Arbitrary Power and the Weakening of the Rule of Law in Duterte's War on Drugs: a qualitative interview study with members of the Filipino Human Rights Community

Abstract: Rodrigo Roa Duterte was elected president of the Philippines in 2016. He launched a violent War on Drugs only one day after his assumption of the presidency. In his inaugural speech, Duterte described his adherence to the rule of law as uncompromising. At the same time, he has publicly promised to kill anyone who is involved in the drug business and encouraged the police and ordinary citizens to do the same. The death toll of the drug war had risen to 12,000 killings after fifteen months. The extrajudicial killings of alleged drug users and dealers have been attributed to the Philippine National Police and vigilantes. The present study addresses the lack of research that explores this campaign against illicit drugs from a Sociology of Law perspective. The author of the study has conducted four in-depth Skype interviews with representatives of the human rights community in the Philippines to explore their perspectives on how the initial period of the Duterte administration’s drug war has impacted on the state of the rule of law. The empirical material was analysed using a thematic analysis coupled with a theoretical framework that heavily draws on Martin Krygier’s sociological works on arbitrary power and the rule of law. The interviewees’ perceptions of the drug war suggest that the war has been characterised by widespread impunity, arbitrary power, and notions of ‘the rule of men’. The study concludes that in the perspectives of the interviewees, the drug war seems to have resulted in a loss of social co-ordination and a normalisation of lawlessness that, in their view, seems to have weakened the rule of law.