ABSTRACT
The victory of Rodrigo R. Duterte in the Philippine presidential elections of May 2016 has led to numerous discussions in an attempt to comprehend his unorthodox style of governance. The key issues at hand include his adversarial response to international criticisms of his War on Drugs and the orchestration of a ‘rescue’ mission for distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in Kuwait, among others. This chapter thus proposes several indigenous concepts derived from the extant literature on Philippine studies that can be employed in an analysis of Duterte’s foreign policy. The first is Remigio Agpalo’s (1981, 1999) conception of pagdamay (caring for others), which constitutes an element of the Philippine pangulo regime. Furthermore, Lucian Pye and Mary W. Pye (1985), in their book Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority, describe Philippine politics as palakasan (asserting power) (p. 124). This chapter provides examples from official policy documents and speeches to argue that the Duterte foreign policy is primarily driven by the concept of pagdamay towards the Filipino people, namely that in pursuit of pagdamay as a norm, the Duterte administration utilizes palakasan.
