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8 - Leadership from Below?

Networked Governance in Preventing the Reintroduction of the Death Penalty in the Philippines

from Part III - Actors and Agencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2025

Wing-Cheong Chan
Affiliation:
Singapore Management University
Mai Sato
Affiliation:
Birkbeck, University of London
Michael Hor
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
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Summary

Death penalty policy and practice in the Philippines have been characterised by ambivalence and repeated vacillation between retention and abolition. In 2006, the death penalty was abolished for the second time, but Duterte renewed the call for reimposition by presenting the death penalty as a solution to the so-called ‘war on drugs’. In March 2017, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a Bill to reintroduce the death penalty for drug-related offences and heinous crimes. Although the Bill was stalled in the Senate, legislators continued filing bills pushing for capital punishment. This chapter analyses the period during 2016–2022, drawing on interviews carried out with those involved in anti-death penalty advocacy on the ground in the Philippines. It uses the framework of ‘networked governance’ to understand how various organisations banded together to oppose the reintroduction of the death penalty. While scholarship on death penalty abolition has stressed the importance of ‘leadership from the front’, this chapter argues that small organisations and individuals coalescing together had been pivotal in steering the trajectory of the death penalty in the Philippines.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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