Rob Jenkins2 and Anne Marie Goetz3
The Philippines offers a case study of the difficulties of determining whether a sustainable reversal of a country’s ‘regime trajectory’ is under way. President Rodrigo Duterte’s tenure (2016–22) witnessed an assault on liberal norms and institutions. To the surprise of many, his successor, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr, has taken actions that suggest the rule of law might be making a comeback. But what evidence is there that the authoritarian tide has ebbed? And what can recent history reveal about the dynamics of democratic backsliding and the potential to insulate policymaking from such trends? While Marcos has curtailed Duterte’s most egregious practices, accountability institutions continue to be systematically subverted. Two decades of regime uncertainty have not, however, prevented successive presidents from pursuing liberal approaches in two policy areas: peace-building in the war-torn Bangsamoro region and promoting gender equality. Continuity amid illiberal headwinds was in both cases facilitated by the creation of specialised institutions that draw civil society into policymaking.
Political regime, democratisation, peace, gender, liberal, illiberal.
With democracy in retreat in much of the world during the past two decades, advocates for human rights and the rule of law have been heartened by recent elections that ousted autocrats from office in countries such as Brazil (2022) and Poland (2023).4 The resuscitation of India’s opposition parties in 2024, after a decade of illiberal governance, and the relatively peaceful overthrow of an increasingly repressive government in neighbouring Bangladesh later that year were held as further indications that democracy may be experiencing a revival.
Despite these welcome developments, there is to date scant evidence of a sustainable reversal of the international trend away from democracy. Inroads made by illiberal political forces in long-standing democracies such as Italy, France, and Germany threaten to negate the effects of progress elsewhere. From a global perspective the picture is decidedly mixed, as leading analysts such as Larry Diamond readily concede (Owens 2023).
Less frequently acknowledged, however, is that even at country level, discerning, meaningful shifts away from authoritarianism can be extremely difficult. It is not just that countries score differently depending on which assessment methodology is used or which of the many dimensions of democracy – free and fair elections, judicial independence, press freedom – are under consideration. Rather, it is the ambiguous and often transient nature of seemingly pivotal political developments, combined with the relative invisibility of sometimes slow-moving but durable trends, that make it so challenging to determine whether a genuine reversal of regime trajectory (Mainwaring and Masoud 2022) is underway.
The recent history of the Philippines offers a useful case study of how challenging it is to identify sustained shifts in the direction of a country’s political regime. The election of President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 ushered in a period in which blatant human rights violations took place, democratic institutions were undermined, and norms of public discourse were degraded. When Ferdinand ‘Bong Bong’ Marcos, Jr (or PBBM, as he is known), succeeded Duterte in 2022, his administration took decisions that, to the surprise of many, suggested a return to something like political normality: the Philippines would remain a ‘flawed democracy’ (EIU 2024), but not a normless one. Checks and balances would constrain extreme abuses of executive power and law enforcement would not be weaponised against ordinary citizens.
With the six-year term of PBBM reaching its halfway mark in 2025, to what extent has the authoritarian direction the country was heading in under Duterte been reversed? And what can revisiting recent political history reveal about the complex dynamics of democratic backsliding in the Philippines, as well as which areas of public policy appear relatively insulated from the general inclination towards illiberalism? To answer these questions, this article examines a range of government actions relating to human rights, democratic governance, and the rule of law. We pay particular attention to two policy areas: (1) the peace process between the government and armed separatists in the Muslim-majority Bangsamoro region, and (2) legal and institutional reforms connected to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Three main arguments are advanced. First, actions taken under PBBM that have ameliorated the illiberal excesses of the Duterte administration mask trends that continue to erode the institutions of accountability needed for a sustained reversion to the path of democratisation. Second, that these trends pre-date Duterte’s time in office suggests that illiberal politics are more deeply entrenched in the Philippines than is often acknowledged, and repairing the damage will be much more challenging. Third, even as democratic norms and institutions have been eroded, successive presidential administrations have over the past two decades consistently pursued liberal approaches in some policy areas. We single out two: building peace in the Bangsamoro region, and advancing policies on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The directional continuity achieved in these policy areas, in the face of broader illiberal headwinds, was made possible in part by the creation, in the post-dictatorship period, of specialised government institutions that have drawn civil society organisations into policymaking. Despite this, the two most recent presidents have not refrained from using illiberal tools to achieve ostensibly liberal ends.
In 1986, a non-violent ‘People’s Power’ revolution overthrew the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr (Time 2006). This was captured for a global public in iconic images disseminated through the world’s media: mass demonstrations along Manila’s main thoroughfare alternated with close-up face-offs at the barricades between citizens and increasingly sympathetic riot police. This coverage would provide a powerful popular uprising frame of reference for viewing the country’s transition to democracy, one that has persisted as a paradigmatic example of non-violent regime-change for 40 years.
But bringing Marcos’s rule to an end had taken years of organised grass-roots resistance. Like many autocrats, Marcos retained power in part through his symbiotic relationship with the country’s business elite, and skill at dispensing patronage to politically entrenched dynasties, many of which possessed private armed groups. The wealth that Marcos and his political followers amassed made the Philippines one of the first countries to which the term ‘crony capitalism’ was applied (Branigin 1984). Political dissidents were often subjected to false criminal charges, staged encounters with the police, denial of due process under anti-terror legislation, torture while in detention, and violence inflicted by state- or ruling party-backed vigilantes (Overholt 1986).
In 1983, immediately upon returning to the Philippines from exile in the United States (US), opposition leader Benigno Aquino II was assassinated. The broad-based nature of the street protests that followed would define the People’s Power movement, as would the non-radical ‘simple housewife’ persona adopted by Aquino’s widow Corazon, who assumed its leadership.5 That Corazon Aquino came from a powerful political dynasty, and had married into another, was less relevant to public perception than her plain-spoken appeal and signature yellow dress. After Marcos was forced into exile, Cory, as she was known, was elected president and her Liberal Party became the dominant political force. Her motherly ‘gendered moral capital’ (Thompson 2012) was, however, insufficient to drive sustained reform, and she had to rely on dynastic patronage systems and the support of the Catholic Church.
During the first three decades following the People’s Power revolution, the Philippines established itself as a solid member of the cohort of new democracies that emerged around the same time. The country’s 1987 Constitution introduced measures to restrain would-be autocrats, such as limiting presidents to a single six-year term, increasing the powers of human rights monitoring bodies, and affirming the supremacy of Supreme Court rulings on constitutional matters. The Philippines would not, in the years that followed, always be a model of responsive or accountable governance. But it held regular elections, with power alternating between rival political groupings. Civil society was vibrant and the press voluble. The judiciary at times showed an independent streak.
It is true that the Philippines faced a series of regime crises in the 20 years following its democratic breakthrough. While this might suggest a fragile political order, in reality, almost all new democracies face stress tests. Many quickly fail. The ability of Philippines democracy to weather these crises arguably demonstrated the resilience of its institutions. Corazon Aquino faced several coup attempts, none of which succeeded. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who held office from 2001–10, also faced multiple coup attempts. These, too, were unsuccessful (Conde 2006).
High-level corruption and the systematic abuse of executive power were other sources of chronic regime-trend instability during this period. Arroyo’s predecessor as president, Joseph Estrada, engaged in such blatant corruption that he was impeached by the House of Representatives in late 2000, two years after taking office. Though his Senate trial became bogged down in procedural disagreements, widespread public protests forced Estrada from office in early 2001. But rather than a military caretaker government assuming power, the appropriate constitutional procedure was followed: Vice-President Arroyo replaced Estrada, who would eventually be convicted of ‘plunder’ by an anti-corruption court (Mogato 2007). Arroyo too would face corruption scandals, the most serious of which called into question the validity of her election in 2004.6 But for all the drama and dysfunction that characterised Philippines politics during the 2000s, its institutions demonstrated self-correcting properties when faced with the possibility of regime collapse.
As the third wave of democracy began to ebb around the world, beginning in 2007 or so, and a distinct undertow of autocracy became visible,7 the Philippines appeared to defy this trend. In 2010, the electorate was given the choice of two populist candidates for president but opted instead for a return to the broadly liberal consensus represented by the Aquino family. Cory’s son Benigno ‘Noy Noy’ Aquino III (or PNoy, as he was known), defeated disgraced former president Joseph Estrada and the country’s richest man, Senator Manny Villar, whose extreme wealth was alleged to stem from his political connections (Republic of the Philippines 2010). PNoy ran on a progressive policy agenda, appointed a cabinet with a commitment to social justice, and was praised for his attempts to combat corruption, including through a valiant though failed effort to pass a Freedom of Information Act (Villamejor-Mendoza et al. 2018).
The Philippines’ defiance of the international trend towards illiberalism appeared more impressive during the second half of PNoy’s administration. The watershed year of 2014 saw Türkiye, Thailand, and Bangladesh each follow its own unique path towards authoritarian rule,8 while India elected a politician credibly suspected of grave human rights violations (Human Rights Watch 2023). As the Philippines’ 2016 election drew near, PNoy’s Liberal Party united behind a mainstream candidate who promised to continue his broadly progressive reform agenda. So when in May 2016 voters elected President Rodrigo Duterte, whose campaign demonstrated open contempt for legal constraints on executive authority, the country seemed to have cast off its outlier status and fallen in line with the prevailing international trend. What alarmed civil libertarians was not just the harsh crackdown on crime Duterte promised, but his record as an elected official. During more than two decades as mayor of Davao City, Duterte had celebrated violence in his public statements and deployed extreme measures to fight crime and, according to critics, punish his enemies. He allegedly used his position to operate the so-called Davao Death Squad, which could ‘disappear’ political and business rivals as well as suspected criminals (BBC News 2016).
During Duterte’s six years as president, he was as good as his word and reputation, violating almost every type of democratic norm. His war on drugs was said to have killed more than 20,000 people – ordinary users as well as suspected traffickers and their accomplices inside government – while normalising state-directed killing by vigilantes. Duterte also weaponised the state’s justice system against high-level opponents (National Union of Journalists of the Philippines 2021). After Duterte declared an inconvenient Supreme Court justice his ‘enemy’ for opposing his policies, his allies had her removed from office on highly questionable legal grounds. Duterte also allegedly exerted influence to have a sitting senator jailed after she continued to pursue an investigation of systematic human rights abuses committed during Duterte’s time as mayor of Davao (Villamor 2018).
As president, Duterte targeted not just individual journalists but entire media companies. One news outlet, ABS-CBN, was blocked from renewing its broadcast franchise, allegedly due to its critical coverage of the president (Esguerra 2020). When in 2019 the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched an investigation into the thousands of extra-judicial killings associated with the administration’s war on drugs, Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC (Al Jazeera 2019). Both during the campaign and throughout his presidency, Duterte degraded norms of public discourse by targeting individuals and groups, notably women (especially female critics), with derogatory and often violent rhetoric (Alqaseer and Pile 2020).
In the 2022 elections, Duterte was succeeded as president by PBBM – the son of the late autocrat Marcos and his equally famous wife Imelda. PBBM had handily defeated the Liberal Party candidate, Leni Robredo, a human rights advocate who had served as Duterte’s (separately elected) vice-president and had earned a reputation for toughness after confronting him on several occasions (Wong 2019). PBBM’s social media apparatus, allegedly built with assistance from controversial political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, was well funded and successfully weaponised misinformation against his opponent (Valderama 2023; Gonzalez 2022).
As PBBM assumed office in mid-2022, a continuation of the assault on democratic institutions waged by his predecessor was expected. Throughout his time as a public figure, PBBM’s main preoccupation had been rehabilitating his family’s reputation. This meant denying the truth of the systematic corruption and human rights abuses perpetrated by his father’s martial law regime. It was with President Duterte’s help that PBBM, then a senator, was able to have the remains of his late dictator father interred at the national heroes’ cemetery. This, and the election of Sara Duterte, Rodrigo’s daughter, as PBBM’s vice-president seemed to ensure that there would be no accountability for former president Duterte’s alleged high crimes.
Since taking office, however, PBBM has – to the surprise of many political observers – displayed a seemingly more liberal side. Most strikingly, he cooperated with Interpol in the March 2025 arrest of Duterte and his transfer to the Hague to face the ICC charges. But prior to that, PBBM’s administration wound down the politically motivated prosecutions that Duterte’s government had launched against his opponents. In 2024, prosecutors withdrew the remaining charges against former Senator Leila de Lima, who had spent the intervening seven years in prison (Amnesty International 2024). Under PBBM’s administration, most, though not all, government cases against the Rappler news site and its founder Maria Ressa were dropped (Associated Press 2023). Ressa’s defence of press freedom in the face of Duterte’s repression earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
PBBM’s socioeconomic agenda – Bagong Pilipinas (‘New Philippines’) – has stressed progressive themes such as the need for more inclusive, participatory governance. This contrasts sharply with Duterte’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ initiative, which encouraged fast-tracking infrastructure projects without due regard for their social or environmental consequences. In a country where policy measures are often introduced stealthily – for instance, through administrative orders rather than statutory changes – PBBM’s government has pursued key economic reforms through legally appropriate channels (World Bank 2023). To liberalise rules on foreign direct investment (FDI), for instance, rather than issuing a presidential proclamation, PBBM initiated the process for seeking a constitutional amendment to allow greater foreign-ownership stakes in the economy.
The most readily perceived shift in terms of liberal norms concerns the symbolic dimensions of official life. Duterte’s interviews and public statements were routinely peppered with casual profanity and crude sexism, boasts of his transgressions, and vivid threats of violence against his enemies. PBBM, by contrast, never uses misogynist language and refrains from using intimidation as a rhetorical device.
Perhaps because the contrast with Duterte’s brand of straight-talking tough guy leadership is so striking, PBBM’s more conventional approach to exercising the duties of president can obscure certain similarities. These are significant (and numerous) enough to sow doubt as to whether PBBM’s administration has substantially reversed the country’s democratic backsliding. After all, while Duterte jailed Senator de Lima because it was politically convenient to end investigations into his past, PBBM had her released because it helped his political future by potentially increasing his popularity among moderate voters. Cooperating with the ICC investigation into Duterte is, likewise, politically beneficial to PBBM, who has fallen out badly with Vice-President Sara Duterte and her father over concerns that they were conspiring to groom Sara, rather than PBBM’s preferred choice, to be the next president (Head 2024).
PBBM’s administration has also, like Duterte’s, subverted democratic norms and disrupted the impartial functioning of its public institutions. For instance, the petition to amend the constitution mentioned earlier, which on the surface appeared to reflect a commitment to legal process, was alleged to have involved a cash-for-signatures arrangement (Cruz 2024), just the kind of tactic that undermines trust in public institutions. Moreover, under PBBM’s government, the practice of ‘red tagging’ – accusing social activists, development workers, labour organisers, and others of abetting an armed communist insurgency – has continued much as it had during the Duterte administration, though with perhaps less open encouragement (Amnesty Philippines 2023).
As political observers assess the significance of the transition from Rodrigo Duterte’s norm-defying presidency to the more conventional approach adopted under PBBM, it may be instructive to revisit an earlier fork in the road of the country’s regime trajectory. In 2010, PNoy’s victory over former president Estrada was perceived as Philippines democracy righting itself – pulling back from the authoritarian brink – following the illiberal tendencies that had emerged during Gloria Arroyo’s presidency. President Arroyo had not only faced several corruption scandals in which she was reportedly involved personally; her government passed laws that facilitated the systematic violation of basic due process. The 2007 Human Security Act removed protections for suspects and detainees where terrorism was alleged. Extra-judicial killings (EJKs) in the Philippines, including by members of the armed forces, rose massively under Arroyo’s administration. A United Nations (UN) special rapporteur’s report found that almost no safeguards had been introduced to counter impunity (Alston 2008).
PNoy’s administration has often been portrayed as representing a return to a liberal political order. It even included the reinstatement of several officials who had called out abuses allegedly committed by Arroyo. But a closer examination of the facts suggests that PNoy’s government possessed neither the power nor the will needed to reverse the authoritarian tide (Regencia 2013). While the number of EJKs declined during his administration, their continued existence became in effect normalised, a regular feature of political life under whatever party held power. That the momentum behind the erosion of norms can be difficult to reverse is suggested by the fact that, despite PNoy’s commitment to human rights, more cases of torture and other grave human rights violations took place under his government than under Arroyo’s (Villamejor-Mendoza et al. 2018).
Reduced election-related violence under the PNoy administration – ‘only’ 80 deaths during the 2013 mid-terms compared to 130 in the previous cycle – could, similarly, be interpreted not as a sign of progress, but rather an indication that violence, too, had become an enduring feature of Philippines democracy. High-level corruption and EJKs had also been gradually normalised to the point where the actions of PNoy’s successor, Rodrigo Duterte, would begin to seem less aberrational to many people (Freedom House 2016: 548).
In fact, the PNoy administration, for all its liberal credentials, demonstrated notable parallels with Duterte’s. PNoy forced from office a Supreme Court chief justice who was closely allied to his predecessor (Abinales 2015). Duterte would do the same thing a few years later – a step he might well have taken even if his liberal predecessor had not already done so – but the precedent made it easier and thus more likely. Though PNoy’s approval rating declined from a high of 79 per cent when first elected to a low of 54 per cent in September 2015, by the time he left office the following year, the majority of the country still did not consider his government’s tolerance for corruption and other abuses of executive authority sufficient grounds for disapproving of the man himself (ibid.). His supporters were more likely to blame what they considered a corrupt system dominated by an oligarchy of elites. Such beliefs offered fertile political ground for a populist leader like Duterte.
Even the results of the 2010 election that brought PNoy to power should have been less reassuring for liberals than they were at the time. When the numbers are examined more closely, we can see that disgraced former president Joseph Estrada, with 26 per cent of the vote, was only 16 points behind PNoy’s 42 per cent. The 32 per cent of the vote obtained by other candidates suggested that if anti-liberal forces could ally with traditional conservatives, the populist right could win power. Six years later, under Duterte, it did. Democracy’s foundation was weak long before Duterte ran for president.
In 2010, it was none other than Duterte himself who demonstrated the viability of a strongman platform while running, unsuccessfully, for vice-president. Jonathan Kurlantzick was among the first external analysts to recognise that Duterte’s rapid acquisition of a national political following placed the Philippines on the same trajectory towards authoritarianism then underway in Thailand and other countries (Kurlantzick 2014). During his 2010 vice-presidential campaign, Duterte market-tested his tough-on-crime version of populism, as well as the salty language for which he would become world famous. Opinion surveys showed significant support for extra-legal methods to restore public order, a sentiment that would only strengthen during Duterte’s run for the presidency six years later (Social Weather Stations 2010).
Despite the considerable regime-trend uncertainty displayed in the Philippines, successive governments of all political persuasions have retained a surprising level of commitment to recognisably liberal policy orientations in two policy areas: addressing the armed insurgency in the Muslim-majority region of western Mindanao, and promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The policy continuity in both fields is notable in light of the degradation of liberal norms in other areas of governance, and a rightward shift in public opinion more generally, but also because dedicated institutions that promote continuous civil society engagement appear to have played a role in both cases.
The Bangsamoro region of the southern Philippines has been the site of an armed struggle for self-determination waged by groups fighting on behalf of the Moro nation (or Bangsamoro) since the 1970s. The war between the Philippines military and various rebel forces killed an estimated 120,000 people, and displaced millions (Poling and Hanlon 2012). Each post-dictatorship president has attempted to advance an official peace process. The 1987 Constitution adopted during Cory Aquino’s government established the legal basis for creating an ‘autonomous region’ in Muslim Mindanao. A regional authority was established. Though it lacked sufficient power, resources, or local legitimacy, a precedent had been set. Cory’s successor, Fidel Ramos, signed the first comprehensive peace deal in 1996, with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). Even President Estrada, not known for compromise, pursued peace talks during his first two years in office with an even more potent breakaway group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), before declaring ‘all-out war’ just as calls for his impeachment were growing.
Throughout much of the 2000s, Estrada’s successor, President Arroyo, despite a dismal record on EJKs, and allegations that she subverted the electoral process, pursued a path of recognisably liberal peace-building, an approach that considers human rights, rule-based governance, and the representation of minority groups essential to preventing conflict recurrence. This orientation was most evident in Arroyo’s appointment of highly regarded figures from non-governmental peace and human rights organisations to key posts in the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP). This consolidated a liberal approach to conflict resolution in the OPAPP bureaucracy, which continues to address a range of internal conflicts in the country through negotiation, development interventions, and other actions.
It was PNoy’s government that brought the nearly two-decade-long negotiating process to completion in 2014 when it signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). The MILF would renounce violence in exchange for official recognition of the Moro people’s right to self-determination, within the context of the Philippines Republic and subject to its constitution. This fell short of the independent state for which it had fought, but the centrepiece of the agreement – the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) – offered substantial scope for the exercise of self-government. The agreement also included other liberal features, such as quotas for under-represented groups in post-conflict governance institutions, specialised bodies for managing relations between the national and regional governments, and provisions to ensure socioeconomic development in rebel-held areas and justice for victims of human rights abuses.
PNoy’s government was unable to pass the legislation required to give effect to the peace treaty before leaving office. When Rodrigo Duterte took power in 2016, there was little reason to hope that a politician known for aggressively prosecuting war against those who defied the state would work to accommodate the demands of armed rebels. Duterte seemed unlikely to resuscitate a peace deal agreed between his predecessor, a man whose liberalism he mocked, and a rebel group that had killed thousands of soldiers and police officers – precisely the ‘military heroes’ Duterte was fond of valorising.
When, a year after Duterte took office, violent extremists pledging support to the Islamic State laid siege to the Bangsamoro city of Marawi, there was even less reason to expect progress on peace. Duterte unleashed the military, including heavy air bombardments, in a five-month-long battle to retake the city. Yet, all the while, the commission he had appointed to draft new legislation in line with the CAB continued its work, and in 2018 Duterte signed the Bangsamoro Organic Law. A year later, his government organised a referendum in which the law was ratified by the region’s people. As called for in the CAB, Duterte appointed the majority of the BARMM’s transitional administration from among the leaders of the MILF, which was empowered to devise the basic codes for the region’s civil service, education system, and so forth. Despite scattered incidents of violence, and the strict lockdown measures his government imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Duterte remained committed to implementing the peace agreement throughout the remainder of his term.
Since assuming office in 2022, PBBM has surprised observers with his willingness to advance the peace process through peace implementation bodies, as well as the intergovernmental relations mechanism charged with resolving issues between national leaders and their counterparts in the BARMM. Because the MILF had backed PBBM’s rival during the campaign, it was expected that he might have his natural allies, the powerful Moro political dynasties from the region (some of which had been empowered by his father), installed in place of the MILF’s rebels-turned-rulers.
Instead, PBBM stuck to the spirit of the CAB and continued to ensure constructive relations with the MILF. Indeed, PBBM’s government has made the Bangsamoro peace process – particularly its liberal features – the centrepiece of the Philippines’ bid for elected membership to a temporary seat on the UN Security Council. The nature of the political system being created in the BARMM is of particular interest to global peace coalitions that see inclusive institutions and respect for human rights and the rule of law as the preconditions for lasting peace.
As with the past two decades of more or less continuous government engagement in the Bangsamoro peace process, significant women’s rights laws have been passed regardless of whether the Philippines was experiencing one of its moments of democratic backsliding. Neither of the two women to have served as president proved to be unambiguous supporters of women’s rights. Both relied on church leaders for support, with enduring consequences for women’s access to divorce, contraception, and abortion (which is specifically prohibited in the 1987 Constitution) (Dañguilan 2018). The Philippines’ ability to sustain legislative progress on women’s rights even as, periodically, democratic norms have come under attack stems from two main features of its institutional landscape: a large, diverse, and well-organised women’s movement, and a national bureaucratic ‘machinery’ in the form of the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW), which monitors gender budgeting provisions and proposes gender equality laws.
Progress in the first decade and a half after the Marcos dictatorship collapsed in 1986 focused on institutionalising ‘state feminism’. This included a national gender and development plan, and a requirement that all government entities spend at least 5 per cent of their budgets on gender equality.9 A comprehensive anti-discrimination law to domesticate the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) – known as the ‘Magna Carta of Women’ – was passed in 2009. President Arroyo appointed prominent feminist civil society leaders to key positions.
Of all the post-People Power presidencies, PNoy’s administration was arguably the most responsive on issues of gender equality. Early in his tenure, PNoy signed into law the 2012 Reproductive Health Act in the face of strong opposition from church-affiliated groups. He included a record five women in his cabinet, appointed a woman as chief justice of the Supreme Court, and ensured that women served as chairs of key constitutional commissions. Women’s share of seats in Congress also increased to about 27 per cent, a level sustained in the two administrations since then.
Rodrigo Duterte’s administration brought an abrupt reversal in many respects. He weaponised the justice system against female critics such as Supreme Court Chief Justice Sereno and Senator de Lima and replaced prominent feminist bureaucrats who held leadership roles in the peace process with men, often from military backgrounds (Villamor 2018; The World 2020). Duterte’s misogynistic rhetoric led many to expect that he might pursue the same regressive policies on gender that had been adopted by presidents Victor Orbán in Hungary or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (Beinart 2019).
Nevertheless, Duterte’s government turned out not to be interested in dismantling the legal or institutional framework for women’s rights. Unlike in ‘gender backlash’ contexts, such as Poland under the Law and Justice Party, Duterte did not attack sexual and gender minorities, and made no move to eliminate the Philippines’ long-established national women’s machinery. Indeed, the PCW’s budget increased steadily after 2016 (Statista 2024). Duterte signed new laws to prevent sexual harassment, child marriage, and online sexual exploitation of children. His administration introduced updates to laws on single parents, the age of sexual consent, maternity leave, and people trafficking. These measures had been under development for years before Duterte took office, but with the exception of stalling a divorce bill (Ranada 2018b), he did not block progressive measures on gender. This is not to suggest that Duterte’s extreme anti-feminist rhetoric was without material effects (Go 2019). Critics claim that his sexist comments fuelled an increase in gender-based violence (GBV), though official data on GBV in the Philippines is too uneven to support any definitive conclusions.10
PBBM’s 2022 victory was met with alarm by many in the women’s movement who had supported Leni Robredo (Villanueva 2024). Since taking office, he has made no important moves on the list of pending measures maintained by the PCW in its Women’s Priority Legislative Agenda (Philippine Commission on Women 2022), but neither has he openly opposed these measures. PBBM moved relatively swiftly, as we have seen, to end the persecution of high-profile feminist critics of the previous government, but he has not promoted a particularly strong team of women leaders in the upper echelons of his party or government.
This article has examined the ambiguous nature of political developments in the Philippines to highlight the challenges that confront any effort to determine the direction of a country’s regime trajectory. We argue that seemingly democracy-restoring developments can obscure political dynamics and long-term institutional weaknesses that can undermine the rule of law. At the same time, we identify a persistently liberal orientation in two key policy areas: resolving the civil war in the Bangsamoro region and addressing issues of gender equality. In both cases, the establishment and further development of specialised institutions helped to ensure continuity even as the tenor of political life shifted.
The Philippines has taken a remarkably inclusive approach to resolving its civil war in the Bangsamoro region, including through the development of close relations between government officials and leaders from both major rebel fronts. The process of consultation and deliberation involving a wide array of stakeholders from within the region and beyond is a key reason why the peace process has come as far as it has, and this has chiefly been the work of OPAPP. This approach, which has included more than two decades of support for social and economic development programmes run by rebel organisations, largely reflects the institutionalisation of liberal peace-building principles in the OPAPP’s mandate and organisational culture. The close linkages between OPAPP and peace coalitions in civil society have entrenched this role, even during periods when democratic norms have been under attack.
Under these circumstances, political actors face strong incentives to seek accommodation, rather than additional conflict – that is, to support the peace process, whose full-time bureaucratic apparatus in the form of OPAPP draws stakeholders into the various panels it oversees. These include local government-elected officials, civil society leaders, and national politicians. OPAPP was renamed the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU) in early 2022. The new name partly reflects the role that it plays in fostering engagement between the country’s large military establishment, the civilian administration, and the peace movement.
The role of specialised institutions in sustaining progress on a liberal policy agenda is also evident with respect to gender issues. The existence of the PCW – and particularly the space it has opened for policy engagement between officials and civil society groups – has allowed it to serve as an organisational locus for maintaining momentum on advancing gender equality initiatives. Even when the Philippines has exhibited signs of severe democratic backsliding, as it did under Duterte, the attacks on individual feminist leaders did not prevent action on key gender policy matters from moving forward. The Philippines’ ‘state feminism’ has created incentives for sustaining local and national commitment to gender issues.
At the same time, even in those areas where illiberalism seemed least able to prevent the onward march of progressive policy solutions, recent governments have been more than willing to use illiberal means to advance what they consider ultimately liberal solutions. Duterte and PBBM have each postponed BARMM’s first regional elections. Duterte’s government agreed to a three-year postponement, from 2022 to 2025, when the MILF leaders said they needed more time to consolidate a political base. PBBM went further, allegedly orchestrating an intervention by the Supreme Court when it looked like his allies in the MILF were likely to lose the regional elections, which at the time of writing have been delayed until October 2025 (Buan 2024). These illiberal measures were employed after senior leaders of PBBM’s party were deputed to use underhanded tactics to pressure local politicians in the BARMM to back the president’s allies, under threat of investigative action (Yahyam 2024). These are all worrying signs for a country that many hope has grown out of a populist phase.
Similar concerns exist when it comes to what might threaten continued progress on gender equality. In an officially secular but deeply Christian country, the challenge of sustaining progress on gender equality should not be underestimated. Considerable political capital is needed for this, but it seems this is not an area where the PBBM government wants to risk alienating conservative supporters. In the case of the two-decade-old bill to forbid discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, PBBM’s allies have created new roadblocks by inviting fresh scrutiny of the proposals by religious groups (Abad 2023). In the case of the Bangsamoro peace process, while PBBM has showcased the extent to which women were included in negotiations as part of the Philippines’ campaign for UN Security Council membership in 2026–28 (Valente 2024), he has made no move to hold the MILF leadership to account for foot-dragging on women’s rights, notably its opposition to implementing the 2022 national child marriage ban (Subingsubing 2022). Moreover, no efforts were made in March 2025 to maintain the numbers of women in the Bangsamoro Transitional Authority when it was reconstituted at the end of its members’ three-year terms. Seven (out of 16) women were cycled out; not one replaced by a woman. These and other developments represent red flags not only for the peace process and women’s rights, but also for the country’s regime trajectory more broadly.
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