“COMMUNITY PROTECTION FROM POPULIST VIOLENCE: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE PHILIPPINE DRUG WAR”
Steven Brooke
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science and Faculty Director, Middle East Studies Program
University of Wisconsin-Madison
When populist leaders’ harsh rhetoric transforms into routinized violence, can organized religion protect vulnerable communities? In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte launched a dramatic “Drug War” in 2016 that left thousands dead. Yet the application of violence was highly uneven: some neighborhoods were barely touched, while others became killing fields. Community Protection from Populist Violence… traces this local variation to the protective role of religious institutions, in particular the efforts of local Catholic congregations. Original surveys of Catholic clergy, experiments with officers of the Philippine National Police, spatial data on thousands of drug killings and local parishes, and dozens of field interviews in these neighborhoods provide an intricate view of how religion, populism, and political violence interact on the ground. Our research reveals that local Catholic parishes drew on institutional capacity and moral commitment to influence local officials with discretion over violence and challenge populist dehumanization. While these activities did not completely stop drug war killings, a variety of evidence suggests that, in their absence, violence directed towards vulnerable communities would have been even more extreme. Amidst rising global concern about populism and violence, Community Protection from Populist Violence… generates new insights into how religious actors protect communities in one of the largest mega-cities in the world.