The current Spotlight explores different interpretations of Germany’s Staatsraison – or raison d’état – which emphasize Germany’s commitment to defending Israel’s national security. This component has played a crucial role in German-Israeli relations to date. The recent attempts (January–June 2023) by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government to overhaul the Supreme Court have left Israeli society facing extreme tension and have shaken the country’s sense of national unity. Since 1965 and especially in the post Cold War period, German Staatsraison has meant defending Israel’s security – but with the assault on Israel’s democracy, can it continue with the same purpose in the future? This Spotlight discusses how this development might impact German-Israeli relations.
Der Aufstieg der AfD scheint im Superwahljahr 2021 gebremst. Die Verluste in den Landtagswahlen von Baden-Württemberg und Rheinland-Pfalz sind aber kein Zeichen für den Anfang vom Ende der Partei. Bei ihrem Parteitag am vergangenen Wochenende hat die AfD in den Corona-Maßnahmen eindeutig ihr neues Feindbild gefunden, dem sie das Narrativ einer vermeintlich heilen Normalität entgegensetzt. Die Verluste sollten ebenso wenig als ein Zeichen dafür gedeutet werden, dass die dem Wahlerfolg von 2017 mitunter zugrundeliegenden sozialen Konfliktlagen und Polarisierungen in der Gesellschaft zurückgedrängt worden wären. Im Gegenteil: Die Geographie der Pandemie deckt sich erstaunlich stark mit jener des Wahlerfolgs der AfD. Das Konzept der Peripherisierung bietet sich an als Klammer für die beiden Dimensionen, Wahl der AfD und hohe Covid-19-Inzidenzen, und erlaubt es, das Nebeneinander und die Verwobenheit unterschiedlicher sozialer und politischer Phänomene zu beleuchten.
Zwei Schulkurse und drei Wissenschaftlerinnen der HSFK sind bei den Frankfurter Ideen für den Frieden im Dezember 2020 in den gemeinsamen Dialog zu Themen der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung getreten, die im Schulunterricht der gymnasialen Oberstufe diskutiert werden, aber gleichzeitig von hoher Aktualität sind und auch die Jugendlichen in ihrem Alltag beschäftigen. Eineinhalb Stunden lang standen Melanie Coni-Zimmer, Nicole Deitelhoff und Hanna Pfeifer Schülerinnen und Schülern zu den vier Themenfeldern Zukunft der transatlantischen Beziehungen, Populismus und Demokratie, Internationaler Terrorismus und 75 Jahre Vereinte Nationen Rede und Antwort. Ein Ausschnitt des umfassenden Dialogs kann hier nachgelesen werden.
With the announcement of having contracted Covid-19 in early October, US President Donald Trump followed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro among a series of prominent politicians who have fallen ill. All three leaders have since recovered, but their recent illness is not the only thing they have in common: They are also perhaps the three most prominent figures of a global surge in right-wing populism and nationalism that has achieved significant electoral victories from 2016 onwards, yet has largely failed in its crisis management when confronted with COVID-19. The pandemic is sorely testing governments worldwide – populist or otherwise. It shows right-wing, populist governments in action, offering insights into their conceptions of expertise and popular support. Nonetheless, poor handling of the pandemic does not necessarily spell electoral danger for the “Class of 2016” populist leaders.
Im Mai 2016 wurde mit Rodrigo Duterte ein Politiker zum Präsidenten der Philippinen gewählt, der versprochen hatte, Drogenkriminalität in wenigen Monaten auszurotten, vor allem durch das Töten von Dealern und Süchtigen. Deren Leichen würden „die Fische in der Bucht von Manila fett machen.“ Seit er diese Ankündigung umsetzt, sind seine Zustimmungswerte auf 80% gestiegen. Die liberale Mittelschicht unterstützt ihn, obgleich er Menschenrechte und liberale Freiheiten ignoriert, und die Armen unterstützen ihn, obgleich die mörderische Anti-Drogen-Kampagne fast ausschließlich Arme ins Visier nimmt. Warum ist das so?
The current and former leaders of the Philippines and Thailand, Rodrigo Duterte, Joseph Estrada, and Thaksin Shinawatra and their policies have in varying degrees been described and explained through the distinct lens of populism. I argue that in these East Asian cases, this category does neither fit the leaders nor their policies. To members of the domestic establishment elites and upper middle class intellectuals it rather serves as a political weapon to fend off political alternatives that threaten to sideline them.
Various aspects of society and everyday life have become affected by the clampdown on the Coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions enforced to prevent it from spreading. While the spread of COVID-19 continues to be fought and researched under extreme pressure, many uncertainties remain regarding its origin and the social, political and economic consequences. These uncertainties are easily exploited by extremists such as right-wing and Islamist extremists. The spread of the Coronavirus is thus accompanied by the propagation of extremists’ discourses. Within a short period of time, they reach thousands of people – not only but especially via social media.
Since the election of Rodrigo Duterte to President of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police has waged an unrelenting war against drug crime that cost the lives of thousands of suspects. A spatial and temporal analysis of the past 30 months suggests that violence is slowly receding. While the situation is still highly problematic, a number of positive developments suggest that in an increasing number of provinces police violence is slowly returning to its pre-Duterte levels. While the master-key for ending the killings lies with the central government, provincial governments can do their share to mitigate the deadly repercussions of the Duterte government’s drug war.
Populists are supposed to thrive on their ability to mirror, condense and radicalize popular demands ignored by establishment politicians. This sketch on the election-promises and later policies of Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte suggests that their success is less dependent on any pre-existing radical popular demands, but on their authenticity as leaders who get things done and realize a government that is perceived to work for the people. The “success” of and widespread approval for Duterte’s deadly anti-crime campaign suggests that Philippine democracy is at a crossroad.
On May 10, 2016, Rodrigo Duterte gained a resounding victory in the elections for the next President of the Philippines. This was generally attributed to his populist appeal, his contrasting himself as a representative of the people against a dominant elite that held Philippine democracy hostage to its political and economic interests. Of equal importance was his image of a politician, who was willing and able to implement his promises against resistance if necessary, a politician that would not succumb to the eternal woes of Philippine democracy: corruption and clientelistic exchange of favors amongst the dominant families. The largest attention, however, caught his repeated promises to eradicate drugs and drug crime from the Philippines within three to six months, if necessary by killing criminals and druglords. After his election, he acted on his promises by instigating an anti-drug campaign in which several thousand suspects were “neutralized” by the police in so-called armed encounters. Even though Duterte was elected by only 39 percent of votes, public support for his campaign has been overwhelming at around 80 percent and more.
First, one should remember that Duterte was elected on an eclectic policy platform that was much broader than the single issue of a deadly war on drugs. Duterte united a host of seemingly rather incompatible political positions, as self-proclaimed Socialist with good contacts to both the Muslim and the Communist rebels, as a critic of the Catholic Church and champion of LGBT rights, and a supporter of federalism with his image of a no-nonsense politician devoted to eradicate crime. This made it possible vote for him “because he is the most progressive presidential candidate that this country has ever had.” His swearing, blaspheme, public threats and vulgar demeanor could be reinterpreted as going against the exclusionary cultural practice of domination through social habits and education. This made it possible to imagine Duterte as an organic intellectual who “aims to win consent to counter-hegemonic ideas and ambitions.” He also promised a policy that shifted from a consumption driven economy to one based on production, with a strong focus on infrastructure aimed at a pro-poor policy and the non-metropolitan regions bringing him the support of prominent development economists as Ernesto Pernia, who became Duterte’s leading crafter of economic policies. Clearly to Filipinos, Duterte was much more than “The Punisher” or “Dirty Harry” from the Philippine South.
Second, there is hardly any evidence that Duterte’s plea for solving the crime problem by killing criminals mirrored, condense and radicalized pre-existing popular demands. Surveys on public anxieties, on perceptions of and experiences with crime do not validate the assumption of a prior public shift towards punitiveness. The quarterly Pulse Asia surveys on the people’s most urgent national concerns had “fighting criminality” persistently ranked sixth only for the past years up to the presidential campaign, lagging far behind much more pressing concerns like controlling inflation, improving workers’ pay, fighting corruption, reducing poverty and creating jobs.
An analysis of Filipinos’ experience with crime victimization brings similar results. Reported crime victimization of family members declined from 2010 to 2015. Reported crime victimizations rates only rose during the months of the Duterte campaign, when the topic was hot on account of Duterte’s elevation of drug crime to a national security problem and his promise to solve it within six months.
The analysis of neighborhood fears should signal most strongly any shifts in popular demands for a harsher strategy of crime-control. Evidence is mixed, with fear of burglary and fear of unsafe streets being rather stable over the past five years, whereas fear of “many drug addicts” clearly rising. However, this trend seemed to have been broken in 2015, when all three types of neighborhood fears receded. As with the other neighborhood fears, fear of drug addicts escalated dramatically only during the election campaign and not before.
In total, this suggests that the punitive shift of the Philippine public is largely a short-term product of a campaign and vast media coverage of the Duterte’s tough talk on crime as a national security threat. Following elections, crime as a national concern, crime victimization and fears receded to pre-election levels with the single exception of fear of drug addicts that dropped to its lowest level since 2012. Taken together with the high approval rates for Duterte’s anti-crime campaign this signals that in the public eye Duterte’s campaing was generally perceived as achieving its aim.
Even though available data suggests that the public shift towards punitiveness may be a product of the Duterte campaign, this shift has enduring consequences. The enduring and broad support for Duterte’s ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ policy of crime control signals that he has successfully established a new paradigm of crime fighting that focuses on tough crime control at the expense of due process orientation.
Clearly, to Filipinos their current government is doing a good job in fighting drug-crime. Further, despite the current administration’s illiberal policies the percentage of Filipinos satisfied with the way democracy works in the Philippines is at a similar or higher level than during the current President’s predecessor’s term.
The extraordinarily high approval rates as well as the almost complete lack of concern about the illiberal turn of Philippine democracy signal that the current administration succeeded in convincing a large percentage of those Filipinos who did not vote for Duterte that his way of doing politics is in the Filipinos’ best interest. This perception of a successful anti-crime strategy is underscored by a continuous drop in crime.
Even critical media report that all types of crime dropped significantly in 2017 and then again in 2018 with local police in all regions regularly reporting significant reductions be it in provincial capitals like Bacolod, in self-governing cities like Davao, in provinces like Bohol, or in the National Capital Region. As the downward trend of crime clearly preceded the Duterte presidency, the attribution to the deadly campaign of the Duterte administration is clearly premature. This, however, is completely neglected in the multitude of success messages that are regularly reported in the Philippine press.
Compared to the perceived “success” the costs – a murder rate that rose dramatically during Duterte’s first year in office – easily pales when viewed from the perspective of the ordinary citizen who has much more to grapple with physical injury, theft and robbery than with the comparatively rare cases of murder and might therefore be willing to pay the price. Duterte’s strategy seems even more convincing as in the meantime the murder rate has dropped to a low not seen during the past years.
The above analysis showed that a punitive popular demand can be created by radical populists, who know the ropes of the modern media democracy. During the past years in office the Duterte administration managed to present its strategy of repressive crime control as successful. It convinced the majority of those who did not vote for Duterte that killing criminals is indeed a viable option for enhancing public security, despite the costs that have to a large extent to be borne by members of marginal communities.
This is clearly bad news for Philippine democracy and beyond, as Duterte’s perceived “success” in repressing crime provides one important pillar of domestic legitimacy for a regime that scraps much of the essentials of democratic governance. Given the overwhelming turncoatism of the Philippine political elite chances for a convincing alternative to Duterte’s “democratic” strongman-rule are dim.
Obwohl in der Debatte nach dem „Wie“ und „Warum“ von Radikalisierungsprozessen Individuen und Gruppen im Vordergrund stehen, wird auch die gesellschaftliche Ebene adressiert. Wenig Wunder, stellt Radikalisierung – gleich ob politisch oder religiös begründet –nicht nur den Staat, sondern auch das jeweilige Gesellschaftmodell in Frage. Es gibt inzwischen Stimmen, die von Deutschland als einer „radikalisierten Gesellschaft“ sprechen. Andere wiederum weisen die Rede von einer Radikalisierung der Gesellschaft als alarmistisch zurück. Ob sich Gesellschaften radikalisieren können und wie es um Deutschland bestellt ist, diskutieren der Soziologe Christian Joppke und der Soziologe und Sozialforscher Oliver Decker. Die Fragen stellten Magdalena von Drachenfels und Eva Herschinger.
