Exploring ‘Dutertismo’ Duterte’s populist foreign policy in the face of the Obama-Trump transition.

Abstract

What happens when a populist head of state controls state foreign policy-making, and how does their populist style change in response to a transition of government in countries they rerceive as a threat? There have been suggestions in literature about how the controversial phenomenon of populism operates in the international level: it has shifted power relations in the regional level, clashed competing interests between fellow populist leaders, or lessened the use of multilateral diplomacy. In analyzing the case of the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, this study will take the lens of populism as a political style that securitizes existential threats, and articulates such threats in their public performances that concern the United States. Using discourse analysis on speech acts from Duterte and his cabinet members, this study explores how Duterte has shifted his foreign policy strategy with the United States in the midst of the latter’s transition of government from a non-populist (Barack Obama) to a populist president (Donald Trump).