Abstract
Both Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte stand out as leaders that epitomise their respective reigns in ways that previous leaders did not. A juxtaposition of their political personae allows us to investigate a contemporary political phenomenon, that of the elected strongman leader. This article makes three points from this juxtaposition: (a) They presided over a period of ‘democratic backsliding’. (b) They came with social media. (c) They are their own message and that message is that they are extraordinary leaders, above ordinary constraints. This article concludes that they represent strongman politics—where they as their people’s representative engage in acts symbolic of the people’s sovereignty. In an age of discontent with democracy, new and social media have allowed them to portray themselves as true defenders of ‘the people’.
Introduction
Narendra Modi was elected prime minister in India in 2014 and Rodrigo Duterte was elected president in the Philippines two years later. Their respective election results were solid, with Modi gaining 31% of the national vote and Duterte 39%. In the subsequent election, the tally improved further. In India, Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party gained an increase both in terms of representatives in the Lok Sabha and in terms of popular support (37%). In the Philippines, the constitution barred Duterte from re-election but the winner, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., was seen as his heir (Heydarian, 2022; Ruud & Endresen, 2022) and won a resounding victory of 58%. Marcos’s running mate and vice-presidential candidate was Sara Duterte, the outgoing president’s daughter. Her tally in the vote (the vice-president is elected on a separate ballot) was even higher with 61%. Duterte himself, on leaving office, enjoyed a record-breaking 87% approval among the Filipino electorate (Manila Times, 2022).
It is clear that in both cases, the particular brand of politics that Modi and Duterte represent is popular with voters. What is also clear is that Modi and Duterte both stand out in their respective domains as different in style and quality from their predecessors—both immediate and further past. Modi is a very different political persona from the soft-spoken and cerebral Manmohan Singh or the mild-mannered Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Duterte was perhaps even more different in style and content from his immediate predecessor, the moderate and liberal Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III. I will detail the cases of Modi and Duterte in the pages that follow precisely because they are representative of a wider twenty-first century trend in which it is the person and political persona of the leader that stand out. Referred to as ‘personalist politics’ or ‘presidentialization’, the person of the leader is in many contemporary democracies seen to be more important than a political programme, an ideological commitment, or an organization (Franz et al., 2022; Poguntke & Webb, 2005). The trend includes leaders such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Victor Órban and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—all leaders for whom the person, the body, the family and personal likes and dislikes, cravings and phobias, all become political. Trump’s sense of pride and of offence was a political matter quite different from that of Obama. Trump’s family was a matter of state in quite a different sense than for any of his predecessors. Decisions and the manner of decisions have become expressions of the leader, who he is and his particular mind. Policies become extensions of this person and his family.
Here, I will employ the term ‘strongman’. 2 A strongman regime, I shall suggest, is a widespread subsample of the personalist regime. In personalist cases, the regime depends on the persona of the leader more than the leader depends on the regime. In strongman regimes, the leader stands out as someone with extraordinary powers or faculties and is promoted as unique and with superior if vaguely understood qualities.
This article traces the origin and development of this style in India and the Philippines in the juxtaposition of Modi and Duterte and suggests that their respective success stories (having been elected as political leader) to a considerable extent is linked to their innovative and extensive use of social media. To do so, this article first outlines the weakening of institutions and limiting of space for critical voices in India and the Philippines. Second, we investigate how the political careers of Modi and Duterte are closely intertwined with the emergence of new media and social media in particular, and how the two leaders were placed squarely in the middle of their respective campaigns and political messages. Lastly, we address how the central message of the leader as the people’s representative in both cases projected the leader as above law, morality, decency, or even political expediency. They both portrayed themselves, successfully we might add, as the supreme representative of a popular will.
Before addressing these points, however, we turn briefly to the term ‘strongman’ itself.
The Term and Its Potential Usefulness
Although the term ‘strongman’ is widely used both in academic literature and in media, there is no agreed-upon definition of what might constitute such a figure. The term is loosely applied to denote a great variety of leaders, some of whom are elected leaders with a populist authoritarian bent while others are outright dictators and presidents-for-life (e.g., Ben-Ghiat, 2021). The term was widely used for the large number of presidents-for-life that emerged during ‘the second wave of autocratization’ in the 1960s and 1970s—some of whom lasted for decades. In ‘the third wave of autocratization’ (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019), the lead figures of ‘backsliding democracies’ today are civilian leaders whose power and position rest on ability to negotiate and manipulate public opinion and opinion-making. Today’s autocratic regimes have shifted away from old-fashioned forms of brutal subjugation of critics to embrace new forms drawn from the ‘menu of autocratic innovation’ (Guriev & Treisman, 2022; Morgenbesser, 2020). They use, for instance, techniques permitted by digital innovation and a globalized economy to create obfuscating narratives that deflect unwanted international attention, or they employ divertive strategies such as ‘strategic litigation against public participation’ (or ‘slap suits’), harassing opponents with building inspectors and tax audits (Frum, 2017) and other forms that effectively silence critical voices at a local level (Curato & Fossati, 2020; Pepinsky, 2020). These forms of harassment and suppression of opponents and critics are common enough in India and the Philippines, even if compared to cases such as Cambodia under Hun Sen (Norén-Nilsson, 2021) or Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina (Ruud, 2022) both countries still firmly belong within a category of democracies where an electoral loss means loss of office. But, as pointed out, even non-authoritarian states ‘can practice everyday authoritarianism’ (Chattopadhyay, 2017).
Is there a point to relaunching the term ‘strongman’, to single out a certain political style from other types of backsliding democracies? The ubiquitous popularity of the term suggests it identifies qualities in certain leaders that make them stand out and be seen as different from other leaders of the same order. Other concepts have been applied to capture the nature of regimes in backsliding democracies, such as ‘authoritarian populism’ (Scoones et al., 2018), ‘right-wing populism’ (Wodak, 2015), ‘autocracy’ (Widmalm, 2022) or ‘majoritarianism’ (Palshikar, 2022). The main challenge that these concepts represent is that they do not explain the centrality of the individual leader at the expense of policies, ideology or party machine. Also, the concept of populism with its distinction between the pure people and corrupt elite (e.g., Mudde’s (2007) much used definition) is not easily found in Asia (Hellman, 2017). The insistence on ‘universal’ concepts ultimately derived from a Western experience is symptomatic of how non-western cases are regarded as derivative rather than original sui generis.
An alternative approach is to follow Ernesto Laclau’s (2005) suggestion that terms such as ‘the people’ are basically ‘empty signifiers’ to be filled with meaning depending on circumstance and the kind of popular coalition being built. Expanding on this understanding, Chatterjee argues that India and much of the developing world along with it has long experienced forms of populism (2019, Chapter 3). This tallies better with the argument that in Asian democracies, mainstream parties and leaders tend all to be centrist and that electoral politics in much of Asia are better understood as ideologically pragmatic ecosystems of distributive politics (e.g., Jou, 2019; Kerkvliet & Mojares, 1991).
The question remains, though, how the appeal is shaped and promoted. As we shall see, both Modi and Duterte stand out as personalizations of their respective regimes in actively promoted messages; but they also stand out as more than just powerful—they stand out as individuals with extraordinary powers. They stand out as ‘strongmen’. This is not to suggest that there is an Asian leadership style that can be captured by this concept. Although both Modi and Duterte have had epithets applied to them that indicate specifically local notions of strongman (Duterte was called
The Era of Democratic Backsliding
India and the Philippines are very different in important respects, the obvious one being that India is about 10 times the size of the Philippines in terms of population and has a significantly larger economy. They are also different in respect of institutionalized politics. While India is constitutionally Westminster parliamentarian and has strong political parties, the Philippines follows a US model with a strong president elected independently and weak political parties (Manacsa & Tan, 2005).
Despite differences, there are clear similarities. India and the Philippines gained independence more or less at the same time 3 ; both are multilingual and multi-ethnic states that retained the colonial language as its elite lingua franca and language of the state; and both experienced overlapping periods of authoritarian rule during ‘the second wave of autocratization’, with Indira Gandhi’s long reign including Emergency (1966–1984), 4 and in the Philippines the long reign of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. including the martial law years (1964–1986).
More significant in our context is that both have experienced comparable forms of democratic backsliding over the last decade. In the EIU’s democracy index, both countries fell between 2015 and 2021 to a near-equal status in the ‘flawed democracy’ category. 5 This same development made the V-Dem team in their report for 2021 describe both India and the Philippines as ‘electoral autocracy’, down from ‘electoral democracy’ 10 years earlier. 6 Similarly, both have fallen in the Reporters Without Borders Freedom of Press Index, 7 and in the Rule of Law index from the World Justice Project. 8 Interestingly, their place in Transparency International’s corruption perception index is also very close. 9
In both countries there is concern among a liberal elite, progressives and academics, about institutional decline, including the increasing politicization of the judiciary, a supine press and exclusion of opposition voices. In practice, both countries are characterized by flawed electoral processes in which intimidation, voter exclusion, online trolling and money play a significant role for the outcome. Both are also increasingly familiar with nominally independent arms of the state (administration, police) creating hurdles for the political opposition, such as when the police and judiciary targets Trinamul leaders in the contested state of West Bengal or when critical voices such as human rights champion (and former minister) senator Leila de Lima remains jailed on charges based on testimonies later withdrawn. Often such hurdles are mere irritants, but even small irritants become significant when they demand time and energy.
A significant difference between India and the Philippines is the political significance of what has been called ‘majoritarianism’ (Palshikar, 2022). The Philippines does not have an ideologico-political development comparable to the rise of Hindutva. This difference notwithstanding, the emergence of strong, politically central individual leaders with (as we shall see) several commonalities to their electoral appeal and style, is still striking and requires separate explanation.
They Came with Social Media
Their election victories, however, did not ‘just happen’. The outcomes were not a fortunate coming-together of an individual leader with an idiosyncratic style and certain preferences with the electorate. Both Modi and Duterte (Arguelles, 2019) in their respective campaigns engaged consciously and successfully with the new and innovative avenues offered by social media. In the Philippines, the use of paid influencers on Facebook and Twitter for political operations had been common before the 2016 election and found across the political spectrum (Ong & Cabañes, 2018, p. 30ff). But Duterte’s campaign was more virulent and aggressive (Cabañes & Cornelio, 2017), and better funded. For his campaign, strategists relied heavily on the promotional labour of digital influencers, who often each had a following of 50,000 to 2 million on Facebook and Twitter, and on community-level operators who manually operated fake accounts to enter community groups and news pages. Keyboard trolls were paid up towards 150,000 UK pounds each to pump up Duterte’s message (Miller, 2018, p. 25). These individuals were more effective than automated bots and gave the online messaging volatile virality, amplifying his populist rhetorical style in a way that resonated with political fans and grassroot supporters (Ong & Cabañes, 2018, p. 12ff). Many also peddled fake news, and the Philippines has been characterized as ‘patient zero’ of fake news (Combinido & Curato, 2020). Later TikTok and Instagram have been added to the mixture and TikTok was probably the more influential channel of all in the 2022 campaign (Mendoza, 2022). According to one report, Filipinos are among the top two internet users in the world with Indians following at number three (WEForum, 2022). In 2022, hashtags in favour of Duterte’s heir Marcos could trend in over a billion views (Mendoza, 2022). The pro-Marcos campaign was vastly more influential on social media than that of his main rival, the liberal Leni Robredo.
Equally, Modi was an early and innovative user of social media, including Google+ Hangout, and he engaged with social media much earlier and more enthusiastically than, for instance, his main rival, the younger Rahul Gandhi (Mehta, 2022). Modi was so adept at using social media that his strategy had been dubbed ‘high tech populism’ (Jaffrelot, 2015) and his political style aligned well with the demands of popular media (Moffitt, 2016). Mehta’s (2022) detailed investigation of Modi’s and BJP’s social media campaigns paints a vivid picture of their capacity and importance to political communication.
The shift from state-controlled broadcasting to commercial television and social media has had dramatic political consequences. The new media logic encourages simplification, scandal, personalization and emotion, an anti-establishment attitude, and drama and style over substance (Moffitt, 2016). This ongoing digital revolution is a formidable source of unpredictability. It fuels what Muelrath (2018) calls phantasmagoria, akin to consumerism and closely associated with entertainment but also demagogy (Gounari, 2018). It contributes to a heightened sense of acrimony. It contributed towards what Rajagopal (2009) called ‘split publics’ and what Udupa (2018) calls ‘gaali cultures’. The shaming and shouting by troll armies increase the cost of digital deliberation through threats of public bullying and shaming (e.g., Ong & Cabañes, 2018, Chapter 5) while increasing the entertainment value. At the same time, and herein lies perhaps the attraction, social media trolling also allows the participants to engage in wordplay and employ humour. Udupa is careful to underline that abuse is a form of performance for the Indian trolls (Udupa, 2018, p. 7ff) and permits them to feel part of something larger, while Arguelles (2019) notes from the Philippines that the online supporters of Duterte were ‘energetic, passionate, and agitated’.
The extensive use of social media is both a democratic challenge and a tool that serves to sustain autocratic leaders by constraining meaningful public participation—what Glasius (2018) calls ‘accountability sabotage’. Disabling access to information limits people’s voice, while drowning it in clutter (Bunce & Wolchik, 2010, p. 74) or ‘noise’ (Eco, 2020) achieves the same outcome. Raising the hurdles to access information or flooding the public sphere with the rulers’ version of things render creeping authoritarianism ‘boring’ and even tolerable (Pepinsky, 2020).
However, reality is grimmer still. Both Duterte’s and Modi’s regimes have engaged in acts of intimidation of journalists and there have been the occasional murders. In the Philippines, opposition activists, human rights defenders and other critical voices have been threatened on social media, which has made many fearful and careful (Arguelles, 2019; Miller, 2018; Ong & Cabañes, 2018). Critical or neutral media outlets have been closed, such as when the country’s largest news network, ADS-CBN, lost its licence to operate, and the highly critical online news portal Rappler, run by Nobel peace prize awardee Maria Ressa, had to move out of the country. In India, journalists have been arrested on flimsy charges or while going about their job, such as Mohammad Zubair, Siddique Kappan and others. Reports suggest that several Indian journalists were frequently held under ‘anti-state’ or ‘retaliatory’ charges, a situation only marginally better than in the Philippines according to the ‘global impunity index’ (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2021).
The Man in the Middle
A third commonality between Modi and Duterte that tallies well with the personalist politics argument is their ability to put themselves squarely in the middle of attention. Modi has been at the centre of BJP’s election campaign since his days as chief minister of Gujarat (Mehta, 2022; Shastri, 2019; Shastri & Syal, 2014), a strategy upheld with great skill and organizational effort by BJP. Slogans such as ‘Emperor of Hindu hearts’, ‘
While the differences between Duterte and Modi are stark, the similarities are perhaps more striking. A significant difference is that Duterte was entirely brutal and vulgar. A central element in his election campaign was his promise to start a bloody ‘war on drugs’ that would break legal and moral boundaries. He was infamous for his uncouth style. He used foul language during press conferences, exhibited forms of ‘hypermasculinity’ (Encinas-Franco, 2022), talked about his sexual prowess as well as his old-man impotency in public, and he made ‘off-colour’ comments on individuals he would name or point to. His public vulgarity was a central feature of his style, all ‘bombast and bravado’ (Miller, 2018, p. 14) but with political consequences. Occasionally, his foul language was directed at traditionally respected quarters, such as the Catholic church, nuns, or even the Pope (for causing traffic jams during a visit to the Philippines) and the USA—an important ally. In general, his international standing was low and he found himself much snubbed and criticized. But he hit back with explicit anti-Westernism and a ‘cuss-laced defiance’ (Heydarian, 2020).
All this only made him popular. His unconventional, vulgar and brash style did not work against him, on the contrary (e.g., Teehankee & Thompson, 2016). His ratings were generally high. From early on he was ‘a rock star’ among overseas Filipino workers (Curato, 2017, p. vii). His vulgar style was a form of entertainment that helped him build his image as ‘authentic’ (Heydarian, 2018). He possessed ‘native intelligence’ (Miller, 2018, p. 143) and had ‘dark charisma’ (Curato, 2017, p. 1).
Extraordinary Beings
This dark charisma is a crucial element. But charisma, noise, clutter and hype offered by social media can only go so far in promoting or maintaining the popularity of a leader. The promotion needs a message and the message needs to appeal to an audience. In the cases of Duterte and Modi, there are four notions common to their political appeals.
First, both portrayed themselves as different from the traditional politicians (‘tra-po’ is a much-used Filipino term that also means ‘rag’) by being from the periphery. While Duterte spent 22 years as mayor of the country’s second-largest city, Davao, Modi spent 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. Although large, Davao is invariably looked down upon by the more sophisticated Manila elite, a fact that helped Duterte distinguish himself as a son of the soil. In the case of Modi, promoting his background as a low-caste tea-seller that had risen to political hights during the campaign as well as the contrast of the
Second, both men used their provincial histories to allow themselves a ‘common’ style and behaviour. Duterte underlined his ‘man of the people’ persona by using provincial expressions and a typical southern sense of inappropriate humour. His foul language, sexist innuendoes and folksy idioms and expressions riled the elite but amused the ordinary listener and made it possible for struggling lower middle-class voters to see a bit of themselves in him (Arguelles, 2019). Also, Modi identified himself as ‘of the people’ in his rhetorical style and revelled in provocative, even vulgar, speech. His body language distinguished him from the refined elites (Jaffrelot, 2021, p. 55) and he is characterized as a great believer in sarcasm and below-the-belt personal attacks. Attacks on his opponents by social media trolls were justified much in the same way, as being written by ordinary people. Amit Shah mused tongue-in-cheek that some of BJP’s cyber warriors could at times be using crass or offensive expressions because they were from provincial places (Mehta, 2022, Chapter 7).
Third, during their election campaigns in 2014 and 2016, respectively, both were able to point to achievements that were substantial enough to catch voters’ imagination. Duterte had turned Davao —originally a city with a reputation for lawlessness—into a city of relative peace and order, while Modi could point to an impressive 10% annual growth rate sustained for more than a decade while he was the chief minister. Both campaigns effectively hid unsavoury aspects of their success stories, such as the fact that Duterte had relied on rogue police officers and enforcers engaged in extrajudicial killings while Modi’s ‘Gujarat model’ had not had social justice on the agenda and had left the poor behind.
Both campaigns also hid the fact that neither leader were entirely self-made men. They were both ‘made’ by vast networks and organizations that promoted them. Despite his claim to be an anti-establishment maverick, Duterte’s family background is in old and powerful political clans in central Philippines (Miller, 2018; Teehankee & Thompson, 2016). Modi’s background was in fact humble compared to Duterte, but, as Jaffrelot (2021) points out, he rose through the ranks of a well-built and extensive RSS and his candidacy as chief minister in 2001 and prime minister in 2014 came on the back of the larger Sangh Parivar.
The interesting point is that their achievements in both cases were advertised as individual accomplishments, as due to personal qualities rather than to any coherent ideology, detailed policy programme or organizational backing. Both campaigns focused on personal abilities, their success in life as in politics and on personal acumen. There were few details in their election campaigns, nor any programme for how to bring their provincial success stories to the national level. At most they hinted at radical methods albeit with little substance. This kind of appeal was admirably suited for social media, their preferred platform.
Exceptional Man
Crucially, both men displayed willingness to break with convention, with tradition and decency, and even with law. This is most clearly expressed in how violence is a common feature in both histories. Duterte had experimented extensively with violence during his 22 years as mayor of Davao. His gangs of rogue police officers had operated with ‘watch lists’ and engaged in random acts of extrajudicial killing (Miller, 2018, p. 266). Never admitting to any wrong-doing, Duterte ran for the presidency unapologetic about his record and threatening all the time to replicate his violent success story—‘It will be bloody’, he held at one point, and ‘God will cry’ at another. In office, his ‘war on drugs’ gave the police impunity as bodies of drug peddlers and drug addicts were left on the streets and on the pavements as a demonstration or a deterrent. This ‘scattering of corpses written upon and read as virtual political texts’ constitutes what McCoy (2017) calls ‘performative violence’. The bodies of the dead were inscribed with a political message, that the president is all-mighty and above the law. In total, more people died at the hands of police officers or vigilantes enjoying official impunity than during the years of dictatorship under Ferdinand Marcos Sr. or during the ‘troubles’ of Northern Ireland (Miller, 2018, p. 17).
The war on drugs in the Philippines was unique, but the performative violence that it represented has parallels in an Indian context. The bloody pogroms against Muslims that happened during Modi’s early years as chief minister have by many critics been laid at his doorstep. He has denied culpability and the legal system has exonerated him, but at the same time he has not apologised for what happened on his watch or indeed taken any step towards reconciliation with the Muslim community. A suspicion of implicit support of the violence was strong enough for him to be denied visa to the USA while chief minister. The violence of the state and the inscribing of the political message on the bodies of the dead continued in the years following Modi’s national election victory. Muslims during the Delhi riots, for instance, or Dalits murdered by so-called cow-vigilantes, became fully visible symbols of a reigning majoritarian Hindu nationalism over which presided Modi (Chatterji et al., 2019; Hasan, 2021; Nielsen & Nilsen, 2022).
One way of interpreting the violence is to see it as an expression of self-centred autocracy. But the violence is always exercised on behalf of ‘the people’, in defence of the nation or in defence of morality. When Duterte was (massively) criticised at home and abroad for allowing and even encouraging such a large-scale murders, he dismissed it arguing that ‘My country transcends everything’ (Miller, 2018, p. 68). Murder with impunity was justified with reference to the larger national good. Similarly, Modi was able to exploit a Hindu majority’s inchoate sense of being beleaguered and a ‘victim’ (Chatterji et al., 2019; Palshikar, 2022) to implement controversial policies such as the Citizen Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, the aberration of Section 57 for Kashmir, the bombing of a hillside across the border in Pakistan, the Vishwanath temple corridor, and other policies, and to get away with his reluctance to touch things Muslims.
More to the point, Modi has expressed his uniqueness in sudden and all-encompassing decisions, in particular demonetization and the closing-down of the country to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. The two decisions are telling expressions of the kind of action-oriented, person-centric decision-making that constitute the strongman style. Both decisions were abruptly announced, they affected the entire country and they came bearing the imprint of the decision-maker more than deliberative processes and institutional collaboration. The delivery of the decision in an unscheduled live broadcast with Modi solemnly announcing the policy hours before more than 80% of the value of currency notes in circulation became invalid was a masterstroke. It put Modi squarely in the middle of a policy change that had a sense of urgency as well as moral justification (black money) and which demanded a sacrifice of every Indian in the name of the nation. The decision to close the country for 21 days to fight the corona virus two years later came with the same sense of urgency, national sacrifice and personal imprint of Modi.
The defining position of the sovereign is as the creator of law, the maker is above the law and can be the law-breaker (‘antinomian’ in Yelle’s (2018) terminology). For both Duterte and Modi, their bravado performativity breaks moral boundaries or ignores legal and traditional restrictions while setting the performer squarely in the middle of attention. They gain a position of exceptionality, what Willner (1984) called ‘exceptional figures’, as individuals endowed with superior insights and perhaps a degree of invulnerability or other ‘auratic’ qualities (Michelutti et al., 2018). Their irreverent acts symbolize their personification as the sovereign will of the people, as the people’s ultimate representative—above convention. The emergence of this strongman leader type was made possible by the revolutionary introduction of electronic and online media. As amplifier of a populist message, new media shaped the emergence of a particular kind of irreverent norm-breaking personalized leadership. It has encouraged a form of delivery that lends itself to the grand symbolic gesture, in which breaking convention can communicate personal identification, compassion and demands for sacrifice more effectively than contemplated, measured and deliberative forms of leadership. Social media has, possibly, fundamentally altered the ways in which democratic politics is conducted.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the journal’s reviewer for excellent comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
Research for this article was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council Grant Leadership and democratic participation in Asia (Grant Number 314849).