Table of Contents
TEMPORAL SCOPE: 2016 – 2022 (from the election of Rodrigo Duterte through the end of his presidential term)
GEOGRAPHIC CONTEXT: Philippines (presidential democracy; weak rule of law enforcement; high executive discretion; politicized security forces)
Case Trigger & Coercive Governance Shift #
Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 electoral victory created a perceived mandate to govern through coercion, with drugs and street crime framed as an existential public order threat. The political puzzle is how a democracy can erode through normalized illegality—violent enforcement tolerated or encouraged by executive signals—without formally suspending elections or rewriting the constitution. International documentation of widespread killings and accountability failure illustrates the backsliding dynamic without requiring a classic “authoritarian takeover.” (See the UN Human Rights Office’s findings in OHCHR (A/HRC/44/22).)
Case Overview #
This case is analytically important because it shows backsliding through practice, not paperwork: rule-of-law constraints weaken when coercion becomes a governing style and oversight institutions adapt rather than resist. The War on Drugs illustrates how electoral legitimacy can coexist with institutional decay when citizens evaluate “order delivery” separately from due process. The core decision-making problem is not “crime policy efficiency,” but how executives use security mandates to reshape norms, incentives, and accountability pathways under formally democratic rules.
Context & Constraints #
- Presidential discretion + weak enforcement capacity: A strong presidency operating in an environment where legal constraints exist on paper but are unevenly enforced enables “policy by signal” (rhetoric + operational expectations) rather than policy by statute.
- Public demand for order: High salience of safety and drugs creates political cover for shortcuts, especially when the government frames due process as an obstacle to protection.
- Institutional fragmentation: Diffuse accountability across police, local officials, prosecutors, and courts increases plausible deniability and makes coordinated oversight difficult.
- International scrutiny as a constraint: External monitoring raised reputational and legal costs, culminating in international legal attention even after the Philippines’ ICC withdrawal debate (see International Criminal Court — Situation in the Philippines (ICC-01/21)).
Key Actors #
- President Duterte and the executive core
- Interests: Credible “order restoration,” political dominance, deterrence through fear, narrative control.
- Resources: Agenda control, appointment powers, public communication megaphone, influence over security priorities.
- Constraints: Formal legality, domestic legitimacy maintenance, international scrutiny.
- Philippine National Police and security services
- Interests: Operational autonomy, budgetary/political protection, performance metrics aligned with coercive outputs.
- Resources: Monopoly on routine coercion, local presence, control of incident narratives.
- Constraints: Internal discipline systems, evidentiary standards (often weakly applied), reputational risk.
- Local officials and community-level brokers
- Interests: Order claims, alliance maintenance with national power, protection from blame.
- Resources: Local knowledge, informal networks, gatekeeping over community targeting and reporting.
- Constraints: Rival local coalitions, media attention, selective prosecution.
- Judiciary, prosecutors, oversight bodies, and legislature
- Interests: Institutional survival, legitimacy, workload management, political safety.
- Resources: Formal authority to investigate/charge/review, hearings, audits, and inquiries.
- Constraints: Political pressure, limited investigative capacity, fear of retaliation, and incentive to avoid direct confrontation.
- Civil society, media, and victims’ networks
- Interests: Documentation, accountability, protection, narrative contestation.
- Resources: Advocacy, reporting, international linkages.
- Constraints: Harassment risks, resource scarcity, polarization.
Institutional Mechanisms of Democratic Erosion #
- Executive signaling that rewrites “acceptable enforcement”
- The center of gravity shifts from law as constraint to law as optional, when leaders communicate that harsh enforcement will be tolerated and protected.
- Incentive engineering inside coercive institutions
- When performance is implicitly measured by “visible results,” street-level agents face skewed incentives: aggressive tactics can become rational career behavior, while restraint becomes professionally risky.
- Accountability dilution through fragmentation and delegation
- Responsibility disperses across police units, local actors, and informal collaborators, creating a “many hands” problem: each node can claim it only followed expectations or handled a narrow task.
- Oversight neutralization without abolishing oversight
- Backsliding here is quiet: hearings occur, courts function, elections proceed—but enforcement of constraints becomes selective, slow, or strategically avoided. Institutions remain standing while their bite weakens.
- Normalization of fear as a governance asset
- Fear reduces reporting, chills mobilization, and lowers the probability that abuses generate coordinated political costs—letting electoral competition continue while civic contestation narrows.
Theoretical Lens Applied #
Democratic Backsliding (primary lens) #
- Why it fits: The core puzzle is democratic erosion without constitutional rupture—elections persist while rule-of-law constraints and accountability degrade.
- Key concepts applied: Executive aggrandizement (informal), weakening of horizontal accountability, erosion of civil liberties through practice, normalization of coercion under democratic legitimacy.
- Explanatory value: Clarifies how leaders can shift a regime’s operating logic from constraint to discretion while keeping democratic forms intact. A rights-abuse strategy can be politically sustainable when framed as “order delivery” and when oversight adapts rather than blocks.
Principal–Agent Theory (secondary lens) #
- Why it fits: The executive (principal) relies on police and local enforcers (agents) whose actions are hard to monitor; ambiguity can be politically useful.
- Key concepts applied: Moral hazard, plausible deniability, agent drift, incentive misalignment, information asymmetry.
- Explanatory value: Explains why tolerated illegality can expand even if leaders avoid explicit written orders: agents over-implement what they believe the principal rewards, and the principal benefits from results while distancing from methods.
Institutionalism (supporting lens) #
- Why it fits: Formal institutions can persist while informal practices reshape outcomes—rules matter, but so do enforcement patterns and institutional adaptation.
- Key concepts applied: Institutional weakness, enforcement gaps, informal institutions, path-dependent tolerance of discretion.
- Explanatory value: Shows how backsliding is often an institutional recalibration: oversight bodies remain, but their incentives and capacity shift toward accommodation, creating a stable (yet degraded) equilibrium.
Outcomes & Consequences #
- Rule-of-law degradation: Due process and lawful enforcement norms weaken as coercion becomes an expected tool of governance, consistent with patterns described by UN OHCHR Press Release (June 2020).
- Durable legitimacy split: Many citizens can continue to view the government as legitimate because electoral mandates and perceived security gains are treated as separate from procedural legality.
- Institutional learning in the wrong direction: Agencies learn that “results” are safer than restraint; oversight learns that confrontation is costly—locking in permissive behavior beyond one leader.
- International legal and reputational costs: The case remains salient internationally as a potential crimes-against-humanity investigation pathway, reinforced by the ICC’s Philippines situation materials (International Criminal Court — Philippines situation page).
- Long tail after 2022: Even after Duterte’s term ends, the governance template and incentive structure can persist if not actively reversed, as emphasized in documentation compiled by Human Rights Watch — Philippines “War on Drugs”.
Analytical Questions #
- If you were a judicial or prosecutorial leader during 2016–2022, what minimum set of actions could increase accountability without triggering full institutional retaliation or collapse of cooperation with police?
- Under Principal–Agent Theory, which monitoring or incentive reforms (metrics, discipline, reporting rules) would most effectively reduce agent overreach—and why would executives resist them?
- What conditions make “coercive governance” electorally sustainable in a democracy? Which shocks (economic, security, scandal, international action) are most likely to break that sustainability?
- How would you empirically distinguish “popular support for public safety policy” from “popular tolerance of rule-of-law erosion” using survey design or behavioral indicators?
- If democratic backsliding can occur without constitutional change, what early warning indicators should analysts prioritize beyond formal legal reforms?
