Mark Richard Thompson

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• PhD
• Director at City University of Hong Kong

The drama of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's arrest by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity was celebrated by human rights activists and the families of drug war victims while other Filipinos saw it as a Marcos clan vendetta. His arrest also revealed Filipinos’ often-overlooked ambivalence towards his n...

In a world where illiberal populist leaders grow more influential, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, Jr's efforts to dismantle the Duterte dynasty appear exceptional. While the Dutertes maintain their populist political brand, Marcos Jr has countered using extensive presidential powers over the lower house and local police. Despite falling pop...

It is a common misunderstanding that the “Asian Values” discourse is about Asia. Originally dubbed “Confucian values,” it became “Asian” in order to serve as a causeway connecting the discourses of Singaporean and Malaysian authoritarian leaders in the early 1990s. Not seriously engaging with a storied “Asianisms” debate about common values in the...

Like much of the rest of the world, East Asia (Northeast and Southeast Asia) has recently experienced a democratic “fall” in which several electoral democracieshave undergone autocrati-zation. This synchronized with China’s rise through whatcan be called illiberal realignment as autocratizing regimes in the region have sought increasing material an...

Why is there sometimes limited mobilization against autocratization, particularly when it involves major human rights violations? Some scholars emphasize the loss of political space through repression as the major cause while others emphasize strategic considerations such as divisions and abandonment of moderate tactics. A third view stresses popul...

This Element explores how in the Philippines a 'whiggish' narrative of democracy and good governance triumphing over dictatorship and kleptocracy after the 'people power' uprising against Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986 was upended by strongman Rodrigo R. Duterte three decades later. Portraying his father's authoritarian rule as a 'golden age,' Ferdina...

Free Access VIA LINK https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10357823.2022.2153798 This Introduction argues that Southeast Asian liberalisms have often been misrecognised – or even ignored – by scholars because liberals in the region do not conform to the expectations of ‘benchmark’ liberalism of the West. It points to efforts by liberal act...

Claims made during mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Thailand in 2020 became increasingly transgressive. Localist demands and calls for the reform of the monarchy, respectively, violated conventional political norms in these two hybrid regimes. This paper examines the dynamics of opposition discursive radicalization during ongoing autocratizat...

‘People power’ figure Fidel Ramos’ presidency was the ‘high point’ of a now lost liberal reformist era in the Philippines. Ramos was a key figure in the Philippines ‘people power’ uprising that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos Snr. As president, Ramos was committed to good governance, but with Duterte’s drug war and election of Marcos Jnr, this li...

In this chapter Mark Thompson traces the formation and emergence of the "aircon opposition"-elites drawn from big business, the Catholic church hierarchy, traditional politics, and the social democratic movement-who had begun actively to resist Marcos after the Aquino assassination and who played a key role in the overthrow of his government in the...

It is a common misunderstanding that the "Asian Values" discourse is about Asia. Originally dubbed "Confucian values," it became "Asian" in order to serve as a causeway connecting the discourses of Singaporean and Malaysian authoritarian leaders in the early 1990s. Not seriously engaging with a storied "Asianisms" debate about common values in the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed enormous governance deficits globally. Several populist strongmen practiced “medical populism” – ignoring scientific advice, proffering denials, and blaming others. More technocratic leaders recognised its severity, implementing strict lockdowns. But some failed to adopt more flexible restrictions once testing impr...

In response to “indigenous” justifications of illiberalism (e.g., “Asian values”) and the cronyism of electoral authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, some pro-democracy activists constructed a “vernacularised” liberal discourse that framed demands for human rights and “good governance” in religious-communalist terms. This countered charges that...

Among contemporary illiberal populist leaders, only Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has instigated mass murder under the guise of a “war on drugs.” Attributed to “penal populism,” it must be explained why Duterte won the presidency despite limited concerns about crime, why he organised extra-judicial killings and why this continued despite dom...

Two influential explanations of Duterte’s surprising rise and rule are his “penal populist” leadership style and a structural crisis of oligarchic democracy. The populist leadership perspective explains “too little” about the extreme violence of Duterte’s illiberal rule and the vulnerability of the prevailing political order to it. The oligarchic-d...

How do different kinds of democratic backsliding affect opposition pushback? To contribute to the answer, this article compares two divergent cases in the Asia-Pacific – “executive aggrandizement” in the Philippines and a “promissory” military coup in Thailand. An institutional explanation focused on remaining electoral, state institutional, and ci...

In elections held in early 2019, Southeast Asia’s already bleak democratic prospects appeared to darken further. In Thailand polls merely civilianized military-monarchical rule. In Indonesia president Joko Widodo’s reelection came after concessions to hard-line Islamists. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte’s candidates dominated the midt...

This chapter describes the rise of illiberal democracy in the Philippines and how this has been embodied in President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘right’ populism, with his violent ‘war on drugs’ as its centerpiece. Introducing the concept of illiberal democracy in the Philippines with reference to contemporary Hungary, an explanation is offered as to why an...

The opposition needs a miracle, but the Philippine midterm campaign also points to problems ahead for Duterte

Singapore appears to be a stand-alone case of authoritarian modernity in the post–Cold War world. But Singapore is much less a ‘lonely’ example of authoritarian modernity than it is a continuation of a historical trend in East Asia. This region has been home to the most significant examples of countries with advanced economies, but without liberal...

It would be premature to claim that Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in the Philippines is in trouble. Despite a temporary drop in his approval ratings last year, three-fourths of Philippine citizens still approve of his performance in office, with his violent drug crackdown considered his ‘top achievement’. Yet while Duterte remains revered in the Phi...

Chinese elites have looked to Singapore as a model throughout much of the reform era, but have failed to understand what made the city-state tick.

This special section deals with China's longstanding fascination with Singapore's development experience that has preoccupied post-Maoist leaders from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping despite the obvious differences between the tiny Southeast Asian city-state and the most populous country on earth. In particular, there is great Chinese interest in Singa...

Singapore exemplifies what China strives for: resilient authoritarianism despite advanced development with good governance and political stability. But lessons Chinese observers draw from the Southeast Asian city-state have been selective, leading to misconceptions. We focus on three key areas in which Chinese observers claim inspiration from the “...

It is far from clear how effective Rodrigo R. Duterte's improvised clean-up of Boracay will be and whether it can be sustained in the long term. But the shutdown played well to his fan base as another demonstration of his iron will to cleanse the country of its social ills. Duterte’s decision to close Boracay is an example of “blunt force” regulati...

In Thailand and the Philippines, seemingly dramatic changes in foreign policy have been triggered by domestic political upheavals – the May 2014 coup d’état in Thailand and the election of a strongman president, Rodrigo R. Duterte, in May 2016 in the Philippines. As both regimes began practising increasingly illiberal politics at home, they seemed...

Controversial ‘strongman’ President Rodrigo Duterte seems to expose the precariousness of democracy, liberal institutions and presidentialism in the Philippines. The structural hazard of presidential systems, according to some, is competing claims to legitimacy between the chief executive and the legislature. But examples from Southeast Asia show i...

Regional patterns have long been crucial to debates about presidentialism starting with the Latin American cases in which presidential systems were seen to have contributed to political instability. This special issue examines four cases of presidentialism in Southeast Asia. Both the ‘first’ wave of the presidentialism literature which focuses on ‘...

Among the neglected cases of presidential systems in Southeast Asia, the Philippines is particularly interesting as the oldest in the region and as a ‘pure’ case of presidentialism which provides seemingly strong evidence for its ‘perilousness’. ‘First wave’ presidentialism theory appears to explain how competing legitimacy claims between a preside...

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/08/07/80706/ After just one year in office, President Rodrigo Duterte has established an illiberal democracy in the Philippines. Because Rodrigo Duterte was elected in May 2016 in free and fair elections with media freedoms still in place, his regime differs from others in the region such as those of Malaysia and S...

http://thediplomat.com/2017/06/dutertes-year-of-sound-and-fury/ Rodrigo R. Duterte, who completes the first year of his six-year term as president on June 30, is notorious for his unorthodox political style. Duterte has quickly moved to replace a liberal, reformist political order in place since the people power uprising three decades ago with an i...

US President Donald Trump’s recent friendly phone conversation with Rodrigo Duterte, during which he invited the Philippine president to the White House, raised questions about his penchant for closeness with strongmen. Trump clearly has a soft spot for the “hard men” of global politics such as Putin, Erdogan, and al-Sissi. Trump’s encouragement of...

Duterte’s early presidency has seen a monomaniacal commitment to his violent drug crackdown during which he has drawn on his deep-seated nationalism to fend off Western criticism. The recent kindnapping/murder of a South Korean businessmen which revealed police corruption forced Dutete to pause the campaign. This will spare dozens of lives daily, m...

Since assuming the presidency, Rodrigo R. Duterte has “stuck to his guns” in carrying out his campaign pledge to launch a violent anti-drug campaign. Duterte’s presidency was preceded by six years of political stability and high growth under the relatively liberal and supposedly reformist administration of President Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino, III....

The significance of Meiji Japan’s “Prussian path” to authoritarian modernity has largely been ignored in the social sciences because it contradicts prevailing modernization theory. Meiji Japanese reformers, after carefully examining several Western country’s political systems, chose the German model because of its illiberal but modern politics. Thi...

With a folksy style and tough-guy image,Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte promised to restore peace and order by any means necessary. Following his surprise victory in the May 2016 elections,Duterte has kept his word,launching the promised anti-drug campaign that saw nearly 1,800 extrajudicial killings within Duterte's firs...

Duterte appeals to those in Philippine society yearning for the reimposition of ‘discipline’ in the spirit of the former dictator Marcos.

In the Philippines and Thailand, two radically different “tales of democracy” are told: an elitist national narrative critiquing electoral “corruption” epitomized by vote buying and a local interpretation of elections in which politicians are judged according to the extent to which they benefit voters’ community and affirm poor people’s self-worth....

Following the death of Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew in March 2015, China remains obsessed with Singapore, the only country in the region to achieve advanced economic industrialization without undergoing substantial political liberalization. The key “lesson” that China is trying to learn is how to combine authoritarian rule with “good go...

In the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries poor people’s voting behavior has been subversive of elite interests, causing the upper classes to be skeptical of votes cast by the poor and to “educate” them on the “proper” exercise of suffrage. But voting by the poor can be understood within a “moral economy” framework in which communal int...

After only a little over a half year in power, as of this writing, Rodrigo’s R. Duterte presidency already represents a sea change in Philippine politics. Despite the personal popularity of Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III (who had the highest opinion poll ratings among post-Marcos presidents), Duterte has quickly replaced a “liberal reformist” polit...

In the last three decades, a number of Asian thinkers supportive of, or opposed to, authoritarian rule have developed culture-based theories of democracy that challenge, or buttress, a liberal, “Western” understanding of democratic rule. The most famous expression was the “Asian values” discourse of government-linked intellectuals in Singapore and...

Asia's Unknown Uprisings, Vol. 2: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia. By George Katsiaficas. Oakland, Calif.: PM Press, 2013. 520 pp. $28.95 (paper). - Volume 74 Issue 1 - Mark R. Thompson

In this chapter, the analysis of media politics in several transitional Southeast Asian countries centres on the relationship between the narrative of “good governance” which the media has helped construct and propagate during democratic transitions. An alternative media in the region spearheaded criticisms of authoritarian rule as arbitrary and co...

The project assesses the global opportunities and risks that are created for media by the switch- over from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting; the growth of new media platforms as sources of news; and the convergence of traditional broadcasting with telecommunications. These changes redefine the ways that media can operate sustainably whi...

In political systems with a powerful chief executive, such as in the Philippines, an essential element in the analysis of politics is a clear understanding of the impact of presidential politics. Two analytical theories have tried to understand this phenomenon: (1) a voluntarist, actor-centered, presidential-style approach, and (2) a structuralist,...

Chinese government officials and academics have shown disproportionate interest in the small city-state of Singapore. The Southeast Asian country with a majority ethnic Chinese population has drawn their attention because it is the only country in the world that combines advanced industrial development with stable one-party rule. Singapore not only...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics, and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time,...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

El Proyecto Los medios digitales analiza en profundidad los cambios del proceso de digitalización y pretende establecer puentes entre investigadores y políticos, tomadores de decisiones, activistas, académicos e instituciones de regulación en todo el mundo. También construye una capacidad política en los países donde está menos desarrollado el proc...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

Political dynasties seem to flourish in Asia, whatever the political system. But this is not a relapse into traditional rule. Political dynasties are modern hybrids in which elite political aims are linked to popular norms of charismatic legitimacy. They are found in non-democratic regimes, electoral democracies and democratic movements, providing...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate in and influence change. At the same time, t...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

There have been a dozen dynastic female leaders in ten countries in Asia over the last half-century. They were the widows, wives, or daughters of male politicians arrested or killed by political opponents. What distinguishes Philippine presidentas from previous women in power in the region is their revolutionary role. Dynastic politics was a factor...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

Proiectul Harta Mediilor Digitale, care examinează în profunzime aceste schimbări, are ca scop crearea legăturilor dintre cercetători și factorii de decizie, activiști, membrii cercurilor academice și elaboratori de standarde din întreaga lume. De asemenea, acesta consolidează capacităţile în statele mai puţin dezvoltate, încurajând factorii de dec...

The Mapping Digital Media project, which examines the changes in-depth, aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this...

:The Philippines' first automated elections in May 2010 were generally honest and orderly, surprising pessimistic Filipino and foreigner observers alike. "Noynoy" Aquino easily won the presidential race by focusing on his "reformist" credentials, a strategy that his mother (her death in August 2009 led him to launch his candidacy) had adopted again...