Persuasive Agenda-Setting: Rodrigo Duterte's Inauguration Speech and Drugs in the Philippines

Arbeitspapier

Can democratically elected politicians persuade their constituents to alter policy priorities? With little empirical support for this hypothesis to date, we propose that Rodrigo Duterte's inauguration speech on June 30, 2016 systematically shifted the Filipinos' policy agenda toward prioritizing illegal drugs. We first study day-to-day variation in national and sub-national Google searches over six months, identifying a strong and persistent increase in drug-related searches right after the speech. Placebo tests rule out potentially confounding topics, such as pharmaceutical drugs, Duterte's 'War on Drugs', or common time trends with neighboring countries. Next, to better identify causality, we exploit the exogenous timing of traditional local festivals, which we argue resulted in some of the Philippines' 81 provinces being less exposed to Duterte's speech. The corresponding results are consistent with our hypothesis: less exposed provinces had smaller increases in drug-related Google searches. Finally, we examine individual-level survey responses that more directly capture policy priorities and uncover similar results: crime has moved to the top of the Filipinos' policy agenda. Results that exploit the same identication strategy based on local festivals hint at a causal effect of the speech on these policy priorities.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 13027

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government ; State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions ; Health Behavior ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: Asia including Middle East
• Subject: agenda setting ; persuasion ; policy priorities

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Jetter, Michael ; Molina, Teresa
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/216339
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET