Rethinking Authoritarian Nostalgia in the Philippines

Burgeoning scholarly discussion of - and worries about – the global spread of authoritarian nostalgia has raised further questions about liberal democracy’s future. Warming memories of Donald Trump’s term in office potentially affecting the US presidential election outcome is an obvious example. In Southeast Asia, the landslide victory Prabawo Subianto as Indonesian president earlier this year has been attributed partly to voters “pining” for that authoritarian era. In the Philippines, nostalgia for the Marcos dictatorship is being eclipsed by yearning for past strongman president Rodrigo R. Duterte. In an effort to rethink authoritarian nostalgia in the Philippines, the panel includes a comparison with the Indonesian case and not only analyzes nostalgia for Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. (as well as his son's efforts to redeem the family name) but also for Duterte's illiberal rule. It also employs multi-disciplinary approaches - social media analysis, ethnography, process tracing and survey research. The panel - comprised of two women and three men from four different institutions with two early career and three senior scholars - includes papers assessing the role social media played in authoritarian nostalgia in the 2022 Philippine and the 2024 Indonesian presidential elections; offering a detailed ethnographic account of the Marcos "loyalista mentality"; analyzing the second Marcos presidency through the prism of the “politics of redemption”; and using public opinion polling to demonstrate longing for Rodrigo Duterte has grown while the popularity of Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., once fueled by nostalgia for his father’s rule, has recently ebbed.