Book Launch: The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy by Richard Heydarian

Join us as Professor Richard Heydarian launches his new book The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy

This book draws on extensive literature on populism, democracy, and emerging markets as well as interviews with senior government officials, experts, and journalists in the Philippines and beyond. It is the first book to analyze the significance and implications of the rise of Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte within a rapidly changing Asia Pacific region. As China's power in the Pacific grows, nations such as the Philippines that have traditionally been US allies are experiencing political convulsions. Duterte's overt willingness to realign the Philippines away from the US towards China in exchange for infrastructure investment is one of the clearest indicators of what China's rise might look like for the rest the world.

Timely, precise, accessible, and fast-paced, this book will be of value to scholars, journalists, policy-makers, and China watchers.

About the author

Richard Javad Heydarian is a Manila-based academic. He has taught political science at the Ateneo De Manila and De La Salle Universities in the Philippines, and is a regular contributor to The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

As a leading expert on Philippine and Southeast Asian affairs, he has written for, or been interviewed by Aljazeera English, BBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asian Review, Straits Times, and other leading publications.