The Philippines Offers a Warning About Tough-on-Crime Policies

When Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, was surrendered into custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2025 for crimes against humanity, public opinion was split. Duterte’s war on drugs—which the ICC prosecutor estimate cost 12,000–30,000 lives—drew condemnation from  the European Union, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and various international nongovernmental organizations and human rights organizations.

Yet domestically, it enjoyed overwhelming approval: in 2017, a Pulse Asia survey found 88 percent of Filipinos supported the campaign. Today, however, public opinion has shifted: a WR Numero survey conducted two weeks after his transfer to The Hague found that 62 percent of Filipinos believed Duterte should face trial at the ICC. This is consistent with a February 2025 survey by the Social Weather Stations that 51 percent of Filipinos agree that Duterte should be made liable for drug-related killings during his presidency.

This dynamic of initial support followed by growing opposition to punitive, tough-on-crime policies like the “war on drugs” is not unique to the Philippines. Globally, leaders who embrace hardline approaches to crime that rely on extralegal violence and the curtailment of civil liberties inspire both strong support and fierce opposition, even amid evidence of abuse and ineffectiveness.

In a recent study, Nico Ravanilla and I examine this dynamic using the 2019 Philippine Senate election, widely seen as a referendum on Duterte’s drug war. We link local-level vote shares with crime and political violence data to assess when voters reward or punish hardline policies. Our analysis found that Duterte-aligned, pro-drug war candidates performed better in communities where crimes targeted by the war on drugs were prevalent, but fared worse in areas where police killings against suspects occurred. By contrast, violence perpetrated by nonstate or so-called “anti-drug vigilantes” had no significant effect on electoral outcomes.

Support and Backlash

Populist leaders across democracies often rise to power by promising law and order at the expense of liberal norms. Yet while public dissatisfaction with establishment responses to crime may fuel their ascent, what determines whether their tough-on-crime approaches sustain popular support once in office?

Three core findings emerge from our analysis. First, when people are exposed to crimes that the hardline policies explicitly promise to tackle—in this case, drug offenses and murders or homicides—they are more likely to support hardline candidates. During the 2019 Filipino Senate elections, administration-aligned candidates performed significantly better in municipalities with more drug cases or murders. This makes intuitive sense; when the danger is highest, voters back candidates promising tough countermeasures.

Who carries out the hardline response also matters in determining voter support. Our study found that when police themselves carry out extrajudicial killings, local voters are significantly less likely to support Duterte-aligned candidates. In one specification, an additional police fatality per 1,000 residents corresponded to a nine-point drop in vote share for Duterte’s allies. Because the state is visibly responsible, attribution is clear—and when violence is clearly attributable, electoral support erodes.

In contrast, violence carried out by pro-government militias—anonymous gunmen or death squads—have a statistically insignificant effect on voter support. Voters may not clearly attribute these killings to the state or may view them ambiguously enough to discount politically. This plausible deniability is not accidental—it is a political strategy. By outsourcing violence to anti-drug vigilantes, leaders can claim progress against crime while insulating themselves from the blowback that comes with visible state brutality, even when vigilantes act on the government’s behalf.

Taken together, these findings reveal the paradox at the heart of Duterte’s popularity. His brand of hardline policies endure because they target the crimes people most fear. While these policies are often ineffective and counterproductive, its worst excesses are often obscured by being carried out through actors with murky ties to the state. At the same time, there are limits: when state violence cannot be denied or hidden, it carries serious political costs.

The Global Story

The Philippine case fits into a broader global story. Across Latin America—and increasingly in other countries such as the Philippines—leaders have used tough-on-crime policies to consolidate power. For example, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who presides over the mass incarceration of alleged gang members, was reelected in February 2024 with more than 80 percent of the vote. Brazil offers a cautionary contrast: Jair Bolsonaro, who likewise championed police killings and hardline rhetoric, lost reelection in 2022 and now faces prison for attempting to subvert democratic institutions.

Together, these cases show both the political appeal and the limits of hardline crime policies—they may yield overwhelming victories, but they do not guarantee lasting power or immunity. The same is true in the Philippines, where Duterte’s drug war delivered strong electoral dividends but, as state violence became more visible and politically costly, its legitimacy eroded—culminating in his eventual surrender to the ICC by his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

What links these cases of tough-on-crime policies is the careful balancing act between visible and deniable violence. Leaders recognize that publics may tolerate—or even cheer—extrajudicial force when it is framed as necessary to control existential threats. But they also recognize the risks of direct attribution. Outsourcing brutality to militias and other shadowy actors becomes a way of reaping the political benefits of hardline policies without the costs.

Yet beyond human rights abuses, hardline strategies are often ineffective in the long run, suggesting a short shelf life for their popularity. Deborah Yashar’s Homicidal Ecologies, for example, found that violence tied to the drug trade and other criminal activities cannot be effectively reduced without addressing root causes such as profitable illicit economies, weak institutions, and corruption. When governments double down on hardline approaches and refuse to address underlying drivers, violence resurfaces, institutions weaken, and cycles of repression and crime deepen. Ultimately, while the apparent popularity of hardline policies is politically understandable, in the longer term these policies can be self-defeating.

The Risks of Hardline Policies

Understanding why Duterte’s war on drugs was initially popular but later lost support sheds light not only on the Philippines, but also on how democracies grapple with crime, insecurity, and populism.

For the Philippines, the lesson is that popularity rooted in fear of crime is fragile. Targeting specific threats can yield electoral dividends, but public support has limits when state brutality is visible. And because hardline policies fail to deliver durable crime reduction, its legitimacy rests on shaky ground. The resilience of Duterte-style politics rests partly on the strategic use of deniable violence—a dynamic that is neither sustainable nor healthy for democratic institutions.

For the world, the lesson is that, while tempting, hardline politics are dangerous. They promise swift political rewards, but rest on strategies of obfuscation and repression that corrode accountability. Where violence is plausibly deniable, support may endure—but where it is clearly attributable, backlash follows. And, in the long run, the failure of these policies to solve crime leaves societies weaker, not safer.

Enrico Antonio La Viña was a 2024–2025 IGCC dissertation fellow and is a PhD candidate at UC Davis.

This blogpost is based on the IGCC working paper, The Endurance and Erosion of Support for Mano Dura: Electoral Evidence from the War on Drugs in the Philippines, by La Viña and Nico Ravanilla, associate professor at UC San Diego. Read the paper here.

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