Chasing Freedom: The Philippines' Long Journey to Democratic Ambivalence(The Liverpool Library of Asian & Asian American Studies)

How did Rodrigo Duterte earn the support of large segments of the Philippine middle class, despite imposing arbitrary rule and offering little tolerance for dissent? Has the Filipino middle class, heroes of the 1986 People Power Revolution, given up on democracy? Chasing Freedom tells the story of the love/hate relationship of the Philippine middle class with democratic politics. It illuminates the historical roots and contingency of the Philippine middle-class’s reticence about democracy, and makes visible the forms of power that have shaped and constrained middle-class imaginings of democracy and representations of themselves as political subjects. Drawing on historical archival work, discourse analysis and fieldwork interviews, the chapters trace the attitudes of the Filipino middle class from the time of American colonization in 1898 to the 2016 election of strongman Rodrigo Duterte. The argument is that democracy has been, and continues to be, lived in a deeply ambivalent way. The simultaneous saying of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to democracy by citizens is one of the defining features of the Philippines’ democratic journey. The prime source of this ambivalence, the book argues, is the Janus face of America’s ‘democratic imperialism’, and the deprecation inherent in the project of ‘democratic tutelage’. According to Webb, the Philippines is a bellwether case of what she calls democratic ambivalence. In an age when disenchantment with democracy is on the rise, it provides lessons of global importance. The book’s empirical findings support a striking conclusion: since ambivalence is not simply a ‘pathology’ of democracy, but one of its persistent features, the dynamics of ambivalence need to be at the heart of descriptive and normative accounts of how democracy works.

About the Author :
Adele Webb is Research Fellow at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, Australia. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2019.

Review :
‘Webb sheds light on the unsung connection between democratic ambivalence in the Philippines and American imperialism… [Chasing Freedom] may spark great interest among students of political science, history, and development studies. Webb’s original contribution to Philippine historiography and democratic theory deserves further research and interest, especially when pieces of historical evidence are often left unacknowledged to deliberately cement today’s dominant narratives.’ John Romer M. Capurcos, Philippine Political Science Journal "Webb makes an original contribution to the field by offering a nuanced analysis of Filipino middle-class responses to democracy and linking this to the period of ‘democratic tutelage’ under American colonial rule.” Professor Mina Roces, Series Editor “Webb convincingly argues that to understand the middle class’s difficult relationship to democracy, one needs to examine over long stretches of time what members of the middle class have thought about democracy – something that is not often done. Webb thus develops in this book a novel and highly fruitful approach that constitutes a significant contribution to the study of democracy.” Frederic Schaffer, Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst.