Competing Nostalgias: The Rise of the Marcos “Golden Age” and the Decline of the EDSA

Description

More than a year after Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s landslide election as Philippine president, scholarly interest has shifted away from the authoritarian nostalgia his campaign invoked. But it remains crucial to understanding democratic backsliding. An influential view is nostalgia is most likely when dictatorships are economically successful and transitions orderly, such as South Korea. But, in the Philippines, like in Indonesia, nostalgia arose although dictatorship had collapsed amidst economic crisis. Three arguments have been advanced explaining this “anomaly.” Stressing that the Philippines’ became “patient zero” of social media-driven disinformation emphasizes how “fake news” about past dictatorship was widely disseminated, not why it was readily accepted. A second view - which blames dynastic politics - does not explain why a previous “anarchy of families” changed into a “unity” of clans supporting Marcos, Jr.’s candidacy. A third explanation points to widespread ambivalence among Filipinos about liberal democracy, but begs the question of why the majority once supported it. All three explanations ignore previous democratic nostalgia as shown by how grief following the death of democracy icon Cory Aquino underpinned her son’s successful presidential campaign. An alternative explanation emphasizes the role of narratives in understanding institutional continuity and change. It demonstrates how a counter-narrative of a developmental “golden age” during Marcos, Sr.’s martial law rule eclipsed the tale of how EDSA (the street on which most of the “people power” uprising in 1986 took place) miraculously freed Filipinos from dictatorship. Initially invoked during Marcos family campaigns in their regional bailiwicks, furthered by a lack of transitional justice and amplified through social media, a discourse about an authoritarian "golden age" spread as critical junctures exposed a patronage-ridden democracy’s weak institutions, debilitated strategic groups supporting it, and undermined claims to have brought about “good governance”. Research for this project - conducted with two leading Philippine political scientists, one of whom is also a leading pollster – involves comprehensive study of opinion polls since Marcos, Sr.’s downfall, social media sentiment analysis, focus group discussions, electoral campaign analysis, study of dynastic politics, and process tracing buttressed by elite interviews situating the rise and decline of these competing narratives within a larger discursive institionalist context. A workshop about authoritarian nostalgia in Asia with regional experts will foster nuanced comparison.