary “good” people. For many Filipinos, this state violence has created a sense of political order amidst weak institutions. Duterte’s “right”populism shows some similarities to illiberalism elsewhere in Southeast Asia but differs in important respects from the anti-immigrant, anti-free trade “closed” right populism represented by Trump and the European far right.
Mark R. Thompson is head of the Department of Asian and International Studies (AIS), and director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC), both at the City University of Hong Kong. He has previously held positions in Germany (Erlangen-Nuernberg, and Dresden) and the United Kingdom (Glasgow). He was Lee Kong Chian distinguished scholar of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and Stanford University as well as a visiting professor at Kyoto University and Passau University. A Rotary Foundation scholar at the University of the Philippines in 1984–1985, he was visiting fellow at the Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University 1986–1987 and completed his Ph.D. in 1991 in political science at Yale University with Juan J. Linz and James C. Scott as supervisors with his dissertation later published as The Anti-Marcos Struggle (Yale 1995). He is also the author of Democratic Revolutions (Routledge, 2004), co-editor of Dynasties and Female Political Leaders in Asia (2013), and the author of a number of journal articles on Asian politics, most recently “Democracy with Asian Characteristics,” Journal of Asian Studies, 74, no. 4 (November 2015) and, together with Stephan Ortmann, “China’s ‘Singapore Model’ and its Limits,” Journal of Democracy, 27, no. 1 (January 2016). He is currently completing a co-authored book manuscript about the Philippine presidency.
Suggested Readings
Mark R Thompson, “The Early Duterte Presidency in the Philippines: Introduction,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Vol 35, No 3 (2016) [The entire issue on the early Duterte presidency is available in this open access journal at: http://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jsaa/]
Julio C. Teehankee and Mark R Thompson, “The Vote in the Philippines: Electing a Strongman,” Journal of Democracy, 27:4 (October 2016), pp. 124-134.
Mark R Thompson, “The Specter of Neo-Authoritarianism in the Philippines,” Current History, September 2016, pp. 220-225.