Deadly populism: How local political outsiders drive Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines

Abstract

Around the world, populists have won elections on the strength of crowd-pleasing but norm-defying policy proposals. Although effective at mobilizing support at election time, these policies are often difficult to implement because populists lack allies throughout the political system. Examining President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal "War on Drugs" in the Philippines, we find that mayors excluded from establishment patronage networks filled a critical implementation gap for the Duterte administration. Employing regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences approaches, we show that outsider mayors received 40 percent lower public works appropriations and, in turn, executed Duterte's drug war more aggressively. Outsider-led municipalities had 40 percent more anti-drug incidents and 60 percent more extra-judicial killings by police. The results illustrate a trade-off between patronage politics and corruption (politics-as-usual) and violent democratic backsliding.

Cite

@article{ravanilla2022deadly,
title={Deadly populism: How local political outsiders drive Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines},
author={Ravanilla, Nico and Sexton, Renard and Haim, Dotan},
journal={The Journal of Politics},
volume={84},
number={2},
pages={1035--1056},
year={2022},
publisher={The University of Chicago Press Chicago, IL}
}