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Pretending to Support? Duterte's Popularity and Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2023

Yuko Kasuya Open the ORCID record for Yuko Kasuya [Opens in a new window]  and
Hirofumi Miwa Open the ORCID record for Hirofumi Miwa [Opens in a new window]
Yuko Kasuya*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
Hirofumi Miwa
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan
*
Corresponding author. Yuko Kasuya Email: ykasuya@keio.jp
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Abstract

The incumbent-led subversion of democracy represents the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding in recent decades. A central puzzle in this mode of backsliding is why these incumbents enjoy popular support despite their actions against democracy. We address this puzzle using the case of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Although some Philippine analysts have speculated that his popularity was inflated due to social desirability bias (SDB) among survey respondents, there has been limited empirical examination. Our pre-registered list experiment surveys conducted in February/March 2021 detected SBD-induced overreporting at about 39 percentage points in face-to-face surveys and 28 percentage points in online surveys. We also found that the poor Mindanaoans, and those who believed their neighbors supported Duterte, were more likely to respond according to SDB. These possibly counter-intuitive results should be interpreted with caution because the survey was conducted during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, and the findings cannot necessarily be extrapolated to the other period of his presidency. Nevertheless, this study suggests that preference falsification could be an alternative explanation for the puzzle of popular incumbents in democratic backsliding.

Keywords

democratic backslidingsocial desirability biasoist experimentRodrigo DutertePhilippines

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Article
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Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , November 2023 , pp. 411 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the East Asia Institute

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