Duterte promised voters that he would swiftly reduce crime and poverty and enact constitutional change. But will he violate democratic norms and rule of law in the process?
The retirement of the country’s longest-serving prime minister leaves in place a “continuity administration,” and with it some troubling questions about whether liberal democracy’s “soft guardrails” are being eroded.
Judging from their citizens’ middling levels of support for and satisfaction with democracy, both Korea and Taiwan are still far from democratic consolidation.