Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T13:26:14.703Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A NEW PENAL POPULISM? RODRIGO DUTERTE, PUBLIC OPINION, AND THE WAR ON DRUGS IN THE PHILIPPINES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2020

Paul D. Kenny Open the ORCID record for Paul D. Kenny [Opens in a new window]  and
Ronald Holmes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing on evidence from the Philippines, this paper investigates the so-called penal populism thesis. Penal populism refers to an understanding of justice in which criminal and anti-social activity should be harshly punished. The paper tests whether support for harsh penal policies, including the use of extrajudicial killings, is associated with underlying populist attitudes and preferences for charismatic leadership. Since coming to power in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has waged a violent and highly popular campaign against drug-related criminality. Based on survey modules fielded in 2016 and 2017, the paper demonstrates a positive relationship between populist attitudes and support for the campaign against illegal drugs in general and the extra-judicial killing of suspected drug users and dealers in particular. It also demonstrates a relationship between belief in the charisma of Duterte and support for the campaign against illegal drugs. The implications of the theory and results for the fields of populism and penal populism research are discussed.

Keywords

populismcriminal justicewar on drugspenal policycharisma
Type
Article
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 187 - 205
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adorno, Theodor W. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Akkerman, Agnes, Mudde, Cas, and Zaslove, Andrej. 2013. “How Populist Are the People? Measuring Populist Attitudes in Voters.” Comparative Political Studies 47 (9): 1324–1353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albertazzi, Daniele, and McDonnell, Duncan. 2008. “Introduction: The Sceptre and the Spectre.” In Twenty-first Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, edited by Albertazzi, Daniele and McDonnell, Duncan. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Algan, Yann, Guriev, Sergei, Papaioannou, Elias, and Passari, Evgenia. 2017. “The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism.” In Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 309–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altemeyer, Robert A. 1996. The Authoritarian Specter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Andreadis, Ioannis, and Ruth, Saskia P.. 2018. “Using Surveys to Measure the Populist Attitudes of Political Elites.” In The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis, edited by Hawkins, Kirk, Carlin, Ryan, Littvay, Levente, and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D., and Pischke, Jörn-Steffen. 2009. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antonakis, John, Avolio, Bruce J., and Sivasubramaniam, Nagraj. 2003. “Context and Leadership: An Examination of the Nine-factor Full-range Leadership Theory Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire.” The Leadership Quarterly 14 (3): 261–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, Bert N., Rooduijn, Matthijs, and Schumacher, Gijs. 2016. “The Psychological Roots of Populist Voting: Evidence from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany.” European Journal of Political Research 55 (2): 302–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, Robert R. 2009. “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-establishment Politics.” Party Politics 15 (1): 29–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. 1986. “The Sociology of Moral Panics: Toward a New Synthesis.” The Sociological Quarterly 27 (4): 495–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth, Conway, Drew, Lauderdale, Benjamin E., Laver, Michael, and Mikhaylov, Slava. 2016. “Crowd-Sourced Text Analysis: Reproducible and Agile Production of Political Data.” American Political Science Review 110 (2): 278–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bensman, Joseph, and Givant, Michael. 1975. “Charisma and Modernity: The Use and Abuse of a Concept.” Social Research 42 (4): 570–614.Google Scholar
Canovan, Margaret. 1999. “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy.” Political Studies 47 (1): 2–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva, Castanho, Ioannis Andreadis, B., Anduiza, Eva, Blanuša, Nebojša, Corti, Yazmin Morlet, Delfino, Gisela, Rico, Guillem, Ruth, Saskia, Spruyt, Bram, Steenbergen, Marco, and Littvay, Levente. 2018. “Public Opinion Surveys: A New Scale.” In The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis, edited by Hawkins, Kirk, Carlin, Ryan, Littvay, Levente, and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. 2011. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. 3rd edn. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crick, Bernard. 2005. “Populism, Politics and Democracy.” Democratisation 12 (5): 625–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curato, Nicole. 2017. “Politics of Anxiety, Politics of Hope: Penal Populism and Duterte's Rise to Power.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35 (3): 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, James C. 1954. “Charisma in the 1952 Campaign.” American Political Science Review 48 (4): 1083–1102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dornbusch, Rudiger, and Edwards, Sebastián, eds. 1991. The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Sebastián. 2010. Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of Populism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elchardus, Mark and Spruyt, Bram. 2014. “Populism, Persistent Republicanism and Declinism: An Empirical Analysis of Populism as a Thin Ideology.” Government and Opposition 51 (1): 111–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foa, Robert S., and Mounk, Yascha. 2017. “The Signs of Deconsolidation.” Journal of Democracy 28 (1): 5–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forman, James. 2018. Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. New York: FSG.Google Scholar
Galston, William A. 2018. Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hari, Johann. 2015. Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Kirk, Riding, Scott, and Mudde, Cas. 2012. “Measuring Populist Attitudes.” Political Concepts Working Paper Series 55, http://works.bepress.com/cas_mudde/72/.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Kirk, and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. 2019. “Introduction: The Ideational Approach.” In The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis, edited by Hawkins, Kirk, Carlin, Ryan, Littvay, Levente, and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Houle, Christian, and Kenny, Paul D.. 2018. “The Political and Economic Consequences of Populist Rule in Latin America.” Government and Opposition 53 (2): 256–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Robert A. and Schimpf, Christian H.. 2017. “On the Distinct Effects of Left-Wing and Right-Wing Populism on Democratic Quality.” Politics and Governance 5 (4): 146–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Robert S. 2011. “Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism.” Sociological Theory 29 (2): 75–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, Will, Farrall, Stephen, Gray, Emily, and Hay, Colin. 2017. “Penal Populism and the Public Thermostat: Crime, Public Punitiveness, and Public Policy.” Governance 30 (3): 463–481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenny, Paul D. 2017. Populism and Patronage: Why Populists Win Elections in India, Asia, and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kenny, Paul D. 2019a. “‘The Enemy of the People’: Populists and Press Freedom.” Political Research Quarterly. (In Press).Google Scholar
Kenny, Paul D. 2019b. “Populism and the War on Drugs in Southeast Asia.” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 25 (2): 121–136.Google Scholar
Kenny, Paul D. 2019c. Populism in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kenny, Paul D., and Bizumic, Boris. 2019. “Is There a Populist Personality? Populist Attitudes as an Intervening Variable in Australian Public Opinion.” Unpublished paper, Australian National University.Google Scholar
MacWilliams, Matthew. 2016. “The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You're a Trump Supporter,” Politico, 17 January. www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533Google Scholar
McCoy, Alfred W. 2017. “Philippine Populism: Local Violence and Global Context in the Rise of a Filipino Strongman.” Surveillance & Society 15 (3/4): 514–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merolla, Jennifer L., Ramos, Jennifer M., and Zechmeister, Elizabeth J.. 2007. “Crisis, Charisma, and Consequences: Evidence from the 2004 US Presidential Election.” The Journal of Politics 69 (1): 30–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Jonathan. 2018. Duterte Harry: Fire and Fury in the Philippines. Melbourne: Scribe.Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mouzelis, Nicos. 1985. “On the Concept of Populism: Populist and Clientelist Modes of Incorporation in Semiperipheral Polities.” Politics & Society 14 (3): 329–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudde, Cas. 2004. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39 (4): 542–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, Jan-Werner. 2016. What is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newburn, Tim. 2007. “‘Tough on Crime’: Penal Policy in England and Wales.” Crime and Justice 36 (1): 425–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Donnell, Guillermo A. 1994. “Delegative Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 5 (1): 55–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostiguy, Pierre. 2009. “The High and the Low in Politics: A Two-Dimensional Political Space for Comparative Analysis and Electoral Studies.” Kellog Institute Working Paper #360 July, University of Notre Dame.Google Scholar
Pappas, Takis S. 2015. “Modern Populism: Research Advances, Conceptual and Methodlogical Pitfalls, and the Minimal Definition.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Political Science. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.17.Google Scholar
Pappas, Takis S. 2016. “Distinguishing Liberal Democracy's Challengers.” Journal of Democracy 27 (4): 22–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pappas, Takis S. 2019. Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis. Oxford, Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pepinsky, Thomas. 2017. “Southeast Asia: Voting Against Disorder.” Journal of Democracy 28 (2): 120–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, John. 2007. Penal Populism: Key Ideas in Criminology. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Kenneth M. 1995. “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: the Peruvian Case.” World Politics 48 (1): 82–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Kenneth M. 2014. Populism, Political Mobilizations, and Crises of Political Representation. In The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives, edited by de la Torre, Carlos. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Ruth, Saskia P. 2018. “Populism and the Erosion of Horizontal Accountability in Latin America.” Political Studies 66 (2): 356–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Mick. 2004. “Red Tops, Populists and the Irresistable Rise of the Public Voice.” Journal for Crime, Conflict and the Media 1 (3): 1–14.Google Scholar
Schimpf, Christian H., and Schoen, Harald. 2019. “On the Psychological Roots of Populist Voting: A Discussion of Bakker, Rooduijn, and Schumacher 2016.” Unpublished Paper.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. 1985. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schulz, Anne, Müller, Philip, Schemer, Christian, Wirz, Dominique Stefanie, Wettstein, Martin, and Wirth, Werner. 2017. “Measuring Populist Attitudes on Three Dimensions.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 30 (2): 316–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shils, Edward. 1965. “Charisma, Order, and Status.” American Sociological Review 30 (2): 199–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spruyt, Bram, Keppens, Gil, and Droogenbroeck, Filip Van. 2016. “Who Supports Populism and What Attracts People to It?” Political Research Quarterly 69 (2): 335–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stavrakakis, Yannis, Andreadis, Ionnis, and Katsambekis, Giorgos. 2016. “A New Populism Index at Work: Identifying Populist Candidates and Parties in the Contemporary Greek Context.” European Politics and Society 18 (4): 446–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stenner, Karen. 2005. The Authoritarian Dynamic. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taggart, Paul A. 2000. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Urbinati, Nadia. 1998. “Democracy and Populism.” Constellations 5 (1): 110–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urbinati, Nadia. 2019. Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Hauwaert, Steven M., Schimpf, Christian H., and Azevedo, Flavio. 2019. “Public Opinion Surveys: Evaluating Existing Measures.” In The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis, edited by Hawkins, Kirk, Carlin, Ryan, Littvay, Levente, and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Van Hauwaert, Steven M. and Kessel, Stijn Van. 2018. “Beyond Protest and Discontent: A Cross-national Analysis of the Effect of Populist Attitudes and Issue Positions on Populist Party Support.” European Journal of Political Research 57 (1): 68–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. 1946. “Politics as Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by Gerth, Hans H. and Wright Mills, C.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weyland, Kurt. 2001. “Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics.” Comparative Politics 34 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weyland, Kurt. 2017. “Populism: A Political-Strategic Approach.” In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira, Taggart, Paul, Mudde, Cas and Espejo, Paulina Ochoa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wiesehomeier, Nina. 2019. “Expert Surveys.” In The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis, edited by Hawkins, Kirk, Carlin, Ryan, Littvay, Levente, and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Willner, Ann R. 1984. The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Kenny and Holmes Supplementary Materials

Kenny and Holmes Supplementary Materials

Download Kenny and Holmes Supplementary Materials(File)
File 103 KB