Populists in the shadow of great power competition: Duterte, Sukarno, and Sihanouk in comparative perspective

Abstract

This article takes the study of populism beyond political parties and individual leaders and foregrounds coalitions in the making and unmaking of populist projects. It compares Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in the Philippines with figures of an older vintage in postcolonial Southeast Asia—the Cold War neutralists President Sukarno of Indonesia and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, neither of whom fit neatly within dominant frameworks of populism in International Relations (IR). Drawing on Rogers Brubaker’s conceptualization of populism as a “discursive and stylistic repertoire,” I argue that the projects of Duterte, Sukarno, and Sihanouk embody populism in general and are suggestive of a distinct type vis-à-vis right- or left-wing party and individual populists. Specifically, these are populists who presided over ideologically diverse coalitions in contexts of intrusive Great Power competition. This comparison advances the study of populism in IR in three ways. First, rather than populist political parties and leaders, this article focuses on populists crafting coalitions in contexts of weak party milieus. Second, it draws on a capacious conceptualization of populism (as repertoire) which pushes beyond exclusively “ideological,” “strategic,” and “discursive” conceptions and better accounts for the empirical diversity of this phenomenon outside Euro-American shores. Third, this article highlights a novel pathway by which international politics shapes the fates of populism. The three cases show how a strident discourse of anti-colonialism glued populists’ diverse coalitions at home, while populists’ external alignment choices and efforts to steer “independent” foreign policies exacerbated coalitional fault lines, straining, if not unraveling, their projects.