Populism and Public Opinon

Delving into governance styles regarding drug policy and related regimes in the region, and social and public views on the death penalty.

Populists are charismatic leaders who seek to mobilise the masses to gain and retain power. They construct to mobilise the masses to gain and retain power. They construct political spaces in terms of conflict between ‘good’ people and impure ‘others’.

Populist leaders may flout the law, yet support for them is deeply bound with society’s desire for order in time of crisis. They differ from other types of political leaders as they lack a deeply institutionalised base of support. They use low-cost strategies to mobilise voters directly, and rely on mainstream, social media and mass rallies. Populist discourses commonly reject evidence, expert opinions and international standards, pointing to popular support to justify and legitimise their policies.

Populists don’t focus on the details and nitty gritty of policy proposals. They typically draw a large boundary around their potential support base, usually by targeting and excluding a small and ‘undesirable’ minority.

In this sense, populists find opposition to crime, particularly anti-social crime such as drug dealing and use, extremely useful in drawing together otherwise diverse coalitions.

For much of the 1990s, drugs were not a salient political issue. Those living in authoritarian regimes were more concerned with gaining basic rights, while those in democratising states worried about inflation, employment, public health and corruption.

But threats to social order, such as those portrayed to be posed by drugs and drug-related criminality, allow for populists to thrive by playing on fears of criminality and disorder.

The lack of deep understanding into issues like drug use and public health is galvanised for votes. Populists exploit the lower classes’ perceptions of social decay supposedly caused by drugs, and the middle and upper classes’ fear of the impact of drug-related crime on public safety and security of property.

There is an often neglected link between populism and the war on drugs: the pursuit of order. Populism as an ideology may refer to the belief that the people’s will should prevail over that of the elite but, in practice, this ideology coalesces into the form of a charismatically-led mass movement that might end up undermining democracy and further alienating communities that are already disadvantaged and marginalised.

Populists’ anti-drug campaign in the region

The use of capital punishment as a method of drug control is pervasive in Asia, in contrast with global abolitionist trends. It is asserted that capital punishment reflects unique ‘Asian values’, purportedly placing the interest of the community over that of the individual. However, this fails to recognise the problem with normalising punishment over understanding and support and the harms that drug control and punitive measures impose on the individual and communities.

Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines made extremist proclamations of wanting to dump corpses of dealers and addicts in Manila Bay, and to push criminals out of helicopters. The war on drugs he waged while in office as president caused thousand, perhaps even tens of thousands, of deaths, mostly among poor and marginalised communities.

Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand also waged a war on drugs. In the first three months, there were about 2,800 extrajudicial killings, and thousands were forced into “treatment” programmes. The government portrayed drug users and dealers as a threat to society. Those who pushed back against this drug policy were also treated as suspect. But these had little real impact on the prevalence of drugs in Thailand.

Joko Widodo of Indonesia gave authorities “shoot on sight” orders for suspected drug dealers. This intensified killings and provided almost blanket impunity for officers to simply to shoot to kill, rather than in self-defence as mandated by law. Joko’s campaign produced over a hundred fatalities, and now over a half of those on death row are for drug-related offences.

Public Opinon

Surveys conducted in China, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand suggest that the public knows little, and has little interest in, the death penalty. Support for capital punishment is based on a faulty understanding of key facts. Public support appears to be rooted in beliefs of the deterrent effect of the death penalty and perfect justice, both of which have been disproved.

An increase in knowledge is correlated to a decrease in support. The public may agree with the death penalty ‘in theory’ but has a more cautious attitude when faced with concrete scenarios. More rigorous polling exercises demonstrates that public support for capital punishment – both in general and for drug offences specifically – is instinctive, abstract, elastic and contextual.

For example, while the majority of Singaporeans surveyed say that they support the death penalty in general, the percentage of respondents in support drops significantly when it comes to the mandatory death penalty for drugs.

Survey Findings

One group of Filipino respondents were asked how much they supported the anti-drug campaign, another how much they supported the anti-drug campaign of the Duterte administration. The Duterte endorsement was found to have a small but significant positive effect on support for the campaign. This suggests that the public may not support the campaign; what they support is the populist individual.

People also tend to be supportive of what’s already in place. In a 2005 survey in China, when asked about their position on the death penalty, 82% were in favour. When the questions was rephrased as if capital punishment had already been abolished, 60% were in favour. Rather than support the death penalty itself, the public may just support the status quo.

The death penalty is a human rights issue that should not be open to referendum or majoritarianism within society. The right to life is not up for debate. People’s lives should not be up for public vote.

Further information:

Chan, W. C., Tan, E. S., Lee, J. T., T., & Mathi, B. (2018). How strong is public support for the death penalty in Singapore?. Asian Journal of criminology, 13 91-107

Girelli, G. (2021). ‘Alternative facts’: public opinion surveys on the death penalty for drug offences in selected Asian countries. International Journal of Drug Policy, 92, 103155

Kenny, P. D. (2018). Populism and the war on drugs in Southeast Asia. Brown J. World Aff., 25, 121.