The Ascent of Asian Strongmen: Emerging Market Populism and the Revolt Against Liberal Globalization

Abstract

The chapter looks at the emergence of right-wing populism in emerging market democracies, from Turkey to India and Indonesia, but with particular focus on the rise of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. The chapter argues that this represents the third wave of anti-globalization popular backlash, with the first one emerging in response to trade liberalization under the World Trade Organization, reaching its apotheosis in the 1990 Battle in Seattle, and the second phase emerging in the aftermath of the 2007 Great Recession, which was followed by the Arab uprisings in 2011-2012 and emergence of anti-capitalist movements in the West, from Syriza in Greece to the Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States. The first two phases were largely civil society-centric with potent left-wing, progressive ideological tinge. The emergence of right-wing populism in countries like the Philippines, however, represents a more state-centric, reactionary, and agential turn in the anti-globalization movement in the East. A closer look, however, reveals that their rise to power was predicated on a widespread backlash against the deleterious dynamics of globalization, particularly the explosion of inequality, inflation, and sense of alimentation and disenchantment among the rising middle class and the masses in the developing world in the twenty-first century.