Neither democrats nor authoritarians? Clustering Philippine youth political attitudes in the time of democratic backsliding

Does public support for democratic institutions necessarily reflect a commitment to the values of democracy? The Philippines is a prime example of third wave democracies wherein formal democratic institutions coexist with authoritarian legacy. Through emergent clustering using a non-probability survey of 23,594 Filipino college and university students, we find significant relative differences among the Filipino youth respondents based on two axes: support for democracy and preference for authoritarian values. Our findings call for a more inductive and contextual approach to the study of the “D-word” among scholars. In the face of authoritarian nostalgia, rising populism, and prevailing political apathy, there is also an urgent need to close the gap in economic inequality and limited social mobility as a way to promote genuine civic democratic culture among the Filipino youth.