Brief Background
Populism emerged in Russia and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century but remained, until the 1990s, almost irrelevant to European politics. Although there is an increasing conflation of populism and nativism in academia and the media, there is no question that populism is a significant, if not necessarily the most important, dimension of the emergence of so-called nationalist parties and politicians.
Populist Ideology
Populism could be defined as an essentially contested concept until recently, but a growing consensus has emerged in recent years on an idealization approach that sees populism first and foremost as a set of ideas centered on a fundamental opposition between the people and the elite.
But to me, populism is a thinly centered ideology which ultimately considers society to be divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups from extreme both ends.
Against the common understanding that the current "populist moment" is a direct consequence of the Great Recession, which means it is a temporary phenomenon related to the crisis, I disasgree that the rise of populism is linked to several structural social changes that have changed politics fundamentally. Cognitive activism and increasing inequality also produced a more disgruntled and outspoken electorate on the demand-side of politics.
The best way to see populism, particularly within the current European background, is to react to political illiberality as an illiberal democratic answer.
Populism Flourished by BBC Strong Man
The emergence of Duterte — his mind-boggling popularity and odd combination of rhetorical overdrive and policy misunderstandings — cannot be understood in isolation. Situated inside a more extensive setting of how populism flourishes in quickly modernizing countries like the Philippines, on the grounds that Duterte is, as a matter of first importance, a populist.
He utilizes a political style with an appeal to ' people ' versus ' elite, ' bad manners, and crisis, breakdown, or danger results. Recent years have seen the liberal elite throughout the world suffer one electoral setback after another, as strongman-populists dislodge the establishment in favor of a new brand of politics that seems familiar as well as new.
The specter of illiberal democracy is haunting the world of democracy, as a distinct process called "authoritarianization" challenges the sustainability of democratic values in one nation after another. What we are seeing today is the rise of hybrid systems combining elements of democratic elections with autocratic rule.
4 years in the presidential seat and there's more the BBC named "Strong Man of the Philippines" is yet to prove.
Is he more than the title?
Do you live in Philippines?