The Maboloc - Mouffe Radical Democracy Debate
The Mouffe–Maboloc debate is philosophically important because it concerns a basic question: Can Rodrigo Duterte's politics legitimately be described as “radical democracy” in the Mouffean sense?
My assessment is that Christopher Ryan Maboloc identifies a genuine democratic problem, but his original use of Mouffe stretches the concept of radical democracy beyond its strongest theoretical meaning. His later reply improves the argument considerably, but does not completely resolve the conceptual problem.
1. Mouffe's position
For Chantal Mouffe, radical democracy does not mean simply rejecting liberal democracy or violently confronting elites. It involves radicalizing liberal democracy by pushing its commitments to liberty and equality further. Political conflict is unavoidable, but Mouffe distinguishes:
Antagonism — conflict between enemies who seek each other's destruction.
Agonism — conflict between legitimate adversaries who recognize each other's right to participate in the political struggle.
Thus, radical democracy requires democratic institutions and a political space in which plural groups can contest power.
This is the central point made by Kyle Alfred Barte in his 2023 critique of Maboloc. Barte argues that Maboloc effectively treats “radical” as a break with liberal democracy, whereas Mouffe's project is better understood as a radicalization of liberal-democratic principles.
2. Maboloc's important insight
Maboloc's argument nevertheless has considerable philosophical force.
He does not simply say that Duterte was radical because Duterte was aggressive. His argument begins from the failure of Philippine elite democracy, particularly the historical exclusion of Mindanao and the persistence of oligarchic power. His 2020 paper explicitly connects Duterte's rise with colonial history, elite domination, and Mindanao's sense of political exclusion.
Maboloc's deeper claim is that democracy cannot be understood merely in terms of formal institutions. One has to ask whether ordinary people actually experience political representation and whether entrenched elites have monopolized political power.
That is a legitimate radical-democratic question.
Indeed, Maboloc has explained that his attraction to Mouffe comes partly from dissatisfaction with liberal approaches that emphasize consensus while failing to adequately confront structural
3. Where the criticism of Maboloc is strongest
The strongest criticism concerns the identification of Duterte himself with radical democracy.
Duterte's anti-elite rhetoric and confrontation with the political establishment can certainly be interpreted as a form of populist mobilization. But that does not automatically make it Mouffean radical democracy.
This is where Barte and Imbong, Imbong, and Torres make a powerful point. They argue that Duterte's administration frequently undermined precisely those liberal-democratic institutions, civil liberties, and spaces for civil-society contestation that Mouffe regards as necessary for radical democracy.
The problem can therefore be stated simply:
Being anti-elite is not sufficient to be radical-democratic.
A leader can attack elites while simultaneously concentrating power, weakening institutions, suppressing dissent, or violating rights. If that happens, the politics may be radical populism, authoritarian populism, or anti-establishment politics, without necessarily being radical democracy.
4. Maboloc's response changes the debate
Maboloc's 2024 response is important because he directly addresses these criticisms. He argues that critics misunderstand his use of radicalism and insists that Duterte's politics should be understood in relation to the people's rejection of entrenched elite politics, including the failures associated with the post-EDSA political order. He also argues that Duterte's conflict with political elites represents an agonistic struggle and that dismantling elitism can give democracy a “radical turn.”
This is a stronger argument than simply saying:
Duterte rejected liberalism → therefore Duterte was radical.
Maboloc's more sophisticated position is:
Elite domination → popular discontent → political antagonization of the establishment → redistribution of political agency → possibility of democratic radicalization.
That is philosophically more defensible.
But there remains a missing step.
5. The unresolved problem: Who is the demos?
This, in my view, is the most important weakness in the Maboloc position.
Mouffe's radical democracy ultimately concerns the democratic constitution of the demos—the people as a plural political subject.
If Duterte becomes the embodiment of “the people,” a serious theoretical danger appears:
Duterte → represents the people → Duterte defines the people's interests → opposition becomes opposition to the people.
That movement can transform agonism into antagonism.
This is precisely why Imbong and his co-authors argue that radical democracy should be grounded more fundamentally in social movements and civil society, rather than in a charismatic leader who claims to embody marginalized people.
This criticism is particularly important for a theory that wants to develop beyond Duterte.
6. But Maboloc's project should not be dismissed.
I would therefore reject the conclusion that Maboloc's entire project is simply a “misappropriation” of Mouffe.
That criticism is too strong.
Maboloc is doing something theoretically interesting: he is provincializing the theory of radical democracy and asking what it looks like when applied to the historical experience of Mindanao, colonial exclusion, Manila-centered political power, oligarchy, and popular resentment.
His strongest contribution may therefore not be the proposition:
“Duterte was radical.”
Rather, it is the broader proposition:
“The conditions that produced Duterte reveal a crisis in Philippine liberal democracy that conventional Manila-centered political theory has failed to adequately explain.”
That is a much more powerful philosophical thesis.
The deeper philosophical significance
The debate ultimately reveals two different meanings of “radical.”
For Maboloc, radicalism begins with a rupture against entrenched political power and the emergence of previously marginalized voices.
For the Mouffean critics, radicalism means deepening democracy itself—expanding equality, liberty, participation and political contestation without destroying the democratic conditions that make contestation possible.
The most productive synthesis would be:
A politics is not radically democratic merely because it challenges the elite. It becomes radically democratic when the challenge to elite power produces a wider, more pluralistic and genuinely participatory democratic order.
That formulation preserves Maboloc's important Mindanao-centered critique of Philippine oligarchy while taking seriously Mouffe's distinction between agonism and antagonism.
And this is where the Davao School of Radical Democracy could potentially move beyond the original Duterte debate: from asking whether Duterte was radical-democratic to asking what a genuinely Southern, pluralist and participatory radical democracy should look like after Duterte.
To conclude, Barte and Imbong are stronger on the textual interpretation of Mouffe; Maboloc is stronger on the historical and political question of why Duterte emerged. Hence, Maboloc may have given birth to a version of radical democracy - the Davao School of Radical Democracy.
