Prevailing scholarship on populism focuses on explaining polarized patterns of support and opposition for populist regimes. This paper extends this conceptualization to account for the fragmented politics of Global South democracies. Invoking the concept of cognitive polyphasia, we map the Filipino public’s social representations of Duterte’s populist regime in the Philippines. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, we uncover a representational field organized by the two dimensions of political alignment (support vs. opposition) and political frame (individual vs. system). Diversely embedded in this polyphasic field, supporters of the regime may construct Duterte’s individual leadership in terms of paternalistic patriotism, or the broader government as a morally-bankrupt yet progressive technocracy. Opposition to the regime may frame the president as an oppressive tyrant, or his administration as a historical continuation of entrenched state violence. Our findings contribute to extant populism debates by describing unique representational processes of differentiation and annexation in unequal populist publics. We reflect on implications for democratic engagement in the Philippines and the broader Global South.
Scholars characterize populist publics as polarized. We argued that in unequal democracies like the Philippines, simple categories of support (pro-populist) and opposition (anti-populist) do not fully capture the diverse ways that the public responds to populist leaders. By mixing quantitative survey data with qualitative open-ended text responses, we discovered that Filipinos who support and oppose President Duterte are further divided according to whether they represent his regime in terms of his individual leadership or a wider system of government. Past studies focused on how the public relies on simplified narratives which differentiate 'good' versus 'evil' in making sense of the populist leader. Building on this idea, we also show how citizens complicate their perspectives by connecting their worldviews to rich notions of governance and local histories. Moreover, we show how these processes are impacted by social inequality, as it breaks Philippine society down into more fragmented groups which see the populist regime in clashing ways.
Extensive scholarship links populist democracies to polarized publics (
We empirically engage this question by invoking the concept of cognitive polyphasia (
The concept of populism is richly debated across a range of disciplines. To focus our conceptual argument, we align ourselves with scholarship which views the relationship between populist leaders and their publics in terms of performative processes over ideological contents (
Supply-side scholarship emphasizes the crisis narratives leaders deploy to consolidate the public’s allegiance (
From the demand-side, various studies associate populist support with anomie, low trust in institutions, and perceived group-level grievances (
In both supply and demand accounts, prior populism research elucidates meaningful processes explaining the emergence of populist leaders and their widespread public support. As
This paper attempts to address this research gap. We specifically propose that not only is opposition to populist leaders under-theorized; we also problematize the support-opposition axis which cuts across prevailing inquiries into populist publics. By highlighting the uniquely fragmented politics of Global South democracies, we aim to capture the contextual nuances which shape the meaning-making processes in which populist publics engage.
Democracies worldwide adhere to diverse models of political systems and practice, especially in contexts of inequality and stratification (
Similar dynamics motivate our proposed examination of populist publics in the Philippines. Paralleling the mainstream populist storyline, President Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 presidential campaign rode on a fevered wave of resentment and outrage against an entrenched political elite (
However, the Philippine example also departs from the traditional populism model in significant ways. Duterte’s ascent to power took place against the backdrop of ill-defined ideological divides (
We posit that such complications lend fertile ground for examining meaning-making among the Filipino populist public that exceeds a binary of support and opposition. We contend that a Philippine case study exemplifies how the fragilities of Global South politics disrupt an uninhibited application of analytic categories in the populism literature (
Social representations theory describes meaning-making in society in terms of socially shared knowledge (
Cognitive polyphasia embraces these general properties of social representations with emphasis on the co-existence of multiple, possibly contradictory forms of knowledge in a single society. Highlighting its constructivist orientation,
Cognitive polyphasia captures diverse social representations of the populist Duterte regime through a politico-psychological lens. We go beyond a traditional model of political polarization by integratively apprehending the broader representational processes with which the Filipino public make sense of populist democracy. Therefore, we ask: What are the social representations of Duterte’s populist regime? How do they constitute a polyphasic representational field in relation to populist governance in the Philippines?
Methodology in social representations theory is notably flexible and open to innovation (
Our framework has two main steps: firstly, we
Methodologies examining diversity in subjective meaning-making employ sampling and testing procedures informed by different theoretical principles than mainstream quantitative research. Following the exploratory sampling principles outlined by
Demographics | % | |
---|---|---|
Age | ||
22.17 | - | |
4.29 | - | |
Sex | ||
Female | 77 | 52.03 |
Male | 70 | 47.30 |
Prefer not to say | 1 | 0.68 |
Education | ||
High school | 25 | 16.89 |
College or higher | 123 | 83.11 |
Place of Origin | ||
National Capital Region | 60 | 40.54 |
Luzon | 22 | 14.86 |
Visayas | 52 | 35.14 |
Mindanao | 14 | 9.46 |
After providing informed consent, participants filled out a questionnaire composed of structured and unstructured questions. Structured questions included 25 items related to the Duterte regime on a 7-point Likert scale. Items were generated through a localization of key concepts in the populism scholarship (e.g., unconditional support for leader, rejection of previous government) and major political events related to the Duterte administration. Exact wordings were finalized through pilot studies with six cultural insiders. In the final survey, ten items expressed diverse statements of support and opposition for Duterte. Fifteen additional items represented subjective assessments related to five flagship policies of Duterte’s legislative agenda. The final section of the survey asked participants to provide unstructured responses to open-ended questions in relation to his leadership, his policies, and his standing relative to the preceding administration.
To map the representational field of the Duterte regime, we conducted principal component analysis on closed-ended survey responses. Principal component analysis projected both item scores and participants into a shared low-dimensional space that maximized explained variance. We determined the final number of principal components based on additional variance explained, using 10% as a threshold of added variance.
This procedure accomplished two key tasks: firstly, it surfaced the latent structure of the survey items, revealing interrelationships between individual statements and overarching patterns of meaning-making which structured participant responses. Such dimensionality reduction methods align naturally with social representations theory, which conceive of representational fields as structured according to ‘organizing principles’ (
Secondly, we uncovered underlying communities among the participants utilizing their coordinates on the representational field. We systematically selected individuals belonging to each group for qualitative analysis of their responses to the open-ended survey questions (
We familiarized ourselves with the transcripts and generated initial codes by reading responses in the order of their scores on each dimension (i.e., high to low). Taking advantage of our mixed methods framework, these scores provided direction to our reading process, as they showed gradations in meaning-making as established by our latent dimensions. Conversely, participants’ personal narratives and subjective reasoning contextualized their quantitative scores and enriched our understanding of the representational field more broadly (
Finally, we generated labels for our themes based on distinct configurations of meaning cutting across participants’ responses, following qualitative principles of ‘internal homogeneity’ and ‘external heterogeneity’ (
Our integrated analysis surfaced a two-dimensional polyphasic representational field which captures yet complicates patterns of support and opposition for a populist democracy.
In the sections that follow, we first present an overview of the quantitatively derived representational field and its organizing dimensions, namely: political alignment (support vs. opposition), and political frame (individual vs. system).
Item Code | Full Text | D1 | D2 |
---|---|---|---|
Duterte_Hope | Duterte’s leadership makes me feel hope for the country’s future. | +10.68 | -1.62 |
Duterte_KnowsDoing | The Duterte administration knows what it is doing. | +7.16 | +0.24 |
Duterte_TheAnswer | President Duterte is the answer to our country’s problems. | +4.60 | -3.48 |
Duterte_Unconditional | I will support Duterte no matter what. | +6.52 | -2.86 |
Duterte_VoteAgain | If it were 2016 again, I would vote for Duterte for President. | +13.40 | -3.28 |
Admin_BetterOff | The Philippines was better off under the Aquino administration. | -23.17 | -3.20 |
Admin_HumanRights | I am worried that leaders in this administration do not respect human rights. | -22.62 | -2.22 |
Admin_IncrementalChange | Incremental change is better than the unorthodox methods of the present government. | -18.88 | -1.38 |
Admin_Preference | I prefer the Aquino administration’s approach to running the Philippines. | -23.16 | -2.61 |
Admin_ReverseDamage | In 2022, I will vote for a candidate that will reverse the damage caused by Duterte. | -27.81 | -4.24 |
BBB_BetterOff | The Philippines will be better off because of the Build, Build, Build program. | +2.83 | +9.11 |
BBB_Happy | I am happy that the Build, Build, Build program is being implemented. | +3.94 | +9.31 |
BBB_Necessary | The Build, Build, Build program is necessary for the country’s progress. | +2.73 | +7.99 |
DrugWar_BetterOff | The Philippines will be better off because of the War on Drugs. | +9.26 | -4.98 |
DrugWar_Happy | I am happy that the War on Drugs is being implemented. | +11.37 | -5.10 |
DrugWar_Necessary | The War on Drugs is necessary for the country’s progress. | +10.09 | -6.66 |
Federalism_BetterOff | The Philippines will be better off because of federalism. | +4.00 | -2.36 |
Federalism_Happy | I am happy about the move to federalize the Philippines. | +7.04 | -2.15 |
Federalism_Necessary | Federalism is necessary for the country’s progress. | +6.21 | -4.23 |
ML_BetterOff | The Philippines will be better off because of martial law in Mindanao. | +4.37 | -3.49 |
ML_Happy | I am happy that martial law is being implemented in Mindanao. | +7.42 | -3.66 |
ML_Necessary | Martial law in Mindanao is necessary for the country’s progress. | +6.99 | -2.97 |
TRAIN_BetterOff | The Philippines will be better off because of the TRAIN Law. | -1.42 | +11.08 |
TRAIN_Happy | I am happy that the TRAIN Law is being implemented. | -0.42 | +11.53 |
TRAIN_Necessary | The TRAIN Law is necessary for the country’s progress. | -1.15 | +11.25 |
Polyphasic representational field of the Duterte regime.
We follow this up with specific social representations adopted by participants across different locations on the representational field, which we have divided into four quadrants in
Participant anchoring in polyphasic representational field.
Because succeeding factors each contributed less than 10% of the total variance, only the first two principal components were retained in our analysis of the representational field. By triangulating item scores with participants’ qualitative responses, we argue that the first axis of this latent space captures a given representation’s political alignment in terms of support or opposition to the populist regime. On the other hand, the second axis expresses the political frame of a representation in its relative emphasis on Duterte’s individual leadership versus broader government systems. In the results that follow, we present participants’ and items’ locations on the representational field in terms of these two dimensions (D1 and D2).
Explaining 45.1% of the variance in the data, the first dimension corresponds to political alignment with or against the Duterte regime. Items on the right represent Duterte in a positive light, encompassing affirmative constructions of his competence as a president (‘Duterte_KnowsDoing’, D1: +7.16; ‘Duterte_TheAnswer’, D1: +4.60), the hope his leadership brings (‘Duterte_Hope’, D1: +10.68; ‘DrugWar_Happy’, D1: +11.37), and the concrete actions of support he inspires (‘Duterte_VoteAgain’, D1: +13.40; ‘Duterte_Unconditional’, D1: +6.52). Alex and Anna, who had high positive scores along this dimension, explain:
Alex and Anna support Duterte’s leadership by anchoring it in his ability to ‘get the job done’ and ‘make the country better’ in contrast to the ‘Aquino administration which ruined the country.’ Such meanings embody support for the populist leader with an appreciation for his strongman policies and a rejection of a previous elite government, echoing robust findings in the populism literature (
This is in stark contrast to the left side of this axis, wherein items correspond to negative representations of Duterte, citing opposition to his strongman political style in favor of incremental change (‘Admin_IncrementalChange’, D1: -18.88) and rejection of his violent policies in favor of principles of human rights (‘Admin_HumanRights’, D1: -22.62). This side of the support-opposition axis expresses a preference for Duterte’s predecessor (‘Admin_Preference’, D1: -23.16) and longing for the next elections to reverse the damage Duterte has done (‘Admin_ReverseDamage’, D1: -27.81). Brent and Britney share such sentiments, arguing:
Whereas Alex and Anna place faith in Duterte’s actions, Brent and Britney express disillusionment with the populist leader’s promises of change. Brent notes that developments in the Philippines have dampened any initial ‘hope’ Duterte’s leadership might have kindled in him, while Britney is forthright in indicting the administration as full of ‘cronyism, corruption, and abuse of power.’ Referencing Duterte’s putative championing of the people, Brent and Britney agree that Duterte merely ‘took advantage’ of the masses and ‘played’ the nation ‘as fools.’ These accounts demonstrate how populist opposition may challenge the populist narrative directly, re-presenting the populist leader’s championing of the people’s interests as a disingenuous ploy for tyrannical power. These findings resonate with prior findings among anti-populist parties and the media (
The second principal component captures 10.3% of the variance in the data, corresponding to the political frame of a given social representation. We invoke political frames in line with
In this case, complementary to the primary political alignment axis, the political frame axis distinguishes between representations focusing on Duterte’s individual leadership versus his broader administration as a system. This secondary axis draws a salient distinction between items linked to complex economic policies about tax reform (TRAIN) and infrastructure development (Build, Build, Build [BBB]), in contrast to the rest of the items which discuss Duterte personally (both positively and negatively) and policies more closely linked to his electoral campaign and pronouncements (e.g., the Drug War). Thus, it appears that while meanings of the Duterte regime diverge primarily based on political alignment, such evaluations are grounded in likewise divergent representational frames vis-à-vis distinct features of the populist regime.
To unpack this distinction further, we note how Carlos and Carissa, who obtained negative scores on the second dimension (i.e., individual political frame), express their assessments of Duterte’s leadership:
Carlos and Carissa vary in their representations of Duterte as boon or bane to the Philippines, but they share a common focus on individual leadership. Expressing well-documented contrasts between the populist leader and the liberal governments they succeed, Carlos expresses support for Duterte by emphasizing his greater ‘productivity’ over his predecessor Aquino. Personality-based framing extends to Carlos’s representation of the prior regime, which he judges in terms of the president’s good ‘intentions’ thwarted by ‘corruption.’ On the other hand, Carissa demonstrates how personality-based framing may also inform populist opposition for Filipinos located closer to the individual end (bottom) of the individual-system axis. She rejects the regime by framing it in terms of Duterte’s personal ‘choices’ as a leader, which she finds unhelpful to the country because they are not ‘very thorough.’
In contrast, Debbie and Danny, who scored positively on the second dimension (i.e., systemic political frame), share their evaluations of Duterte’s administration:
Though Debbie and Danny occupy different positions along the primary axis, their diverging views of the Duterte regime are not based on the president’s personality or promises. Instead, they frame their evaluations based on whether the regime’s policies are ‘ineffective’ or ‘have issues.’ Whereas Duterte rose to power in line with prevailing populism models, Debbie and Danny show how support and opposition may be engendered along criteria separate from the personality politics and intergroup conflict emphasized in past scholarship. For Filipinos closer to the system pole (top) of the representational field’s secondary axis, political divisions may instead be grounded in economic and infrastructure programs linked to the broader administration, while populist measures like the drug war may be conditionally nuanced even among Duterte’s supporters due to their policy implications.
Whereas the foregoing analysis characterized broad themata of the representational field of the Duterte regime, we now deepen our analysis of the diverse social representations adopted among his supporters and detractors. Each participant occupies a unique location on the representational field corresponding to distinct patterns of shared and unshared meanings of the Duterte regime. Invoking the four quadrants on our quantitative map, we qualitatively interpret participants’ open-ended responses to examine the representational dynamics of cognitive polyphasia among the populist-led Filipino public.
Participants with positive scores on the first dimension and negative scores on the second correspond to Duterte supporters who represent his regime in terms of his individual leadership. Embedded in Quadrant 1 (
Emma and Fidel locate their support for the Duterte regime in the president’s person, constructing him as both patriot and father figure to the country. By invoking his ‘nationalism,’ ‘care,’ and ‘willpower,’ they construct Duterte as a heroic individual who must lead a country afflicted with numerous ‘problems’ and ‘get the job done’ despite resistance from the ‘many’ who are offended by his efforts. As argued earlier, such constructions resonate not only with narratives of support for populist leaders in general, but also with scripts of authoritarian parenting which pervade a collectivist, high power-distance culture like the Philippines (
Discipline, in this view, constitutes an imperative of heteronomous trust in authority figures like the populist leader (the father), predicated on the populace (the children) ‘adjusting’ and ‘accepting’ the president’s actions without question. Only under such conditions, in this view, might Filipinos achieve progress: by aligning themselves with Duterte’s ‘changes’ for ‘the future’ and ‘betterment’ of the nation. Individually framed representations of populist support in the Philippines thus not only lionize the populist leader, but also sets up an ideal of dutiful citizenship in terms of loyal obedience to the leader. By linking the patriotism of Duterte to the patriotism of the citizenry through a paternalistic lens, such representations implicitly position ‘negative feedback’ of the regime as inutile, thereby sharply demarcating boundaries between populist supporters and detractors as in-group and out-group, respectively, of Duterte’s family-cum-nation.
Other supporters of the Duterte regime focus on the substantive policies enacted by the administration. Participants with positive scores on both dimensions highlight the sophistication in the Duterte government’s management of the economy, despite the recognition of corruption and incompetence which may nonetheless remain embedded in the system. Embedded in Quadrant 2 (
In representing the Duterte regime, Gemma and Harold prioritize an assessment of economic legislation such as the TRAIN Law (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) or comprehensive infrastructure programs like Build, Build, Build. By emphasizing issues of ‘economic management’ and ‘implementation’, technocratic representations of the regime eclipse the significance of Duterte’s populist leadership and recover the multifaceted functionalities of government systems. In such representations, recognition of the moral (‘corrupt’) or possibly technical (‘I doubt anyone else knows’) failings of the populist leadership no longer requires redemption through personality-based assessments of nationalism and care. Instead, implicit concession is made that while the Duterte administration is imperfect, the Philippines may still benefit over time due to its technocratic competence (Finance Minister ‘Dominguez’).
Hence, while some minor recognition is accorded to the Duterte administration’s putative political will, greater credit is given to the ‘complexity’ and ‘rightness’ of policy decisions in bringing about ‘more jobs, more infrastructure’. By prioritizing system-based representations of the political governance, some Filipinos may compartmentalize their view of the Duterte regime and thereby compartmentalize support for it as well, noting that they need not be ‘pro all the economic stances of the administration.’ Meaning-making along these lines thus does not buy into the conventional anti-liberal and anti-technocratic narrative of support drummed up by the populist leader from a supply-side perspective. Interestingly, such support does not seek to distance itself from the failings of liberal democracy, but rather sees its continued workings of ‘incremental change’ even in the context of populist regimes. Such representations thus result in nuanced and ambivalent support that is granted with a streak of practical Machiavellianism.
For opposition to the regime, however, the moral failings of Duterte as a leader cannot be redeemed or negotiated. Embedded in Quadrant 3 (
Tyrannical representations of the Duterte regime strongly reverse the caring and patriotic figure espoused by populist supporters, constructing Duterte as an ignorant (‘naïve way of doing things’), indifferent (‘don’t care about the country’), and violent (‘he wanted them to die’) oppressor of the people. Focusing on his uncouth ‘cussing’, defilement of ‘human rights’, and intolerance for the dissent of ‘people he doesn’t like’, participants belonging to this third category represent Duterte’s populist qualities as those of one emphatically unfit for political leadership in a democracy. Instead, they are emblematic of the sinister despotic tendencies (‘a government where he can do anything that he wants’) of a ‘murderer’, whose violent policies specifically aggravate the lives of ‘the poor and oppressed’—thus reversing the populist’s ostensible status as the people’s champion. In this manner, supporters of the regime are correspondingly reframed as ‘idiotic’, whose ‘nationalistic sentiments’ have been severely misplaced.
Opposition to the Duterte regime is underpinned by a powerful moral rejection of Duterte’s person and his unprecedented denigration of Philippine democracy. For some, this rejection sparks contrast with the preceding Aquino administration, against which the Duterte campaign had propped up their crusade for sweeping change. Because the prior government at least ‘didn’t blatantly encourage murder,’ some detractors of the Duterte regime return nostalgically to it as a flawed but morally preferable alternative. Individualized focus on the populist leader thus paints political opposition to his regime in terms of extreme and exceptional villainy, condemning it wholesale and seeking a return to democratic politics as exemplified in the past.
Finally, respondents with negative scores on the first axis but positive scores on the second represent the present plight of Philippine democracy not as a sui generis breakpoint but as a historical continuation of long-standing state violence (
By framing previous presidencies (‘Aquino failed’; ‘Arroyo, Estrada, and Marcos stole’) as complicit in the current state of political turmoil, the Duterte regime’s ‘flaws and injustices’ are historicized within a systemic frame of corruption and oppression with roots which grow deeper than any individual leader. Thus, members of this final category overall reject nostalgia for a better political past (‘no better’) and instead focus on the urgent need for deepened democratization (‘get better with our democracy’) in the future. Such oppositional representations contrast with individual-based charges of tyranny, which view the populist leader as an exception and therefore seek to go ‘back to normal.’ Interestingly, detractors adopting such representations share with populist supporters a condemnation of the corrupt elite which had dominated Philippine politics. However, to these detractors, Duterte does not represent the cure to the nation’s political malady, only its culmination, anchoring the direct violence perpetrated under his leadership in the wider context of structural violence (
By foregrounding a system-focused representation of political governance, historical representations of the Duterte regime correspondingly propose an institutional response, one that breaks free from the ‘continuous forgiveness’ of personality politics in the Philippines which has perpetuated the chokehold of the ‘rich and powerful’ over the ‘weak and poor’ (
This paper utilized the concept of cognitive polyphasia to examine social representations of Duterte’s populist regime in the Philippines. Integrating quantitative and qualitative methods, we mapped the organizing themata of the Filipino public’s representational field and characterized the polyphasic meanings different groups may adopt across its dimensions. Our findings highlight novel contributions to extant debates in the populism literature, specifically in terms of attending to politico-psychological plurality with which citizens enact ‘world-making assumptions’ in the context of fragmented Global South democracies (
We discuss implications of our findings in terms of unique representational processes of
Previous scholarship emphasized the dual processes of vertical and horizontal differentiation which underpin support for populist regimes in the West (
Furthermore, our findings novelly demonstrate how opposition to the populist regime likewise perform practices of differentiation parallel to those of populist supporters. By adopting tyrannical meanings of the Duterte regime, the populist opposition
Diametric contestation between communities representing Duterte as either a patriot or a tyrant constitutes sharp polarization among the Filipino public in line with the prevailing scholarship on populist publics. Extending this view, we propose that underpinning such polemical representations are not only bifurcated meanings of Duterte’s populist leadership, but also competing assertions of rightful citizenship as ‘true’ Filipinos.
This paper introduces the new concept of representational annexation, as a complementary meaning-making process undertaken by populist publics. We define representational annexation as a process of linking, extending, or fusing meanings of social objects to complicate and specify their politico-psychological force. Besides extending the purview of representational differentiation across political alignments, we show how divergent political frames exceed and enrich a polarized view of populist support and opposition.
Our findings exemplify these processes especially among system-based representations of the regime. By embedding the populist leader within wider systemic contexts, the public locate their moral evaluation of the regime not solely in Duterte’s personality or imputed authenticity, but in the broader structural contours which nest his leadership. Diversely deployed both by Duterte’s supporters and detractors, representational annexation may serve to amplify or diminish the centrality and accountability of the populist leader, thereby constituting unique political meanings of populism not otherwise emphasized in previous scholarship.
For instance, communities adopting technocratic representations of the regime annex Duterte’s strongman politics and repudiation of democratic norms to multifaceted institutions like the Department of Finance, which persist with economic sophistication despite the president’s putative barbarism. Among Duterte’s supporters, then, representational annexation informs favor for the regime by expanding the scope of what it means to evaluate Duterte’s presidency. In doing so, representational annexation renders visible the ambiguities and contradictions which pervade any system of government. Whereas such disjunctures expose the susceptibility of governance to volatility in parts, they also recover its capacity to withstand absolute corruption (or absolute salvation) as a whole.
By contrast, communities which subscribe to historical representations annex the Duterte regime to long-standing state violence, invoking collective memories of corrupt, authoritarian regimes wracked with military repression and economic precarity. In this light, representational annexation enflames populist opposition by exposing the fragmented political system which enabled the rise of Duterte in the first place, thus seeking its reformation beyond the replacement of Duterte himself.
In both cases, what is at stake is no longer a contestation of
Such compounded fragmentations in the meaning-making processes we observe emphasize how fragile Global South politics elide direct application of dominant supply-side and demand-side populist scholarship. While some representational practices do run parallel to those documented in Western democracies, Global South democracies mobilize unique and unequal patterns of populist support and opposition. The public’s relationship to populist regimes encompasses not only ideological divides, but also diverse politico-psychological attunements to raw personality politics, authoritarian paternalism, bureaucratic institutions, and histories of militarized state violence (
We anchor these divergent frames in the highly uneven social landscape constituting the stratified Philippine society. Local scholars have long documented the co-existence of bifurcated moral politics tied to classed inequalities (
As populism continues to sweep nations worldwide, we propose that such considerations are vital toward the process of democratization. As our work shows, political polarization in populist democracies is underpinned by complex processes of cognitive polyphasia. Such dynamics are exacerbated in the fragmented and stratified political contexts of Global South democracies. In the Philippines, as in many populist regimes worldwide, populist supporters appear to be unified by a clear leader and common sense of loyalty and patriotism. In contrast, citizens critical of the regime may excuse its moral ambiguities, or else diverge in terms of a crucial discordance between returning to a prior state of liberal governance and the more fundamental task of democratic reimagination (
What forms of political change are possible in view of both polarization and polyphasia? Which shared and unshared meanings might enable or foreclose collective action among disparate, polyphasic communities? Our work does not claim to answer these questions, but rather emphasize their urgency by empirically mapping the plural and complex representational practices which drive them.
At this juncture, we note that several considerations may limit the conclusions to be drawn from our findings. While following established principles for sampling in semi-qualitative methodologies (
Future work may thus considerably extend our findings toward further deepening populism scholarship through the lens of politico-psychological plurality. Utilizing our exploratory findings, more traditional survey-oriented methods may construct more statistically valid measures of diverse populist attitudes. On the other hand, from a conceptual standpoint, we note that cognitive polyphasia may also refer to the co-existence of multiple social representations not only among groups, but also within a single individual (
The authors have no funding to report.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable feedback of the journal editor and two anonymous reviewers in revising this manuscript. We also thank Angelica Sinay, Karl Estuart, and Catherine Tan for thoughtful comments on early versions of this research.