Public ambivalence towards democracy has come under increasing scrutiny. It is a mood registered perhaps most clearly in the fact populist figures, from Trump to Orbàn to Duterte, appear to carry strong appeal despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, they pose a threat to democratic institutions and processes of governance. Are ambivalent citizens the grave threat to democracy they are often portrayed to be in media and academic discourse on populism? In this article, I contend that citizens’ ambivalence about democracy is a more complex, spirited and volitional idea than is acknowledged in the current discussion of populism. Drawing on psychoanalysis and critical social thought, I embrace a conception of citizens’ ambivalence in a democracy as both immanent and desirable. I argue ambivalence can be a form of participation in democracy that is crucial to safeguarding its future.
Resist and Revivify
Democratic Theory in a Time of Defiance
Jean-Paul Gagnon and Emily Beausoleil
harnessed by patently undemocratic leaders. Donald Trump, along with other right-wing populists such as Rodrigo Duterte ( Curato 2016 ) and Benjamin Netanyahu, has styled himself, through his own actions, as one of “the deplorables” ( The Economist
The Social Life of Fighting Words
The Case of Political Correctness
Ronald S. Stade
Duterte, who hardly can be accused of being politically correct, were voted into office. Against this historical background, the Friedmans and their acolytes resemble if not Ionescoan rhinoceroses then the character of the logician, who, in Ionesco’s play
Building ships while breaking apart
Container economies and the limits of chaebol capitalism
Elisabeth Schober
thanked Hanjin for its $2.3-billion investment and for the training the company had provided to countless Filipino workers. In addition, a note was read out in absence by Rodrigo Duterte, who also thanked the Koreans for their role in Philippine economic
Whither the people in the ASEAN Community?
Prospects in regional community building above and below the state
See Seng Tan
expense of an ASEAN consensus on the South China Sea disputes under President Rodrigo Duterte have shown. The aspiration-expectation gap is very much at the heart of ASEAN regionalism, as evidenced by the grouping's tortured syntax on community building
Michael Herzfeld
increasingly evident that some national leaders see in the pandemic a golden opportunity to ramp up real restrictions on freedom and to consolidate their own power. Prayuth Chan-ocha in Thailand, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and
Migration, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Knowledge
An Interview with Juliano Fiori
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Juliano Fiori
articulate internationalisms in pursuit of a more just order will be lost. In recent years, liberal commentators have given a great deal of attention to Trump, Salvini, Duterte, Orbán, Bolsonaro, and other leading figures of the so-called populist Right
Breaking New and Controversial Ground?
Democracy in ASEAN
Avery Poole
allegations of electoral fraud continue. Recently elected President Rodrigo Duterte emphasizes law and order and is seen as a new strongman in the region. Multiparty parliamentary democracy (currently under martial law) Thailand Democratic transition in 1991
Andrew Dawson and Simone Dennis
comparison, he illuminates echoes of the worst aspects this global hegemon in places like Viktor Orbán's Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines and Boris Johnson's United Kingdom. However, and more optimistically, he sees the flickerings of better
Neither Shadow nor Spectre
Populism as the Ideological Embodiment of the Democratic Paradox
Anthony Lawrence Borja
range from Trump in the United States to Duterte in the Philippines and Widodo in Indonesia. 3 This article notes that for Claude Lefort (1988) power within a democratic society became an empty place – a position that cannot be monopolised by anyone
