Perceived threat of crime, authoritarianism, and the rise of a populist president in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

President Duterte of the Philippines implemented an open “war” on drugs based upon claims of an over-proliferation of illegal drugs in the country. Despite summary killings of suspected users and dealers, Duterte enjoys popular support among Filipinos. This paper assesses reasons behind the support using citizens’ perceptions of the severity of the drugs/crime problem, their punitiveness, and authoritarian attitudes as explanations. A sample of 114 Filipinos across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao responded to an electronic survey about socio-legal issues. Results show that drugs/crime are perceived as serious problems nationally yet only minor problems locally. This perceived national seriousness is significantly related to support for Duterte. Trust in the law and enforcement agents, an authoritarian attitude, and region are also strongly related to support for Duterte. This paper concludes with reflections on information manipulation as means to advance political ends and the importance of context in furthering theories of authoritarian submission.

KEYWORDS:

• State control
• crime perception
• authoritarianism
• populism
• Philippine crime
• Philippines
• politics of fear
• media manipulation
• authoritarianism

Notes

1. Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, is Davao’s current mayor.

2. A noteworthy comparison are data routinely collected in the United States across at least three major systematic data collection protocols that are all publicly availabe: (1) the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports that reflects crimes reported to over 95% of police jurisdictions throughout the United States (Planty, Langton, & Barnett-Ryan, 2014; Lauritsen, Rezey, & Heimer, 2016); (2) the National Incident-Based Reporting System (Planty et al., 2014; Federal Bureau Of Investigation, 2018); and (3) the National Crime Victimisation Survey (Bureau Of Justice Statistics, 2018; Morgan & Kena, 2017). Across these systematic data collection protocols, the accuracy of crime definitions and their interpretations are still debated, including the veracity of data collection techniques (Lauritsen et al., 2016; Ali, Dowd, Classen, Mutter, & Novak, 2017).

3. Although there are social surveys routinely done in the Philippines (via the Social Weather Stations) and other media outlets (e.g., Rappler) have conducted their own surveys on opinions about President Duterte, none of these surveys comprise the set of theoretically nuanced elements that were included in this current survey.

4. English is the medium of instruction in the Philippines and most Filipinos speak English. However, because the questionnaire was administered online, opinions expressed by the respondents may be heavily tilted towards higher educated Filipinos. It should be noted, however, that adult literacy rate in the Philippines for both men and women is at 95% (Lee, 2015).

5. Highest correlation among scale measures of independent variables is .337 as shown.

6. Average level of support for Duterte per region is 5.5 for Luzon, 7.4 for the Visayas, and 7.8 for Mindanao.

7. Interactions between authoritarianism and context, authoritarianism and punitiveness, as well as authoritarianism and trust in law/authorities were explored in separate regression models and interaction effects were not observed. The main effects shown in Tables 2 and 3 remained very similar with the interaction terms.

8. There was no interaction between authoritarianism and trust in law/authorities as mentioned earlier in this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sheila Royo Maxwell

Dr. Sheila Royo Maxwell is an Associate Professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University.  She studies offending behaviors and attitudes towards law and sanctioning across ethnic, cultural and social-structural milieus.  Dr. Maxwell has conducted research in the U.S. courts and correctional systems and has also done considerable research in the Philippines.