Flirting with Authoritarian Fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the New Terms of Philippine Populism

This commentary aims to take stock of the 2016 presidential elections in the Philippines that led to the landslide victory of the controversial Rodrigo Duterte. It argues that part of Duterte’s electoral success is hinged on his effective deployment of the populist style. Although populism is not new to the Philippines, Duterte exhibits features of contemporary populism that are befitting of an age of communicative abundance. This commentary contrasts Duterte’s political style with other presidential contenders, characterises his relationship with the electorate and concludes by mapping populism’s democratic and anti-democratic tendencies, which may define the quality of democratic practice in the Philippines in the next six years.     

Consanguinity as capital in rights assertions: Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines

This paper examines the material dimensions of ethnic identity claims by Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating on their behalf. Most Japanese-Filipino clients of NGOs in the Philippines were raised by their Filipino families with little knowledge of their Japanese fathers and little or no lived experience of Japan. Although these children and young adults are often called “multi-cultural” by NGO workers, they frequently grow up with no connection to Japan other than an awareness of their Japanese parentage and Japanese cultural products equally accessible to most Filipinos. I argue that filiation can be leveraged to gain access to resources not only through the legal implications that are provided by biological relationships, but also through symbolically salient claims for belonging to a nation or people by virtue of descent. This consanguineal capital should primarily be understood in politically symbolic terms, mobilized in processes of claims-making and based on notions of “blood” and belonging and their frequent conflation with ethnicity.     

The Four Faces of Bandung: Detainees,Soldiers, Revolutionaries and Statesmen

This article seeks to provide a textured and nuanced conception of the first Asian-African Conference (18-24 April 1955) by structuring four simultaneous, “mosaic” perspectives (for India, China, Indonesia and the Philippines) of that multifaceted event. By eschewing hegemonic “Cold War” and “triumphalist” interpretations, one purposefully avoids a rehash of the roles of the USA and the Soviet Union. Their role, in this study, is peripheral. This article highlights the complexity of the conference by a series of analytical snap shots, multiple focuses, recollections and memories, which emphasise the frequently neglected Babel-like environment of the Bandung Conference. The resulting analysis provides capsules of self-contained experiences rather than one unifying story. Ultimately, the highly contentious and disparate viewpoints that the participants brought to the conference underscored the difficulties that Cold War superpowers experienced in creating political-military blocs friendly to their cause. Third World countries, by the nature of their decolonization process and their political expediencies, succeeded in preventing both the superpowers from creating monolithic blocs.     

Capitalising on the financialisation of agriculture: Cargill’s land investment techniques in the Philippines

This paper has two objectives. First, it aims to analyse how transnational agricultural traders are positioning themselves in, and capitalising on, the financialisation of agriculture. Second, it seeks to position land investments in this process. This is done by situating Cargill – one of the largest agricultural trading companies in the world – into the transformation of agriculture in the world economy and by assessing its strategies of adaption through private equity-driven land investment in the Philippines. The article notes, following Burch and Lawrence, that the transforming position of agriculture is created by reshaping relationships in the agri-food supply chain and is based on the logic of finance capital. An example of this process from the Philippines is provided, where Cargill’s private equity arm – Black River Asset Management– is investing in land through equity acquisitions of a Philippine company, Agrinurture, in a manner that allows the company to adapt to national and local dynamics. The evolving and deepening connection between finance and agriculture is presented first, followed by a discussion of how Cargill fits into this transition in the Philippine context.     

Saints,scholars and the idealized past in Philippine Muslim separatism

Philippine Muslim nationalism appeals to two distinct but related imagined pasts: the traditional territorial past of the precolonial southern Philippines and the newly-emphasized moral past of the Sunna; the sacred traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the earliest days of Islam. Problems arise when the imagined moral past, embodied in the present by a sharp increase in the influence of Middle East-educated Islamic clerics and their calls for the purification of local Islamic practice, comes into direct conflict with the authority of the traditional aristocracy and locally-cherished cultural practices. The Muslim separatist movement that began in 1968 had dual goals. It was primarily an ethno-nationalist endeavour that had as its primary goal the creation of a Philippine Muslim nation - a nation-state governed by Philippine Muslims and modelled on the sultanates of the precolonial period. The second goal of the Muslim separatist movement was to reform local religious and cultural practices under the leadership of a new set of religious leaders. To understand the place of atavism and puritanism in the Philippine Muslim separatist movement I review the largely local tradition of saints and the more universal Muslim institution of religious scholars as they have interacted in the contemporary Muslim Philippines. I consider the contradictions between revanchist and reformatist goals of the movement by interpreting the narratives of Sultan Muhammad Adil, a prominent supporter of Muslim separatism in the Philippines.     

中菲知识产权刑法立法比较研究

：菲律宾知识产权刑事立法采用混合型模式,有利于调节刑法典的稳定性与其对频繁变动的社会关系的适应性;罪名体系比较完整;原则上任何故意侵犯知识产权行为都构成犯罪,仅将犯罪目的作为个别侵犯知识产权犯罪的主观要素,并且该目的要素并非唯一的选项,相对而言比中国著作权犯罪“以营利为目的”的规定要宽松;行为方式可谓形式多样、种类丰富,而中国侵犯知识产权犯罪的行为方式则比较狭窄;虽然都规定了一定的刑事门槛,但中国规定的“违法所得数额”等情节设置不科学,不利于司法认定;两国侵犯知识产权犯罪的刑罚设置以短期自由刑为主,并设立罚金刑,有利于该类犯罪的惩治与预防,但在罚金数额的设定上,都需要借鉴限额罚金制与倍比罚金制相结合的方式。     

Confidence in the Police: Where does Taiwan Rank in the World?

The study of public opinion toward the police in Taiwan has not, heretofore, included comparative research. The current study fills this void in the literature by analyzing the data from the World Values Surveys. It was found that Taiwanese confidence in the police was reasonably good for a society experiencing democratic transition. Although lower than many more mature democratic societies such as Finland and the USA, confidence in the police is among the top one-third of fifty countries and is significantly higher than those found in other Asian and European countries that also experienced democratic transition. Further regression analyses of data from the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan indicated that the differences between those three countries are substantive and cannot be explained away after the demographic social and attitudinal variables have been controlled.An early version of this paper was presented at “The Second International Conference in Crime and Its Control,” Taiwan, April 2005. We would like to thank Professors Susyan Jou and Lanying Huang, for providing information on Taiwan, and Professor Alethea Helbig, for polishing the languages of the paper. The views expressed in the paper are all ours.     

试析菲律宾出口导向型工业化发展战略

自 8 0年代中期起 ,菲律宾政府对经济发展模式进行调整 ,通过推行出口导向型工业化发展战略 ,经济运行环境从过去那种高封闭、高干预的状态向着一种较为开放、宽松的环境过渡 ,增长方式发生了显著变化 ,经济发展速度明显加快 ,摆脱了此前发展中存在的“增长 -衰退”不良循环状态 ,整体经济呈现出了较好的发展前景。     

中菲关于黄岩岛领土主权的主张和依据研究

黄岩岛事件因菲律宾挑战中国对该岛的固有领土主权而起,其主权归属也是菲方试图与中方争辩的焦点。双方在事件发生后重申了各自的主张,提出了本国的法律和事实依据。根据相关国际法和事实,中国不仅拥有黄岩岛的原始主权,该权利还经中国明确表达行使主权的意图与持续、和平、有效地行使主权转化为完整的领土主权,且有效存续至今。菲方无权依据有效控制对抗中国对该岛的既有合法主权,亦无法通过时效等其他任何方式取得该岛的主权。