Abstract
Prevailing scholarship on populism focuses on explaining polarized patterns of support and opposition for populist regimes. This paper extends this conceptualization to account for the fragmented politics of Global South democracies. Invoking the concept of cognitive polyphasia, we map the Filipino public’s social representations of Duterte’s populist regime in the Philippines. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, we uncover a representational field organized by the two dimensions of political alignment (support vs. opposition) and political frame (individual vs. system). Diversely embedded in this polyphasic field, supporters of the regime may construct Duterte’s individual leadership in terms of paternalistic patriotism, or the broader government as a morally-bankrupt yet progressive technocracy. Opposition to the regime may frame the president as an oppressive tyrant, or his administration as a historical continuation of entrenched state violence. Our findings contribute to extant populism debates by describing unique representational processes of differentiation and annexation in unequal populist publics. We reflect on implications for democratic engagement in the Philippines and the broader Global South.
Highlights
Prevailing scholarship on populism focuses on explaining polarized patterns of support and opposition for populist regimes
By mixing quantitative survey data with qualitative open-ended text responses, we discovered that Filipinos who support and oppose President Duterte are further divided according to whether they represent his regime in terms of his individual leadership or a wider system of government
Past studies have sought to explain support and opposition to populist leaders’ rhetoric and policies (McCoy, Rahman, & Somer, 2018; Müller et al, 2017; Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2019). While such findings illuminate crucial dynamics in populisms across nations, we argue that a binary focus on support and opposition can obscure the complex political contexts in which they are embedded
Summary
Prevailing scholarship on populism focuses on explaining polarized patterns of support and opposition for populist regimes This paper extends this conceptualization to account for the fragmented politics of Global South democracies. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, we uncover a representational field organized by the two dimensions of political alignment (support vs opposition) and political frame (individual vs system) Embedded in this polyphasic field, supporters of the regime may construct Duterte’s individual leadership in terms of paternalistic patriotism, or the broader government as a morally-bankrupt yet progressive technocracy. Extensive scholarship links populist democracies to polarized publics (Handlin, 2018; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2018) Pursuing this view, past studies have sought to explain support and opposition to populist leaders’ rhetoric and policies (McCoy, Rahman, & Somer, 2018; Müller et al, 2017; Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2019). Locating our inquiry in the context of Rodrigo Duterte’s populist regime in the Philippines, we propose to examine how such representational pluralities may be understood in situating populist support and opposition
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