Thai Politics: Between Democracy and its Discontents 9781626375147

Citation preview

THAI POLITICS

THAI POLITICS Between Democracy and Its Discontents Daniel H. Unger Chandra Mahakanjana

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2016 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2016 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Unger, Daniel H., author. | Chandra Mahakanjana, author. Title: Thai politics : between democracy and its discontents / Daniel H. Unger and Chandra Mahakanjana. Description: Boulder, Colorado : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015037571 | ISBN 9781626374270 (hc : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Thailand—Politics and government—20th century. | Thailand—Politics and government—21st century. | Democratization—Thailand. Classification: LCC JQ1745 .U64 2016 | DDC 320.9593—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037571 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

4

3

2

1

For our Prince, and our Leviathan

Contents

ix

Authors’ Note on Terminology

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Thai Politics: Institutionalizing Uncertainty Potemkin Politics Performance of the Thai State Rule of Lords and Rule of Law Politics Between the Lines Political Participation: Civil Society and Political Parties Thailand’s Elusive Democracy

1 37 67 99 131 161 195 221 243 251

References Index About the Book

vii

Authors’ Note on Terminology

The term Thai refers to the people of Thailand, but the term Siamese was used widely until the country changed its name from Siam to Thailand in 1939/1949. The term Tai, which we use only in Chapter 3, refers to a specific ethnic group that displaced and absorbed Khmers, Mons, and others in establishing new polities in the areas of present-day Thailand and beyond.

ix

1 Thai Politics: Institutionalizing Uncertainty

politics and the deep political divide that has produced a decade of political turbulence, including two military coups in 2006 and 2014. More generally, we present insights into why democracy as a form of political regime has proved so challenging for Thais to manage. As with a number of other East or Southeast Asian countries, Thailand’s economy expanded rapidly and underwent structural transformations over the past half century. While manufacturing and services increasingly displaced agriculture as the key economic sectors, poverty plummeted, education expanded, and ever more Thais were being shaped by the forces of globalization. In these circumstances, observers might have anticipated that Thailand would follow the path of South Korea or Taiwan, two East Asian countries that, having built up strong economic and social bases, transformed their political systems comparatively rapidly and effectively as they shifted from authoritarian to democratic politics. At the end of the past century, a number of factors were working to support such a political shift in Thailand. These included an apparently strong national identity and a broad and flexible consensus among elites concerning public policy and the direction in which politics should evolve. Events over the 1990s seemed to have been nudging Thailand steadily in democratic directions, bolstered by an elite coalition that included conservative and liberal elements (Connors 2012: 99). Thailand’s further democratic development seemed all but inevitable. By 2016, however, Thailand’s short-term democratic prospects looked threadbare. Authoritarian governments dominated by the military were the predominant form of government in Thailand from the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 until 1973. Following the collapse of military rule in 1973, a government appointed by the king of Thailand oversaw the writing and IN THIS BOOK, WE OFFER A WAY OF UNDERSTANDING THAILAND’S

1

2

THAI POLITICS

adoption of a new constitution in 1974 and elections in 1975. There followed much political turbulence and another election amid considerable political polarization that lasted over a year until October 1976, when the military returned to power. Another coup followed in 1977, and the subsequent prime minister was eased from power early in 1980. Thereafter, however, Thailand’s politics stabilized. Under Prem Tinsulanonda, Thailand’s “semidemocracy” evolved gradually, eventually yielding to turbocharged economic growth, a widening span of liberties and political participation, and growing roles for elections, politicians, and parliament. Prem stepped down in 1988 and was succeeded as prime minister by a member of parliament. Perhaps Thailand’s military and bureaucracy, roots of its fusty authoritarian past, were being bypassed (Samudavanija 1995: 9–12). A military coup in 1991 briefly appeared to reverse Thailand’s democratizing momentum. However, mass protests forced the military to relinquish power the following year and made the democratic momentum more compelling than ever, setting the scene for the adoption in 1997 of the most progressive constitution in Thailand’s experience. Using an unprecedentedly participatory drafting process, a mostly elected assembly wrote the new constitution. Was Thailand’s democracy on the verge of consolidating itself? That is, would political competition be regulated by democratic procedures and the coup habit abandoned? One scholar suggests that, around the turn of the past century, “everything seemed to work out very well” (Bunbongkarn 2012: 233). Another contends that Thais had broken the “vicious cycle of Thai politics” with a “decade of coup free politics” (Samudavanija 2002: 206). Yet another argues that Thailand seemed “to have moved beyond authoritarianism and onto a path toward liberal-democratic consolidation and parliamentary rule” (Montesano 2010: 275). Today, Thailand’s democratic outlook is decidedly grimmer and democrats and liberals have “parted ways” (Connors 2012: 101). Military coups overthrew elected governments in 2006 and 2014. Following the latter coup, under repressive legal frameworks the government clamped down hard on freedoms of assembly and speech. Earlier, court decisions brought down three governments, two in 2008 and one in 2014. Other court decisions closed several political parties and barred hundreds of politicians from political involvement for five-year terms. Over the past decade of political conflict, lèse-majesté and defamation laws were used to stifle free speech. A succession of sometimes violent mass movements took to the streets, beginning in 2005, which helped to bring down governments. Well over 100 people died on the streets in political violence. Parliament’s political centrality declined. Thailand’s long-solid elite consensus on politics and policy unraveled while the country’s often-quiescent masses mobilized. The Thai people in general grew far more politicized and sharply polarized. Sustaining and strengthening democracy in Thailand was proving to be challenging.

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

3

In retrospect, it seemed that the liberal features of Thailand’s democracy—parliamentary government, a flourishing press, a degree of rule of law, and civilian oversight of the military—had reached their peak as the 1997 constitution came into force and immediately thereafter. Under a Democrat Party–led government (1997–2000), parliament passed some 300 measures, many of them major organic bills necessary for the realization of the constitution, as well as economic legislation stemming from the 1997 economic collapse (Harding and Leyland 2011: 68). This apogee of parliament-based governance was followed immediately by a rising democratic trend that saw popular political mobilization under a new prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001. Thai democracy’s participatory, as distinct from its liberal, features reached new heights as Thaksin began to transform Thai politics and his supporters came to believe their votes mattered. Thaksin concentrated executive power in his hands and undermined the previously malleable, but working, elite consensus on public policies and a vision for a future polity. Mass mobilization rose sharply, reflecting and engendering sharp and disabling political polarization. Street politics grew dramatically in frequency and impact. Parliament’s influence declined as those of Thaksin and his party, street protests, and extralegal and judicial interventions rose. It was no longer easy to sustain rosy expectations for Thailand’s democracy over the short- or medium-term future. We argue here that Thailand confronts a triple transition. To become a more stable and participatory polity featuring greater levels of leadership accountability and public service, Thailand needs to (1) bring formal and informal institutions into closer alignment (discussed in Chapters 3 and 4); (2) enfold the mass of the citizenry within the polity (Chapter 6); and (3) devise a more sustainable model of governance featuring more modest levels of corruption and lawlessness (Chapters 3 and 4) than what exists today. Looking back over more than eighty years since the end of absolute monarchy, Thailand has a poor record of entrenching a stable, law-bound, quality, liberal democracy. Indeed, Thais had a tough time sustaining even democratic regimes that fell well short of those standards. Since Thailand adopted its first constitution in 1932, it has run through them at a faster clip than any other country (Harding and Leyland 2011: 34). Over the same period, it has experienced more regime shifts (back and forth between authoritarian and democratic governments) than any other country, except perhaps Argentina (see Boix 2003: 89–109). Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi (1997) argue that, as countries grow richer, they become more politically stable. Elites come to feel they have more at stake and, accordingly, grow more risk averse (1997). Under these conditions, authoritarian regimes have better chances of remaining authoritarian, and democratic ones are more likely to remain democratic. Przeworski and Limongi’s data suggest that no democracy had

4

THAI POLITICS

ever failed above the per capita income threshold of around $6,000 in purchasing power parity 1985 US dollars. Argentina was the only case of democracy that failed in a country with a per capita income above $6,000. Uruguay’s democracy collapsed when its per capita was (just barely) above $4,000. These were the only two cases of countries having experienced democratic failures at these higher income levels. Four additional countries saw their democracies fall when their per capita incomes reached the $3,000 level. That made six countries in total (Chile, Fiji, Greece, and Suriname, in addition to Argentina and Uruguay) whose per capita incomes were above $3,000 when their democracies collapsed. Thailand’s per capita income in 2014, measured in 1985 purchasing power parity dollars, was above $4,000, suggesting that with its coup in 2014 Thailand joined rather select company (Argentina and Uruguay).1 Our two central concerns in this book are to understand why Thailand stands with such a select few and, second and more specifically, why democracy took a wrong turn early in this century. Answering the latter question requires us to try to understand the nature of the political conflict that unfolded from 2005. More broadly, we also want to suggest why democracy did not fare better over the past eighty-plus years since Thais moved away from absolute monarchy and nominally began to aspire to democratic rule. It can be difficult to predict political developments in Thailand. As recently as the eve of the May 2014 coup, many journalists and experts on Thai politics believed that the balance of power rested with Thaksin and his supporters. Some of these observers feared civil war would erupt should there be another coup (see for example Jory 2014; BBC 2014; Campbell 2014). In hindsight, these expectations proved wrong. It also can be tough to interpret Thai politics. More than eighteen months after the 2014 coup, many Thais and outsiders seem confused as to how the policies and rhetoric of the military government serve its nominal goals of reform and reconciliation. We hope that this book will help readers to think about these sorts of issues. As we elaborate below, the effort to address all such questons prompts us to do three things in this book. First, we provide readers, particularly those less familiar with the Thai case, with a reasonably detailed sense for the historical, institutional, and social contexts within which Thailand’s politics are embedded. We hope to make readers familiar with more than just the surface maneuvers of Thai politics. Hence, in subsequent chapters we look in detail at the Thai state, rule of law, political communication, and participation. Second, while not employing a systematic comparative framework of analysis, we draw attention to parallels and divergences between political developments in Thailand and cases from other times and places. This attention to comparative political analysis may be particularly helpful for readers who may be famil-

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

5

iar with the Thai case, but less so with others. Third, of course, we aim to convey our arguments. Concerning Thailand’s current political conflict, we hope to convince readers that more is involved than a straightforward class conflict or the stubborn refusal of hidebound elites to relinquish power and privilege. Similarly, there is more involved in Thailand’s political contest than problems of corruption or the decay of traditional Thai values or concerns for ethical behavior. Achieving these three tasks makes it possible for us to pose, and try to answer, underasked questions. The causes of Thailand’s democratic failings, we argue, are diffuse and widely distributed among Thais arrayed along both sides of the main lines of political conflict as well as the nonaligned. Before we proceed further in laying out the book’s goals, themes, and organization, we pause to consider the nature of the political conflict that engulfed Thailand after 2005 and that, seemingly, at least in the short term, has damaged the country’s democratic prospects. Given the complexity of the conflict and the diversity of understandings of it, our discussion is no more than introductory. Thailand’s Political Conflict There is a broad range of views concerning the social and political forces underlying the conflict. Thais have differed in their opinions, including over the question as to how their conflict should be understood. We offer a typology of the diverse sorts of factors adduced to explain the conflict in Figure 1.1. In the top half of the figure, the forces seen as driving the conflict differ on two dimensions: their understandings of the groups in conflict (intraelite, or haves vs. have-nots), and the core values in conflict (material or symbolic). These two dimensions yield four different kinds of popular explanations of the conflict. The lower parts of the figure feature procedural differences as well as some of the dynamics of the conflict that we emphasize in this book. (While the elements of Figure 1.1 are familiar to students of Thai politics, not all of them will be so for others.) In this book, we emphasize cultural and structural factors that are not captured in the upper part of the figure. Among the key structural factors, in addition to social, asset, and income inequality, are weak third-party enforcement mechanisms, weak political institutions, and, as a result of those features, the relatively unbounded nature of the stakes at play. Cultural factors refer, for example, to low levels of trust among political antagonists; poor quality deliberations; conflict avoidance, at least in face-to-face contexts; and personalism. As we argue throughout this book, these cultural features make the underlying structural factors that underpin the conflict particularly threatening. The cultural factors, as we argue at length in Chapter 5, impede the deliberations and policies that might help to address

6

THAI POLITICS

Figure 1.1 Understandings of Thailand’s Political Conflict Intraelite

Values in Conflict

Material issues

Symbolic or social equality issues

Dynamics of Conflict

Diverging Procedural Preferences Structural features

Cultural features

Groups in Conflict

Socioeconomic groups

Free trade vs. Protection, Assets of crown, property bureau

Conservative/economic Liberal vs. populist Rich vs. poor Urban vs. rural

Thaksin vs. monarchy Old elites vs. all others

Elites vs. excluded Liberals vs. Democrats Rule of law vs. majoritarianism “Thainess” vs. other Good vs. bad people

Pluralists vs. autocrats Liberals vs. Democrats Rule of law vs. majoritarianism Wealth or income inequality; no third-party enforcement; weak institutions; unbounded stakes Low trust; poor deliberations; conflict avoidance; enchantment; personalism

underlying structural concerns. Economic inequality, for example, poses sharper threats to political instability to the degree that weak political institutions (in part cultural products) and poor quality deliberations hamper efforts to address it. The catholic range of causes adduced to account for the conflict suggests the sheer novelty, in Thailand, of the struggle as well as the opacity of much Thai political discourse. Thailand is in the midst of a series of slowly unfolding political processes. Over the past decade, many of the longfamiliar landmarks of Thai society and politics changed fundamentally.

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

7

Thais found themselves in a vertiginous terrain in which “everything that was no longer exists; everything that is to be does not yet exist” (Musset, quoted in Barzun 2000: 491).2 The freighted Thai phrase “Now we see clearly” (taa sawaang) was often used to capture this sense of novelty (and of perceived injustice) in the political landscape and Thais’ political consciousness. Some popular accounts of the Thai political conflict have been relatively straightforward, in contrast to Figure 1.1. These explanations might emphasize hidebound establishment elites, their opposition to higher levels of public spending for populist programs, or, more generally, class struggle as the key factors engendering political battle. In our view, these explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete. Great income, wealth, and status inequalities, as well as a sense of right on the part of elites in determining what is acceptable in Thai politics, certainly were part of the pattern to be understood. By themselves, however, they were far from sufficient to account for the conflict. Even though the conflict is not intelligible without recognizing Thailand’s enormous social and wealth inequalities, we argue against an interpretation of the conflict primarily in terms of material interests or class struggle. Former prime minister Thaksin and the Red Shirt movement that later backed him generally did not attempt any comprehensive redistribution of incomes.3 They made no breakthroughs in equalizing educational opportunities, although the first Thaksin government gave the goal some attention. Redistributive taxation figured more prominently in the policy agenda of the Democrat Party, and indeed the policies of the 2014 coup government, than it did during the governments under Thaksin or his subordinates.4 Further, survey data suggest that few Thais see themselves as being on the political left or right. Differences in attitudes toward democracy in general or how it is more specifically understood are not clearly correlated with variations in economic status or partisan affiliation (World Values Survey Wave 6, 2010–2014). Ultimately, class figured in the conflict primarily in two ways. First, relatively dispossessed voters of the north and northeast constituted for Thaksin a powerful weapon that made it possible for him to survive concerted judicial and military attacks. Second, those Thaksin backers’ rhetoric and likely also their identities over time increasingly included elements of class solidarity. This shift marked a profound transformation in Thai politics but not one, in our view, that precluded a political settlement. To understand the elusiveness of a political settlement in Thailand, we must go beyond a focus on material interest politics. One reason we might doubt that material interests were of central importance to the conflict was the zero-sum character that it assumed. Such sharply zero-sum conflicts are associated more with identity politics than with material, interest-based politics in which dividing the benefits typi-

8

THAI POLITICS

cally is more feasible. Had issues of taxation or welfare programs been at the heart of the conflict, bargaining should have been more evident. The expectation that such bargaining typically is feasible underlies the argument made to explain why democracies survive at higher per capita income levels. With the stakes higher, elite actors bargain rather than risk it all. In fact, however, as far as we know, at the height of political tensions leading up to the 2014 coup, concrete policies were not discussed at all as part of any possible bargains. Instead, discussions remained stuck at the point of arguing for elections without preconditions or for an extended period of reforms under an appointed government before further elections. In short, which group would hold power? Another reason for doubting the conflict was largely about material interests is that the Thai Rak Thai campaigned publicly in 2001 on a platform that highlighted several populist programs. The party nonetheless sustained strong elite support in Bangkok and around the country. In 2001, apparently, Thai elites were not unalterably opposed to populist measures. It is unlikely that subsequent expansion in the populist programs alone accounted for later intense elite hostility (indeed, elite opposition mounted before the programs expanded). Neither is it entirely plausible that elites never believed Thaksin planned to implement his party’s platform and that, when he did so, they turned on him. Instead, it seems more reasonable to conclude that populist policies inspired misgivings and opposition but not the no-holds-barred determination to drive the Thaksin regime from power. Survey data suggest that elite support for at least some redistributive measures continues (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). As for understanding Thaksin’s hold on many rural voters, his having met their demands for social recognition and political equality may have been almost as important as the concrete benefits that rural voters derived from his governments. It seems more likely that the key sources of elite opposition to Thaksin lay elsewhere. Elite condescension toward Thailand’s great unwashed was real enough, but its political significance was overstated by many analysts. Elites shared similarly dismissive views of the lower social orders in many political systems in which elites nonetheless eventually recognized their inferiors’ political rights. To understand antipathy toward Thaksin on the part of much of the elites, we need to take account of fears of his tendency to amass power in his own hands, the belief that his government was deeply corrupt, and, perhaps in particular, a perception that he did not extend adequate deference toward the palace. In the Thai context, the alleged slighting of the monarchy’s symbolic centrality constituted a grave violation of the Thai normative injunction to show gratitude, including the gratitude all Thais owe to the monarch. The palace would enter into many Thais’ assessments of Thaksin in a fashion more profound than a simple matter of feeling that Thaksin might

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

9

not be paying adequate respect to the king. Any acts that might call into question the constitutive powers of the monarch could be construed as threatening given the deep sense in which the institution was understood to be woven through the entire fabric of Thai social life.5 This interpretation suggests that many Thais saw their society as highly fragile. That sense of fragility may, in turn, have reflected widespread individual feelings of insecurity. In a vast edifice of hierarchical dependencies stretching up to the palace, the monarchy served as the keystone, the strength of which sustained all the other parts. Many Thais felt at sea in a context that hinted there might be more than one ultimate core to the polity, more than one “father.” Anxiety seems to be pronounced among Thais. The self-help elements in Thai society are pronounced. Individuals have considerable theoretical opportunity to rise, or fall, within status hierarchies. As in international politics, security is afforded through alliances with others (generally of a vertical nature) as well as through boosting control over one’s own resources. More diffuse (normative constraints, civil society) or impersonal (reliance on standardized procedures, rule of law) bases of security, however, are comparatively weak. The relatively permissive social context seems to generate anxieties. The king in Thailand served for decades as an umpire, a source of third-party enforcement, and the ultimate backstop in the struggles for power among competing individuals and groups. With the country deeply divided politically, however, the palace grew less able to play such a role. This brief discussion of the monarchy helps us to understand how a political conflict largely devoid of policy (as opposed to procedural) content assumed such broad encompassing dimensions as those found in Figure 1.1. Antipathy to corruption in the Thaksin governments was also an important source of opposition for many Thais. Given that corruption was widespread in public life and hardly restricted to Thaksin’s governments, a measure of skepticism concerning the importance of corruption concerns may seem appropriate. Nonetheless, such skepticism should perhaps be moderated. Certainly Yellow Shirts and other Thaksin opponents talked about corruption a great deal. Their rhetoric deserves our attention. There may be in Thailand an incipient, albeit weak, progressive (in the US latenineteenth-century clean government sense) coalition. Corruption on the scale that is found in Thailand cannot be found in any high-income countries. Populism that entrenches competitive bidding for votes could risk fiscal health. It would not be surprising if part of Thailand’s substantial population of affluent citizens is concerned about the phenomenon. Let us attempt for a moment to simplify discussion of Thailand’s political conflict by asking what Thais generally, as well as Thaksin supporters and opponents more specifically, want. Generally, as best we can tell, Thais

10

THAI POLITICS

are not seeking the return of absolute monarchy, leadership under a Leninist party, or Latin American–style populism, though the last certainly is closer to the mark than the other two. Generally, and of course this is true of many people elsewhere as well, if they could Thais probably would be happy to have a prosperous country that enjoys stable democratic governance of a partly liberal and partly social sort under a constitutional monarchy. Continuing with the question as to what Thais as a whole want, let us briefly look at survey data. In their survey replies, Thais expressed strong support for democracy and considerable satisfaction (over 78 percent indicated they were “very” or “fairly” satisfied) with Thailand’s version of it. Asked to characterize democracy, they were prone to emphasize jobs for all, quality government services, and economic redistribution, but they also recognized the centrality of multiparty competition and legislative oversight of the executive. They were more likely to characterize China as democratic than not democratic. They were still more prone to see Japan’s political system as democratic, perhaps reflecting a degree of political sophistication or, it may be, recognizing Japan as a more orderly and prosperous country (Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 3, 2010–2012). Turning specifically to those Thais who either support Thaksin or oppose him, we might guess that median Thaksin voters want economic help from government, social recognition, and the rights to participate politically, to feel a degree of political efficacy or importance, and to be led by Thaksin. As for median anyone-but-Thaksin voters, they may want a somewhat more complex mix of things. These include limited tax increases, stable and pro-business government, less corruption, limits on the concentration of political power in any but the most trusted hands, a stable and satisfactory monarchical succession,6 and, perhaps, some approximation of an East Asian or Confucian model of good governance (Fukuyama 2014; Gilley 2014). Survey data reveal few major differences between (the relatively few) Thais who saw themselves as either Pheu Thai or Democrat (the main opposition party) partisans in how they viewed democracy. Both groups tend to emphasize redistribution and state aid for the unemployed. Pheu Thai partisans, perhaps contrary to expectations, had more confidence in the courts and placed more emphasis on civil rights than did their Democrat counterparts (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). Various readers may dispute different elements that we have sketched of the principal concerns of these two antagonistic political groups in Thailand. In at least some cases, however, they may agree with us that it should not be impossible to satisfy both sets of concerns at once, if Thaksin could somehow be removed from the equation. Of course, that claim is also contentious. The suggestion that Thai politics might stabilize with Thaksin’s removal as a political actor may strike some readers as downright offensive. We nonetheless make the argument to underline our

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

11

view that political differences dividing Thais are not primarily about substantive policy differences. Many Thai democracy advocates of the 1980s and 1990s turned out in this century to be ambivalent democrats. In this regard, these disloyal democrats have something in common with those Latin American democrats who contested military rule and were subsequently dismayed to find themselves living under delegative, plebiscitary democratic regimes (Mazzuca 2014). The key difference between disenchanted democrats in Latin America and Thailand is that, while the former democrats in Latin America generally remained committed to elections, in Thailand many defected and at least acquiesced to military coups. Two important factors encouraged many Thais to abandon (contingently, as they typically saw it) their democratic commitments. The first had to do with the specific nature and the weaknesses of formal political institutions. The second related to the monarchy. Thai democrats perhaps had less faith than, for example, their Argentine counterparts that political institutions could restrain executive rule. Perhaps more important, term limits promised, even if those limits were occasionally stretched, to bring the tenures of Latin American presidents to a close after only a few years. Thais, by contrast, could expect Thaksin’s rule to continue for decades, a notion that he himself endorsed. Choices were limited for Latin American democrats confronting presidential rule that undermined various democratic norms and institutions. In Thailand, however, contingently disaffected democrats often believed they had some latitude because in the monarchy there seemed to be an alternative. A temporary palace-sanctioned power transfer via a coup could be understood not as a power grab favoring a clique, class, or cabal but one that would be regulated by the soul of the nation. The monarchy encompassed all Thai interests. This understanding of democratic interruptions in Thailand contributed to the coup habit. Having introduced the dimensions of Thailand’s political conflict, we now return to the more general consideration of the difficulties that Thais have confronted in making democracy work well. What Makes Democracy Work? What factors influence whether or not democracy works reasonably well, at least well enough to survive, in any given setting? Over time, this question has been answered in many different ways that might be grouped into three types of explanations. One type of answer points to structural thresholds such as the size of the middle or working classes, or levels of affluence, or wealth inequalities. A second type of explanation emphasizes a community’s

12

THAI POLITICS

“manners,” or political culture.7 A third approach stresses the nature and quality of a country’s political institutions. For a variety of compelling reasons, contemporary analysts tend to be drawn to institutional explanations. If democracy does not thrive in a country, if it seems to engender poor governance and political conflict, even political violence, what is to be done? Assuming quality liberal democracy is the ultimate goal in the country, how can that goal be attained most reliably? Reflecting a structural understanding of democracy’s preconditions, we might advise that democratic aspirations be deferred until some threshold (of incomes, of the size of the middle classes) is reached. As we noted above, Thailand seems to be well above any plausible income floor that might be linked to democratic failures. Some structural approaches have suggested, not very helpfully, that democracy thrives only with the disappearance of the peasantry (Moore 1966). Accordingly, we put such arguments to the side and focus here on the institutional and political culture explanations, one examining the bricks and the other the mortar of social life (Geertz 1973). Consistent with a political culture approach, perhaps we would counsel a period of tutelage during which those who are less educated or otherwise untrained in democratic rights are habituated to assume their eventual responsibilities. Lesser or larger numbers of citizens may be politically immature and in need of awareness and skills before they can be expected to be able to make democracy work (Diamond 1999: 67–68, 75–76). We might characterize the injunction implicit in this approach as “learn first, practice later.” Advocates of this alternative may emphasize, in the spirit of Machiavelli’s attention to the specific founding of republics, the need to get the initial conditions right. In Machiavelli’s understanding, it may be necessary to flout commonplace morality in the service of the successful founding of a kingdom or republic. Such a founding requires the guidance of a single leader of vision and virtue. So valuable are the effects of such a man’s leadership that we conclude that his great achievement justifies his nefarious deeds: “If his deed accuses him, its consequences excuse him” (cited in Wootton 1996: 108). Among those possible consequences are a citizenry rich, at least for a time, in public virtues. The political culture approach (often overlapping with the structural one) underlay once popular arguments for the gradual expansion of the franchise and the powers that it exercised. Would-be democracies might start with only local elections, or limit the scope of the legislature’s powers, and only over time provide all adult (or adult male) voters the opportunity to determine the holders of sovereign authority. An alternative and currently dominant approach emphasizes that there are no absolute prerequisites for democracy and that, ultimately, the best and perhaps the only way to foster citizenship skills and stronger democratic institutions is through practice. Citizens do not need training to

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

13

understand their own interests, though experience may help them to season their democratic skills over time. Communities, in this view, whether in Denmark, Russia, Turkey, or Thailand, learn democracy by doing it. Citizens need not exceed some floor of levels of education or income; they need not be Protestants or Hindus; they need nothing beyond the opportunity to exercise political voice on behalf of their interests (typically understood in individual and material terms). With democratic experience, citizens will become more democratic in attitudes and behaviors. As Hamlet remarked to his mother, “Assume a virtue, if you have it not. . . . For use can almost change the stamp of nature” (Shakespeare 1992: 77). The clash between these two general orientations (political culture and institutional) as to the most promising means of creating and entrenching a quality liberal democracy became concrete in Thailand late in 2013. Massive street demonstrations organized by one of Thailand’s two main political groups had stymied the government, which was backed by the second group. Confronted with enormous shows of opposition on the streets of Bangkok, the government withdrew the highly controversial bills that triggered the demonstrations. One bill would have enabled Thaksin, the group’s paramount leader, to return to Thailand from self-exile by granting him (and others) amnesty. Another bill would have made the Senate, half appointed under the terms of the 2007 constitution, fully elected. Confronted with street opposition, the government withdrew these bills, closed parliament, and called new elections. The street demonstrators had achieved a stunning victory. They had stopped what they saw as dangerous legislation in its tracks. More than that, the government had resigned and called elections. Surely the street demonstrations would stop at that point, and its supporters would declare victory and prepare for new elections. It is true that most observers expected that the government’s Pheu Thai Party would be reelected but, given the government’s recent travails, its majority might have been sharply reduced from its smashing victory in 2011. The important point was that the elected government had been held accountable. Thaksin’s electorally rooted juggernaut had, at least temporarily, been stymied. This victory for the opposition could provide a valuable lesson that might have a positive longterm impact on the ways in which the country’s political institutions evolved. Alternatively, perhaps holding the government accountable on this one occasion was not the key point. Thaksin’s opponents may have concluded that with formal institutions weak and the stakes large and seemingly personal, involving for example loyalty (Rithdee, 2016: 9) to the king, a single political victory could in no way guarantee the overriding goal of preventing Thaksin from returning as the dominant figure in Thai politics. A newly elected government, however much reduced its majority or plurality, might

14

THAI POLITICS

again pursue an amnesty, a fully elected Senate, and, ultimately, the return of Thaksin to power. In the view of at least the People’s Democratic Reform Council (PDRC) leadership, the protestors would have gained nothing. Without some quotient of only vaguely articulated reforms, it seemed that no amount of corruption or bad government on the part of Thaksin’s allies could sufficiently reduce Thaksin’s electoral base among rural voters, particularly in the north and northeastern parts of the country. Hence, the country needed to purge itself of its Thaksin-rooted cancer and to refound its politics to enable a democracy that would not return the same corrupt autocrat to power time after time. The latter logic apparently proved persuasive. In a critical decision that represented a key turning point in Thailand’s recent political developments, instead of calling off the demonstrations and welcoming elections the PDRC, with the opposition Democrat Party’s subsequent support, determined to press ahead. They would not be satisfied with elections that their opponents would win. Instead, they demanded an appointed government, one that would take the time necessary to adopt thoroughgoing (but unspecified) reforms that would make it possible at long last for real democracy to emerge in Thailand. An appointed government would give the PDRC a powerful voice, more potent than it would be able to muster through elections. In the PDRC view, Thailand’s democratic experience had amply demonstrated Thai citizens’ weak democratic skills and the vulnerability of the country’s political institutions to the wiles of its politicians. Only after a process of thorough reform could the country again safely attempt elections. The PDRC argued, essentially, that Thailand’s manners needed adjustment before democracy could be expected to work well (Rojanaphruk and Sinlapalavan 2014). Presumably, the clearest indicator of better citizen performance would be keeping Thaksin’s Pheu Thai Party out of power, or fundamentally transforming the political system’s clientelist features. At that point, political parties or movements would no longer be the political vehicles of a single individual. Institutions would need modifications and the bulk of the Thai people would need to adjust their ways of thinking, and their values, to make them supportive of a democracy led by responsible, virtuous individuals. Democracy in Thailand needed a new founding. An immediate return to democracy without further tutelage and institutional adjustments would see the further entrenchment of a political system concentrated in the hands of Thaksin—the wallet, strategist, and key symbol behind the Pheu Thai and its supporters’ aspirations. If allowed further time in office, even if again through one of his proxies, Thaksin would be able to consolidate his power still more, extending perhaps to influence over the only institutions—the military, the courts, the mass media, the palace—not already largely under his sway.

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

15

The view among Thaksin’s supporters was, by contrast, straightforward. Modern democracy is fundamentally about elections that enable full political participation. Accordingly, the key requirement for Thailand’s democratic development was for all Thais to commit themselves to elections, to refuse to countenance further coups, and to cease knocking on the barracks door. Clearly, in this view, the problem of weak democratic skills was most pronounced among Thaksin’s opponents. So long as his opponents continued to be willing to call for and support military interventions, Thailand’s democracy would never be consolidated. Thaksin was winning elections because at least a plurality of the people concluded that he and his party best provided people with what they wanted from their political representatives. The conflict between the Pheu Thai and the PDRC was, of course, far from being primarily a principled one. There was a major element of elite, and indeed nonelite, competition for spoils. A principled supporter of the Pheu Thai government in late 2013, however, might have argued something like the following. Thailand was no longer a traditional society, but one ready to manage the challenges of embedding political competition within impersonal institutions. This would suggest that Thais were able to work with a system of politics rooted in procedures in which substantive outcomes and the nature of leadership would remain uncertain (Przeworski 1991: 10–14). The country was ready as a result of development and democratic experience to cast aside the weight of tradition; it was capable of entrenching the rule of law. Thais could learn how to participate in democratic politics more effectively by fully engaging in them. The process of entrenching democracy would not necessarily be easy or smooth, but an increasingly educated and sophisticated population could manage the challenges. What people in other places and times had succeeded in doing, Thais were now ready to do, with appropriate (though limited) local variations. While the task might appear daunting, it was important to recognize the dangers of resisting the tide of history. There simply were no compelling, enduring, or legitimate normative grounds on which to base a policy of continued political exclusion. Tradition had once sustained an order founded on principles of hierarchy and paternalism. No full-throated rendition of that tradition was any longer tenable. Thais, as with the English working classes in the middle of the nineteenth century, “no longer believe in any innate difference between the governing and governed classes. . . . They are sufficiently enlightened to feel they are the victims” (Disraeli 2008: 227). Thais had no realistic choice except to learn to cope with and hopefully to embrace a new normative and institutional order. By contrast, a principled backer of the PDRC might have framed the dilemma as follows: There were grave dangers in overestimating the extent to which Thai traditional attitudes and behaviors had changed and, hence,

16

THAI POLITICS

of Thais’ political capacities to well manage the challenges of institutionalized uncertainty. Excessive optimism on this score often stemmed from a failure to recognize the significant degree to which the great gains Thais had achieved over the prior half-century had depended on the survival of traditional institutions, in particular, the monarchy. Indeed, the strength and survival of monarchy in Thailand had to be factored into any effort to account for Thailand’s relative affluence and stability relative to its Theravada Buddhist neighbors (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar). Many other societies had shifted their political systems in the direction of more universal political participation only gradually, an approach that Thailand should continue to take. It is a mistake, however, to assess Thailand’s needs and capacities by reference to the experiences of others. The Thai case is distinctive, indeed unique. It would be foolish to risk the gradual gains made in building new political institutions, even the country’s strong economic performance, by again making the leap in the dark (Kalyvas 1998) associated with whole-hearted embrace of electoral procedures. Given Thais’ generally poor prior democratic experience, full embrace of democracy could not in fact be characterized as a leap in the dark. Thais had good and unhappy reasons for anticipating where they would end up— again. Did Thais not have abundant and recent evidence (corruption, the undermining of institutions of horizontal accountability, extensive political polarization, and violence) that they were not yet ready to manage the impersonal institutions associated with fully institutionalized uncertainty? Continuing elements of elite tutelage admittedly were not easy to countenance in normative terms (though some traditional appeals still resonated with substantial force), but surely they represented the safest choice for all Thais. Political movements, evident in the past decade of street politics, were infused with hero worship, making crowds readily manipulated and dangerous. Experience had demonstrated repeatedly, as evident in the qualities of many of Thailand’s politicians and political parties, that unchecked democracy in Thailand carried grave risks. At this point, we hope our readers have gained a sense for the issues and arguments at play in Thailand’s political conflict. We deepen an understanding of these two contrasting positions in subsequent chapters by embedding them within fuller pictures of Thai society and politics. We hope to help readers understand why, despite some considerable apparent advantages, Thais have not had and are unlikely to have in the near term an easy time entrenching an effective democracy. The remainder of this chapter does four things. First, we note what would seem to be favorable circumstances in Thailand for embedding democratic politics. We also discuss a less favorable and critically important condition, the generally modest modernizing ambitions of Thai political elites. Second, we characterize the central Thai political challenge as one of

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

17

political inclusion. We suggest that Thais are navigating a shift from a time of relative stability under a system of low political participation toward one of far higher levels of participation and, to date, far less stability. We note that a central challenge in effecting that change is the difficulty of entrenching credible bounds on the stakes at play in political competition. Such bounds could be rooted in shared commitments to institutional procedures, or in effective systems of enforcing agreements such as third-party enforcement or robust rule of law. Thais need to confront two other transitions, in addition to accommodating fuller political participation. Stabilizing a quality democracy also depends on bringing dominant formal and informal institutions into closer alignment than has been the case in the past couple of decades. Further, if they are to have hopes of creating a stable and affluent country, Thais must find means of founding a less corrupt and more sustainable model of governance. The third and longest part of the chapter introduces our approach to analyzing Thai politics and discusses concepts we believe are of particular importance to an understanding of the Thai case. These include an emphasis on personalism, the centrality of individuals’ moral qualities, the weak roles of impersonal institutions, the monarchy, and a penchant for obscure and indirect communication that requires that observers read between the lines. The fourth and final section of the chapter briefly introduces the subsequent chapters of the book. Favorable Conditions for Democracy Thailand enjoys a number of conditions that we might have expected to facilitate the entrenching of a democratic polity. For example, the Thai economy has performed well since the 1960s. Outside of the far south where a violent ethnically and religiously rooted conflict festers, Thailand has had little acute ethnic conflict. Despite more recent and politicized assertions of regional identities, in general Thais enjoy a strong and shared national identity. As late as the 1960s, Thailand was not saddled with deeply rooted or high levels of material inequality (gaps in skills and incomes are now much greater). Thailand differs from many cases of stalled democratic development in one important respect: Thailand has a thriving market economy. While politics helped many Thais become rich, it was not the only road to wealth. The political kingdom was not the only one in Thailand. Many prominent Thais seem to have attained great wealth without relying primarily on political connections. Therefore, the political stakes in Thailand should not have been as encompassing as they are where control over the state is the only

18

THAI POLITICS

path to wealth and status. Despite this difference, which we might expect to be of great importance, Thai politics have assumed the qualities of zerosum competition that we associate with contexts in which political competition is the only game in town. This development reflects the political system’s lack of means of limiting the span of stakes at play in political competition. The problem of unbounded competition is aggravated by the infusion into politics of key elements of Thai “enchantment,” as we explain below. Thailand has other assets that might lead us to anticipate democratic success. One of these is Thailand’s sustained relative social calm over several decades. Thai society has, since the founding of the Chakkri dynasty over two centuries ago, experienced little sharp sustained political upheaval and even less, until this century, political mobilization. Further, with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies from 1960 to the mid-1990s, Thailand experienced a rapid reduction in poverty rates over the last decades of the past century—there were 33 million poor Thais in 1990 and 8.4 million in 2012 (Lomborg 2015: 10).8 This record of social calm and rising social gains seems to imply an underlying social order that is quite effective, a reasonably competent administrative apparatus, and even rule of law. Such conditions could be conducive to the entrenchment of a democratic regime. Two additional reasons for finding Thailand’s prolonged and pronounced democratic difficulties surprising include its escape from colonial control and the effects of the long reign of King Bhumipol Adulyadej. Thailand was never colonized and, therefore, its economy, political institutions, and national identity were spared many of the burdens that affect the politics of some struggling democracies. Further, since US president Harry Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin were squaring off early in the Cold War, and Mao Tse-tung’s communist forces and Sukarno’s nationalists were struggling to come to power in China and Indonesia, a single and near universally venerated king has reigned in Thailand. The king helped Thais to sustain what seemed a durable sense of nation and to compensate for a number of weaknesses, including the fragility of the rule of law, a feeble civil society, and the incapacities and narrow vision of much of the political leadership. Thailand’s stable social order, despite its constant churning of coups and constitutions, could be accounted for by the positive impact of the king (Samudavanija 2002: 127). Some of Thailand’s just cited “advantages”—a degree of social stasis, the absence of colonial control, limited political mobilization, the dominant influence of the monarchy—can be understood instead as infirmities retarding the polity’s preparation for democratic government. The survival of charismatic monarchy and the absence of colonialism ensured that Thailand faced relatively few great upheavals associated with large-scale mobilization in war (Holmes 2003: 32) or revolution. As a result, in some senses

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

19

Thailand experienced an easy transition toward modernity, with gradual and sustained social transformation driven largely by economic forces but accompanied for decades by only limited social and political upheaval. Surplus land (for a time) helped make possible enormous shifts in the country’s economic structure without short-term commensurate changes in political attitudes and behaviors. As a result, as we argue in this book, Thailand now confronts some of the costs associated with its relatively unchallenging past. Modernizing ambitions driven by desires to catch up burned more brightly among wider numbers of people and more intensely among political leaders in many countries in the past than they did in Thailand. In Japan, the Meiji oligarchs oversaw fundamental transformations of almost all aspects of the economy, society, and politics to create a country that could handle the threats posed by Western imperialism. Centuries earlier, Peter the Great attempted something similar in Russia. Early in the twentieth century, Kemal Atatürk launched a comparably ambitious campaign in Turkey. Within a few years of taking power, he ended the Ottoman Caliphate, established the Turkish Republic, closed down religious organizations and schools, substituted the Latin script for the Arabic one and Turkish for Arabic in the call to prayer, banned “Islamic dress” and more (Mishra 2012: 282). Leninists in Russia, China, and elsewhere instituted thoroughgoing modernization programs. In all of these cases, extensive reforms were aimed at ensuring national survival and enabling national power. By contrast, the remarkable reforms of late-nineteenth-century Thailand (Chapters 3 and 4) largely were limited to administrative, legal, and logistical measures to centralize and consolidate rule. These reforms aimed at enabling Siam’s survival but were not clearly based on wider geopolitical ambitions or in service of wounded national pride. Tradition in Thailand was never discredited. To a degree, elites adopted reform in the spirit of Giuseppe T. di Lampedusa’s Sicilians: changing in the interest of staying the same (di Lampedusa 1960). Thailand’s limited past social transformations helped to sustain social peace and elite consensus. With deepened political polarization after 2005, however, the long-enduring broad elite consensus in place since at least the early 1980s shattered. New and possibly deep and long-lived political cleavages emerged instead. The assumed strength of national identity came under challenge as Thaksin’s supporters, the United Front for Democracy and Against Dictatorship (UDD) or Red Shirts, articulated oppositional, regionally based identities in the northeast and north. The weaknesses of the Thai state grew more visible as political division rendered its security forces ineffectual and its system of justice increasingly suspect. Less openly but more shockingly, the centrality of the monarchy in Thai society came under challenge. These factors worked together to threaten, at least

20

THAI POLITICS

temporarily, the long-sustained dynamism of the Thai economy while a broad agenda of needed reforms was neglected. Thailand’s conservative society and polity slipped their long-accustomed moorings. Would they find new and secure ones anytime soon? The Challenges of Political Inclusion and Thailand’s Triple Transition Thailand is one of the many cases around the world of flawed or illiberal democracies, or semidemocracies, some of which are essentially disguised authoritarian regimes. Many of these low-quality democracies lack strong political party systems and highly organized civil societies (GrzymalaBusse and Luong 2002). Some of these democracies are struggling with the task of “political inclusion,” referring to the “widening of the political nation” (Phongpaichit and Baker 2012: 225). This process is clearest when political rights, in particular electoral suffrage, are expanded. People formerly denied the vote win it. Unions, civil society, farmers’ federations, and political parties often were instrumental in enabling the political inclusion of workers and peasants (Collier 1999). Thailand confronts a comparable political challenge today. However, unlike some countries that grappled with this task in the past, Thailand has not already built strong political institutions, civil society is not robust, and rule of law is not entrenched. The task in Thailand is not simply one of widening the political nation, of allowing excluded Thais access to existing robust political institutions. Thais also face the challenges of building institutions, entrenching law, and consolidating democratic procedures. As part of these challenges, Thais need to root a more sustainable model of politics than they have fashioned to date. Doing so will depend in part on narrowing the gulf between Thailand’s informal institutions, including prevalent Thai attitudes and practices, and its formal ones. History offers us a rich store of cases of political inclusion around the world over the past two centuries. These processes often were complex and of long duration. Generally, they were accompanied by sharp political conflict and demanded institutional adaptation. Where political systems confronted the tasks of inclusion, it was common for liberals, who prized liberty and the rule of law, and democrats, who emphasized political equality and participation, to part ways. In some cases, liberals had won the right to self-government only recently, seizing rights from hidebound elites. These liberals took for granted their political standing, or recognition, and typically resisted extending that recognition to those who were poor and uneducated. Liberals worried that a wider franchise might threaten their liberties or their property. Democrats, demanding equal political rights, often were

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

21

less concerned about liberties than about gaining political recognition, participation rights, and, particularly since the expansion of social welfare spending around the world in the previous century, material benefits. As a result of these different emphases, liberals and democrats often clashed. When liberals and democrats parted ways, the effects on their political systems often were hazardous. In Thailand today, the old broad alliance in support of democracy that developed in strength in the 1980s and 1990s is moribund. Liberals and conservatives, who once supported democracy in the face of militaryauthoritarian repression, shifted their primary concern to opposing Thaksin a few years after he came to power in 2001. As a result, these liberals and conservatives parted ways with many Thai democrats who supported Thaksin and emphasized the centrality of elections. Thaksin won the elections and, in some ways, bolstered democracy. His broad polarizing influence on Thai politics, however, also damaged it. Thailand’s political conflict echoes in some respects the conflicts in many European countries following World War I. For perhaps most Europeans, that was a traumatic era of huge political changes and a watershed, or critical juncture. With the help of mobilizing, totalitarian ideologies, and new mass communications (print and, subsequently, radio), workers were drawn into national politics for the first time. The processes of political inclusion were under way and the results often were unhappy. Most of Europe’s democracies weakened or failed altogether during these years. Some of them reverted to more oligarchic, less participatory politics. Others came under military, fascist, or communist leaderships. In Thailand in recent years a major political movement supporting Thaksin, the United Front for Democracy and Against Dictatorship, made heavy use, as in Europe a century earlier, of novel media for political communications (satellite-based television and community radio stations) to support demands for political inclusion and the entrenchment of democracy. The UDD’s ideology was moderate, though a small minority favored ending constitutional monarchy, a radical position in the Thai context. Political participation, in the forms of organization, speech, and protest, expanded sharply. The ensuing political conflict may indeed have brought Thailand today to a critical juncture. The nature of its political system and trajectory of its development over coming years, conceivably decades, may be in the process of being shaped by Thailand’s conflicts, coups, and new constitutions. Presumably, Thailand will eventually again achieve a degree of political stability, but under a more participatory democratic political order. A new social and political order in Thailand will entail the development of far stronger linkages between society and the country’s key political institutions than exist today (see Chapter 6). Past processes of mass inclusion in politics in countries around the world varied in the ways in

22

THAI POLITICS

which such linkages were created and sustained. In some cases, linkages were managed largely by a deeply institutionalized political party system powerfully embedded within a strong civil society. In other instances, street politics played more prominent roles. In yet other cases, unions or other corporatist entities were critical. One way or another, Thais too will have to find effective means to link the concerns of the mass of citizens to the legislative and executive operations guiding the state. The institutions needed to manage conflicts will have to be stronger and more impersonal than those that operate in Thailand today. The current weaknesses of Thai political institutions and the prominence of personalities in the country’s politics suggest that a critical juncture in Thailand may not be signaled by key institutional shifts. Rather, we should look to the emergence of transformative leaders able to shape events and restore political calm as Thais habituate themselves to an altered political landscape. Our Approach to Understanding Thai Politics This book takes an ideographic approach. That is, we focus on the single Thai case. We rely heavily on analysis of meanings and of cultural habits to interpret Thai politics. This approach should give our interpretation depth and texture. If so, however, those gains come at the cost of leaving us for the most part unable to offer generalizations that might apply more widely. A simpler explanation of Thai politics than the one we offer here might help us shed light on a diversity of puzzles beyond those in Thailand. Parsimony in explanation would enable us to generalize, but possibly at the sacrifice of illuminating conditions in Thailand (Geertz, as cited in Flyvberg 2001: 122–123). Abstractions do not serve us when they fail to capture key elements of the phenomena that we hope to understand. Thongchai Winichakul notes that early in the Bangkok era, a map was a “model for, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent” (1997: 130). The maps were aspirational and prescriptive rather than descriptive. Abstractions are more apt to become wobbly when needed most; that is, when analysts shift from the settings in which the abstractions were first articulated to new ones (Stinchcombe 2001). Liah Greenfeld wrote of early French difficulties in importing the English concept of “nation”: “If in England ‘nation’ was a title given to a story, in France the title had existed long before the story was written” (Greenfeld 1993: 167). Accordingly, we might say of Thailand that democracy has long been the title of a story, but one yet to be plotted in great detail. To help readers understand Thailand’s politics, in this book we emphasize particularities of the Thai context that are products of historically and

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

23

socially constituted inheritances. David Hume suggests that people’s “manners” were more important determinants of social outcomes than were the designs of specific formal institutions. The constitution that gave liberty to the English, he argues, might produce only faction and oppression in less “mature” eighteenth-century Scotland (Hume, as quoted in Trevor-Roper 1968: 11). In a similar spirit, John Stuart Mill asserted that “the worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it” (Mill, as quoted in Ricci 1987: 160). British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli argued in one of his novels that “a political institution is a machine; the motive power is the national character” (2008: 158). In this book, we make use of this old-fashioned way of understanding the world. We give much attention to Thai interpretations of social life, habits of association, uses of information, patterns of participation in politics, construction of informal institutions, and search for security. As a result of historical inheritances, leadership choices, and perhaps also broader cultural predispositions, modernization has yet to circumscribe Thais firmly within its “iron cage” (Weber, discussed in Baehr 2001). It is not difficult to find remnants of Thai orientations to social tasks that are unsystematic, reflect limited discipline, and are irrational.9 We interpret many dimensions of Thai society and politics as reflecting a limited hold of modernity. Our discussion below turns to five features of Thai social life, and its interpretation, that reflect modernization’s tenuous grip on Thai sensibilities: personalism, a focus on leaders’ moral capacities in assessing them, informal institutions, monarchy, and reading between the lines. Personalism

Modernity, as argued most famously by Max Weber, features impersonality, a reliance on neutral procedure to allocate values by rules rather than on the basis of inheritance or other partiality. It is shaped by formal institutions, a main feature of which is their impersonality (Sanchez-Cuenca 2003: 63). Weber describes the complex of forces that enmesh us in modern societies as constituting an iron cage. This cage can be conceptualized as a Calvinist straightjacket (Gorski 2003) that features “a penal conception of the self” (Khilnani 2001: 19). It entails an “incessant hindsight and foresight”10 as people learn to assume instrumental approaches to life (Elias 1982: 374). The widespread embrace of modern “impersonalism” is a big step toward enabling the state to become a “cold hard monster” (Nietzsche, as quoted in Fukuyama 2011: 82). The iron cage is at least as much a product of individuals’ policing their own behavior, of instituting discipline and instrumentalism, as it is of formal institutions. It often seems, both for good and ill, that many Thais have managed to elude the iron cage. Ruth Benedict’s portrait drawn from

24

THAI POLITICS

afar in the 1940s of Thais “without cultural inventions of self-castigation and many of self-indulgence and merriment” has not entirely lost its resonance (1952: 26). However fortunate this attitudinal inheritance is for some dimensions of Thais’ psychic welfare, it may have helped to retard the entrenching of institutions that underpin strong liberal democracies. In the West, the wrenching changes of modernization gained a positive spin—the gales of destruction assumed a positive valence—that helped to undermine resistance to it. As they submerged themselves in their iron cages, many Westerners saw themselves as a part of a great historical transformation, the unfolding of the Enlightenment. Civil society was described as a sphere of autonomous individuals interacting in a market society beyond the inertia exerted by traditional and parochial identities (OzSalzberger 2001). Market society was liberating human opportunities. An “unrestricted differentiation” in civil society unleashed human energy and innovation as capitalism took root and transformed societies (Kaviraj 2001: 298). This embrace of new bases of social organization rested on a sort of “common submission of individuals, irrespective of their personal inclinations or interests, to a set of impersonal rules to which there exists a kind of social pre-commitment” (299). The emergence of a “peculiarly modern form of trust—among strangers”11 enabled bureaucratically impersonal political and state institutions to work (299). Comparable commitments to social transformations are less evident in Thailand than they were in the West or Northeast Asia. In part as a result, many of Thaksin’s foes in general and the leaders of the 2014 coup in particular have difficulty articulating a compelling vision for Thailand, and often are reduced to simply reaffirming the values of tradition. In a sense, many Thais suffer affect excess. They seem (to want) to experience social life, even within formally impersonal contexts, as personalized and infused with affect. They may feel anxiety when confronted with impersonalism. A central feature of Thai society is pronounced fear and insecurity (Day 2002: 19). Thais, informed perhaps by a “theory of unequal souls,” typically have sought security in vertical personal ties with individuals powerful enough to protect and to provide for them (Kirsch 1973: 15). When Thai strangers are set together, they are prone to go to work to foster social bonds marked by warm, personal, and often hierarchically structured ties fundamentally different from those they have with strangers. Thais often seek to infuse their relationships with a warmth that may well assume a vertical dimension, perhaps expressed as loyalty. If they fail to construct such ties, they may become aloof, competitive, distrustful, and factionalized.12 Survey data suggest that Thais have low levels of impersonal trust, but much higher levels of trust of their neighbors (Asia Foundation 2009). This finding parallels anthropological observations that many Thais have warm trusting relations within the family but distrust and fear the forces at work

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

25

outside that sphere (Mulder 1985). Operating together in a workplace, Thais construct personalistic relations characterized by warmth and trust. The failure to extend that warmth or trust beyond the agency in which they work contributes to difficulties in coordinating across organizations.13 Some Thais depict the epic political battle that unfolded after 2005 as pitting two individuals, the king and Thaksin, and their respective entourages, against each other. Of course, it is not unusual for people anywhere to simplify conflicts by personalizing them even as they understand that a conflict between two people, or two small groups, could not be responsible for a hullabaloo on the scale that has swamped Thailand. In Thailand, however, this personalized narrative was retailed more literally. Some Thais were convinced that Thaksin aimed to ultimately end the Chakkri dynasty and found a new one (an example of unbounded stakes in political competition!). Leaders’ Morality

For Thais to solidly entrench a liberal democratic political order, they not only will have to craft political institutions that enable more political inclusivity but they also eventually will have to align their informal institutions more closely with their formal ones. More specifically, they will have to come to terms with their “goodness” problem. Many Thais see, in fairly profound fashion, some people and some leaders as good and others as not good. Typically, these are not mere statements of preference. Often, they are convictions concerning the moral qualities of individuals. Given the workings of merit, one is more likely to encounter good people at higher levels of the social hierarchy. The traditional Thai worldview depicted a hierarchy of individuals differentiated by their capacities “to make actions effective” and, hence, the extent to which they could limit suffering (Hanks 1962: 1251). Generally, Thais did not expect to associate much beyond the family and village except with individuals who had concentrated resources such that they could distribute a part of them to their followings. Hence, inequality was “the indispensable condition for group existence” (Hanks 1962: 1249). Democracy’s institutionalized uncertainty means, among much else, the need to accept that leaders may not be good people. Most Westerners, with their robust but austere procedural vision of political legitimacy, can accommodate this requirement. The framers of the US Constitution aimed to create an institutional matrix that could cope with the imperfections of people and of their leaders. But for many Thais, it remains difficult. This need constitutes a particularly formidable challenge today given that many Thai political leaders’ foibles and worse are highly evident and, further, they contrast so sharply with the king’s majesty and benevolence.

26

THAI POLITICS

There is little reason to expect that the quality of Thai political leaders will improve quickly. Hence, the concern for goodness in their leaders is a real obstacle, possibly an insurmountable one, unless Thais have faith that the bounds of political competition are firmly circumscribed so that bad leaders cannot inflict too much damage. In consolidated democracies, when they are forced to coexist with awful leaders, citizens and the political opposition seek security in the rule of law and look forward to the next constitutionally sanctioned opportunity, particularly elections, to throw the bums out. Many Thais have yet to make such a procedural commitment. Their notions of goodness are implicated in the difficulties they have in making such commitments. Informal Institutions

Formal institutions can offer relatively fixed procedural rules as well as norms and principles around which actors’ expectations converge (Krasner 1983). By contrast, personalism does not offer a promising basis for organizing a modern state. Institutional formality, however, also has its limitations. Formality in organizations may imply concern for form over content and rigidity in operation. Institutional formality, nonetheless, is critical to continuity. In the absence of formality, institutions will be tugged in different directions to suit the needs of particular people or periods and will be less apt to survive over time. Institutions, of course, need to be able to adapt to their environments. Jean Bodin argues the need for the state to be adapted to “the nature of the citizens . . . the place, the persons, and the times” (Bodin, as quoted in Barzun 2000: 246). In practice, institutional adaptation often occurs through change in informal institutions rather than formal ones. Formal institutions may fail not (only) because informal ones are competing with or otherwise undermining them but because of an absence or weakness of supportive informal institutions (Helmke and Levitsky 2006). Thailand has had at times the formal institutions of a liberal democracy and, more consistently, those of the rule of law. However, as we argue in subsequent chapters, the institutions of the state, rule of law, and political participation are not adequately buttressed by the right kinds of informal institutions, including predominating attitudes and behaviors. In this book, we focus on informal institutions because they are important to understanding Thailand’s politics. This focus, complemented with attention to formal institutions, helps to protect against the analytical dangers of seeing institutions as similar when the formal properties are alike but the informal ones are not. Excessive attention to formal institutions at the expense of informal ones also can result in missing historical parallels due to distracting formal institutional differences. For example, we give

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

27

considerable attention to the challenge of political inclusion in Thailand. In formal institutional terms, this is misleading. Political inclusion generally refers to the extension of voting rights—formal suffrage—to the masses. The masses in Thailand long since enjoyed such rights, at least when there were elections. For most Thais, however, voting only superficially engaged them as citizens. More often, they voted as clients. Thaksin was instrumental in changing this. In informal institutional terms, therefore, we choose to speak of political inclusion as a recent and ongoing process in Thailand. Comparative social science is simpler if the focus is restricted to formal institutions. Bringing into analytical frameworks elements of informal institutions often obliges us to attend to considerations of meaning and culture.14 Meanings and cultural habits generally are more elusive than formal institutions and require extended study and direct exposure to social situations. In addition, it is difficult to define culture, much less measure it or use it as an explanatory concept. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, “One of the things that everyone knows but no one can quite think how to demonstrate is that a country’s politics reflect the design of its culture” (Geertz, as quoted in Migdal 2001: 241). John Casey asks “Why is the word culture one of the most contested in the language? The truth is that none of us quite understands what we mean by it” (quoted in Barzun 2000: 657). As a result, the concept has become something of a taboo, but one that yet another scholar admitted that “I cannot do without” (James Clifford, as quoted in Sewell 2005: 155). Trying to find an analytical place for consideration of a “Thai culture” is treacherous. It is particularly difficult given that the political stakes are large and normatively charged, social change is so rapid, and the concept of culture is so malleable. It is hard to advance generalizations related to culture that stand up to careful examination. Cultures after all are not monolithic, unchanging, or entirely exogenous. They are created in part by antagonists in the course of debates and political struggles. In this book, we contend that widespread habits, attitudes, and ways of seeing the world contribute in Thailand to extensive personalism, and to low levels of institutional formality, trust, or horizontally based associational activity. This analysis might, of course, be seen as wrong in believing that these traits constitute elements of Thai culture. Even if it is at least partly right, such traits change, their distribution across different groups shifts, and they apply in some contexts more than in others. Nonetheless, it seems dishonest and unhelpful not to acknowledge our belief that these elements must, however crudely, be factored into efforts to understand Thai politics. One formal Thai political institution to which we give great emphasis in this book is the monarchy. Even here, however, the monarchy’s formal powers, as detailed in Thailand’s written constitutions, are of far less importance than its informal ones embedded in Thailand’s “real” or “infor-

28

THAI POLITICS

mal constitution” (Sanchez-Cuenca 2003: 82; Ginsburg 2009). Monarchy contributed to Thais’ national identity, political integration, and political stability. Decline in the monarchy’s charisma in the future will entail a reduction in its political centrality. Those changes, under way since at least 2007, will be momentous. They are inevitable given that Thais’ emotional engagement is only partly with the institution’s formal features but more so with the elderly King Bhumipol himself. Monarchy

Thailand was an absolute monarchy until 1932. The fifth king of the current dynasty built up the monarchy’s formal and informal powers, but the newly dominant institution did not survive long unchallenged. In 1932, constitutional monarchy was instituted. From 1934 to 1951, Thailand had no full-time resident king. Buddhism, Brahmanism, weak rule of law, and strong personalism, however, provided materials with which the current king could work in gradually rebuilding the institution’s informal powers in the course of a long reign. King Bhumipol rebuilt the charisma of the institution of the monarchy and, in particular, his personal authority. While some of his forebears modernized the institution, downplaying notions of divinity, for example, the later decades of King Bhumipol’s reign witnessed an embrace of some of those once discarded elements (Jackson 2010: 31–32). By the time the king intervened decisively to end political violence and authoritarian rule in 1973, he had established himself unambiguously as the ultimate arbiter in Thai politics. Generally avoiding the open exercise of political authority, the king afforded the political system a form of reliable third-party enforcement that gave to the overall system a considerable degree of stability, if rather little accountability or transparency. The king, at least since the time of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat in the mid-twentieth century, largely monopolized the symbolic and ceremonial expressions of nationalism and served as the soul of the nation. This had two important consequences. First, it hobbled politicians seeking to construct any sort of national political following. At best, politicians could aspire to be prime ministers in the original sense of the term—the leading agent of His Majesty. They would not, and should not, seek presidentialstyle powers. This division of political labor explains a Thai aversion to any discussion of presidentialism. After all, presidents exercise the ceremonial roles associated with reigning, in some cases in addition to the executive ones of ruling.15 The division of labor between king and prime minister, far from ideal in terms of its effects on accountability, nonetheless left ample scope for ambitious politicians to compete to achieve wealth and status. Until Prime Minister Thaksin in 2001, Thai politicians after the 1950s gen-

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

29

erally did not seek to challenge the limitations that stemmed from the monarchy’s central symbolic roles. Thaksin challenged these bounds. He sought in some ways to make himself the embodiment of the nation. Under Thaksin, Thailand’s premiership more closely resembled the superpresidentialism associated with Latin America’s delegative democracies (Gonzalez 2014: 242–243). A second effect of this division of labor in Thailand’s political executive between a reigning monarch and (at times) elected prime ministers was to tend to bar many more emotionally charged political issues from politics. Potentially flammable issues concerning political identities or visions of the polity’s future were to some degree out of bounds. The monarchy’s formula for concretizing the polity—nation, religion, king—contributed to regulating the bounds of acceptable political discussion and to ruling radical ideologies (communism, republicanism) beyond the pale. The policy differences that separated the two broad groups of antagonists arrayed against each other beginning in 2005 might not, in other circumstances, have been unbridgeable. Most of the key players shared at least a nominal commitment to democracy. The differences, including that over a willingness to adopt elections as a procedural means of transcending the conflict, could more easily have been managed if there had been available some form of neutral and reliable third-party enforcement. In many contexts, the law provides such mechanisms. In Thailand, for decades, the king did so. By 2016, King Bhumipol’s relinquishing of more active public roles was evident. As a result, issues that in the past, when he served as an active political overlord, would not have threatened to deeply disrupt Thai politics, had come to pose grave threats indeed. One of these concerned the choice of a successor Supreme Patriarch of Thailand’s Buddhists, following the death of the previous Supreme Patriarch in 2013. The choice of a successor was intertwined with Thailand’s political polarization and risked possible disruption however it was resolved. A second issue concerned efforts to create, as part of the exercise of drafting a new constitution after the 2014 coup, a body that could intercede in Thai politics in the event of a crisis, some unspecified political paralysis of the kind Thailand experienced in 2006 and 2014. Were King Bhumipol more active today, he would have selected the new Supreme Patriarch and the notion of needing a crisis committee never would have arisen. One observer argues that “the deep, even grave, importance of the monarchy is . . . broadly based in the cultural-religious bedrock of Thai society” (Platt 2010: 89). A journalist made this notion more concrete and personal: “Morality flies out the window because people cannot rely on the rule of law, but only on their personal connections and the ability to pay their way.” In this context, they drew solace from the king’s “unwavering

30

THAI POLITICS

service to the people. . . . When we are up to our necks in corrupt and arrogant politicians, our hearts light up when we see our King walking tirelessly under the scorching sun in faraway villages, or sitting on the ground talking with simple folk” (Ekachai, 2006: 11). In the traditional view, the monarchy in Thailand is necessary to sustain a moral center. The palace bolstered “the moral element in the public discourse” (Mulder 1985: 314) and, to some limited extent, this may have curbed politicians’ excessive rapaciousness. The monarchy operated in a fashion similar to ideology. It was a sort of concretization of ideology, an overarching conceptual system that facilitated collective action (Hanson 2010: 48–52). If Thais were not prone to adhere to impersonal norms or were not strongly drawn to serving public needs, they were ready, in service to their king, or through participation in royal rituals (Gray 1991: 47), to abide by their personal commitments to the king as the embodiment of national community. In the Thai social context, it is not always easy to identify individuals or institutions that act or speak for collective goods rather than narrow selfinterest. Most Thais, however, believed that the king did so. Many Thais served as principled public servants, to some extent because they believed they were serving the king. Indeed, it was in part through their service to Thai kings that at least some Thai bureaucrats might be seen as members of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “universal order,” one that stood for the collective (Hegel, as quoted in Sperber 2013: 103). In Thailand, it was dangerous to discuss openly what the monarchy was and was not. The lèse-majesté law (Chapter 5) was corrosive of the institution itself as well as of Thai public deliberations. It was tragic and unexpected that Thais took to the law with such gusto this century given that its use was steadily declining at the turn of the past century and that Thais so overwhelmingly felt reverence for their king. The law invoked traditional attitudes to sustain a highly traditional institution. As a Thai remarked about criticism of the law, “It is not about law. It is about faith” (Vanijaka 2012: 11). One scholar notes that “Thai-style democracy” accorded the monarchy a critical, albeit obscured, centrality in the political system. It was “founded on a cultural model of moral and king-centered politics” (Askew 2011: 11). Pattana Kitiarsa argues for carrying on politics in a Thai vernacular that is rooted in a Thai culture that is incompatible with Western ideas about democracy (cited in Hewison and Kitirianglarp 2010: 181). As these examples suggest, a number of Thai intellectuals struggle to articulate the bases of legitimacy of Thai-style democracy. Their emphasis on morality and on good people tends to be read by critics as archaic traditionalism or class condescension. At the heart of these Thai ideas, however, are assumptions of widespread amorality in the public sphere and the relative impotence of

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

31

political institutions to impose a just and stable order in the absence of a personalistic metaleviathan. The monarchy may be more central to traditional ideas of politics and political community in Theravada Buddhist societies, such as Thailand’s, than it ever was in European ones. Bernard Lewis complains that, because the broader political roles of religion declined in the West, many Westerners refused to accept that it continued to play central roles in other societies (2004: 285). Perhaps something similar was at work in the difficulty that many outsiders had in apprehending the deep roots of monarchy in Thai habits of thought about political life. Charles Keyes describes the “problem of power” in Theravada Buddhist societies as follows: immorality generally is required to gain power even as success in doing so testifies to the accumulation of good karma in the past. This formula is worryingly permissive of foul means used in the quest for power. Inherited power, as in monarchy, helped to deal with that tension (Keyes 1977: 156–158). Thais will one day be managing their politics in a context in which monarchy is far less central than it has been for three generations. They may not accomplish the change easily. Reading Between the Lines

We draw in this section on Arthur M. Melzer’s (2014) analysis of “esoteric writing” in the Western tradition. Melzer distinguishes between philosophic writing that is exoteric, public, and offered for undifferentiated external consumption, and writing that is esoteric, secret, and offered for consumption to a select few able to read between the lines. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe early in the nineteenth century saw as a “disaster” that from the latter half of the prior century, people “no longer drew a distinction between the exoteric and esoteric” (Goethe, quoted in Melzer 2014: xi–xii). There are related problems in understanding Thai politics. First, some Thai political speech, as well as writing, assumes distinctions between those in the know and those outside that select circle. Communications are not necessarily aimed at reaching both groups, but may aim only at those privy to inside information or possessing superior insight (Gray 1991: 44–45)16. Second, general habits, not necessarily conscious, of obfuscation impede clear communication. Third, as we discuss in Chapter 5, Thai formal law requires great circumspection if individuals and media are to avoid severe legal sanction. A further dimension to the phenomenon of “secret writing,” however, is worth noting. Before the impact of the Enlightenment was fully felt in the West in the past two or three centuries, it was common for Westerners to fear that open communication of key truths could hurt a community “by subverting its essential myths and traditions” (Melzer 2014: 3). Westerners, now living in open societies, believe they have found that the presumed

32

THAI POLITICS

dangers of exposing myths were overstated (even as they sustain others). Members of partly traditional and more closed societies, however, do not necessarily reach the same conclusions. Just as Western philosophers once believed that a fundamental gulf separated them from most other people, Thai Buddhist ideas point to a sharp divide between the all-seeing few and the rest (Melzer 2014: 70–71, 168–169; Gray 1991). In the traditional view, with political communities rooted in “unexamined illusions” rather than reason, open analysis of sacred elements could be highly threatening (Melzer 2014: 90). This is a threat that Westerners are unlikely to consider and find difficult to accept. Alexis de Tocqueville suggested, as paraphrased by Melzer, that following the Enlightenment, people had difficulty understanding “how utterly different all their perceptions and sensibilities have become from those of earlier, nonegalitarian ages” (116). Hence, despite the fact that both Jesus and Socrates were well known for their indirection, Westerners lost touch with the “traditional inclination for reserve and concealment” (119). By contrast, traditional societies were formed around shared customs, traditions, norms, and ideas about the sacred (169). These societies were, and had to be, closed. At least residual elements of what Melzer (2014) describes as a traditional outlook remain evident in Thailand today. They are most obvious in the lèse-majesté law and its enforcement. However, they may also manifest themselves in more diffuse tendencies to eschew being explicit in political discussions. The Chapters That Follow Having introduced the book’s goals and approach, it is now appropriate to foreshadow the material that appears in the following chapters. We aim to reach two audiences. The first group consists of those already at least generally familiar with Thailand and its politics. In addition, however, we target readers who are unfamiliar with Thailand. Therefore, Chapter 2 provides an overview of Thailand’s political history. This history will enable readers to follow the discussion through the rest of the text. In the chapter, we introduce the principal actors and institutions of Thai politics that recur in subsequent chapters where the discussion elaborates on their importance to greater or lesser degrees. Particularly in Chapters 3, 4, and 6, additional historical details emerge in the course of discussions of the Thai state, rule of law, and political participation. Interwoven with the narrative in Chapter 2 is a highly abbreviated discussion of the literature on Thai politics that highlights how such analyses have shifted over time. An effective state, entrenched rule of law, and strong political institutions that enable effective political participation are fundamental elements

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

33

of a quality liberal democracy. Accordingly, we examine these key Thai institutions. Familiarity with these institutions and their histories will enable readers to embed an understanding of Thailand’s current conflicts more deeply. We also look at selective features of political communication in Thailand. This discussion covers several issues necessary for understanding Thailand’s politics and gives attention to a number of features of its political culture. In Chapter 3, we examine the state—the political institution most central to modernity. We describe the broad reforms adopted by Rama V beginning in the late nineteenth century and consider the origins and subsequent changes in the state’s capacities. Then, we review the distinctive features of historical Thai states, the personal character of Thai absolutism, and the extensive roles afforded to ceremony and ritual. We also examine three periods of centralizing state reforms that aimed to make the state more accountable. Absolutism in Thailand has left the country a legacy of a relatively effective state. Nonetheless, the weakness of rule of law and challenges to the state’s normative underpinnings raise concerns for the state’s future capacities. In Chapter 3, we note the failure of elected government to sustain control over the military. Chapter 4 is concerned with the rule of law, a concept central to liberal democracies. Weaknesses in the rule of law in Thailand pose major challenges and are, at least in part, products of the feebleness of formal institutions, and supportive informal ones, that can underpin systems of law. Nonetheless, viewed comparatively, Thailand’s system of law is relatively robust. In the chapter, we examine the extensive legal reforms that started in the late nineteenth century as well as current formal legal institutions and Thai attitudes toward their system of justice. We also discuss in some detail recent constitutions, the new accountability institutions those charters created, and the expanded political roles of the courts. In Chapter 5 the analysis moves closer to individual Thais, focusing on Thai styles of political communication and combat. We examine Thais’ levels of political sophistication and attempt to account for those endowments by looking at the nature of Thai media and state regulation of information, including defamation and lèse-majesté laws. We also discuss how Thais interpret politics and engage in political debates, their styles of rhetoric and capacities for deliberations, and their propensities toward violence and embrace of enchantment. Here too, we note the ways in which the use and management of information has contributed to democratic difficulties in Thailand. These matters are linked to deep issues involving the nature of polity and society, of legitimacy, of good and evil, and of truth. Our discussion in Chapter 6 describes Thais’ once pervasive political passivity and the steady, then rapid, rise of political mobilization and, since

34

THAI POLITICS

2005, polarization. We examine new political movements in addition to civil society and political parties. We note the limited degree to which parties are rooted in civil society. We also look with more depth at former prime minister Thaksin’s rule and legacies. There is some potential for strong political parties to emerge and play important parts in strengthening Thailand’s democracy. It is unclear, however, on what bases they will be organized or whether, like most Thai political parties to date, they will essentially be the agents of a single key leader or a small leadership group. In Chapter 7, we conclude the book by identifying eight conditions that help to account for Thailand’s past successes in economic development and, less impressively, in building state capacities or entrenching the rule of law. These conditions are robust national identity, Buddhism, monarchy, broad elite consensus, modest political participation, relative asset equality, limited social exclusion, and adherence, for the most part, to a market economy. We note that those once favorable conditions have either disappeared or are on the wane. We ask, again, why the goal of a stable and quality liberal democracy has proven so elusive in Thailand. We consider the longterm impact of Thailand’s political conflict by drawing on a parallel with the presidency of Andrew Jackson in the United States. We then consider the plausibility of five different types of political regime taking root in Thailand over the coming decades. These are liberal democracy, social democracy, monarchy-centered pluralism, electorally based authoritarianism, and bureaucratic authoritarianism. In one final, brief comparison, we close the book with a discussion of the reign of King Dom Pedro II in Brazil and its aftermath. Notes 1. Later cases of democratic failure at higher income levels not considered by Przeworski and Limongi (1997) include Russia. 2. The more familiar version is from Antonio Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” (1971). 3. These actors are introduced below, and more fully in Chapter 2. 4. Democrat Party tax proposals included both progressive (land and business tax) and regressive (lowered corporate income tax, albeit with reduced exemptions) elements. 5. Even in Japan, with its robust formal institutions and without any ambiguities concerning succession issues, the looming demise of Emperor Hirohito (he died in 1989) seemed to provide impetus to, admittedly marginal, political pathologies (Field 1993). 6. While these voters would continue to want a monarchy infused with charismatic force, succession will diminish support for a monarch playing active political roles.

INSTITUTIONALIZING UNCERTAINTY

35

7. This term was used widely in the past, for example by David Hume, to refer to what also was known as “national character” (Trevor-Roper 1968). In much of the past century, the favored term was “political culture,” though that term too is now out of favor. 8. Many estimates, often using different definitions, offer lower figures. 9. Yes, irrational elements are prominent in the politics, and social life more generally, of any country. 10. The more compelling demand confronting Thais was the need to “look up and down the hierarchy” to secure their positions (Hanks 1962: 1253). 11. This form of trust seems to be low among Thais (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010−2014). 12. One observer suggested that for those wanting to “row in the Thai conceptual boat,” it was essential to understand the abundant Thai uses of the term (and concept) jai (heart) (Moore 1998: 13). 13. Conversations with William J. Klausner (2013) contributed to this discussion. 14. Cognitive linguistics offers useful analytical tools for these purposes, encouraging attention to moral, mythic, and emotional dimensions of politics (Lakoff 2002). 15. More important, of course, presidents are associated with republics. In 2015, the group responsible for drafting a new Thai constitution considered having a directly elected prime minister. Fundamental institutional architecture might shift, but nomenclature would not. 16. Gray argues that the Thai Buddhist hierarchy tends to see the Buddha’s teachings as esoteric and that it has been kings and monks, those with “the esoteric knowledge necessary to assign proper meanings to words,” who have “revealed to the masses” the Buddha’s insights (1991: 44).

2 Potemkin Politics

helpful for following our discussion of politics in contemporary Thailand in subsequent chapters. The summary does not aim to cover new ground, and readers familiar with the material may want to only skim it. Second, in the course of describing Thai political developments, we provide a highly cursory literature review that tracks some of the main shifts in the ways that scholars have analyzed Thai politics over time. IN THIS CHAPTER, WE FIRST PRESENT HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Chronology Bangkok became Thailand’s capital when the king who founded the country’s current Chakkri dynasty in 1782 moved the capital east across the river from its former base in Thonburi. With the seventh of the Chakkri kings on the throne, absolute monarchy came to an end in 1932 as a group of about 100 civil servants and military officers staged a coup and established a constitutional monarchy. Both Edmund Burke and Maximilien Robespierre predicted that the French Revolution would end in military rule (Blanning 2007: 346). Roughly analogously, Pridi Phanomyong, one of the key leaders of this Siamese “revolution,” worried that without accompanying economic and social changes, the end of absolute monarchy would amount to no more than a change from one to many “kings” (Pridi, as quoted in Young and Pitsuwan 1978). For several decades, we might judge Pridi to have been correct. By 1932, some Thais—a tiny minority of the population—came to see that absolute monarchy appeared increasingly as an anachronism (Ungpakorn 2003a: 11–12). The foreign-educated king himself wondered whether it might not be a good idea to adopt elements of constitutional rule 37

38

THAI POLITICS

(Jumbala 2012: 118–123; Harding and Leyland 2011: 10). After the coup, King Prajadhipok and the coup group tried to work together for a time but never succeeded in establishing any degree of cooperation. When the king abdicated in 1935, he suggested that he was ready to turn power over to the people “as a whole,” but “not to any individual or any group to use in an autocratic manner” (King Prajadhipok, as quoted in Suwannathat-Pian 2003: 111). He was unhappy with Thailand’s shift from a single to a small group of rulers. The limited impact of the 1932 coup made it possible to interpret the events of that year in differing ways: for example, as a modernizing coup against an entrenched feudal political order, or as a more or less consensual transition to a new constitutional order subsequently hijacked by a narrow and self-serving clique. Even in France, for all of its revolutionary fervor and tumult, the Bourbons, returning to the throne in 1814, advanced the latter sort of interpretation (Bramsted and Melhuish 1978: 31). The ambiguity concerning just what happened in Thailand in 1932 and thereafter became important in discussions of political democracy and monarchy, and the extent to which the palace supported democracy. A seemingly bold step toward a modern political system (a revolution) over time grew fuzzy in retrospect. The fuzziness was partly natural as Thais, after having no resident monarch for seventeen years, basked in celebration of the growing charisma of their new king, Bhumipol Adulyadej, who assumed the throne in 1946, occupied it full-time in 1951, and reigned through the many decades to follow. Our discussion begins with a brief overview of Thailand’s experience during the fourscore years following the end of absolute monarchy. We then back up to present the same history in more detail. Absolute monarchy ended in 1932 and the newly opened political space was occupied by the only Thai social groups, other than the royals and the Chinese, that were organized and exposed to the West to any significant degree—state officials and, in particular, the military. Squabbles among these groups produced considerable political instability but, given the highly elite nature of political contest, this instability had little impact on society generally. Soft authoritarian rule and low levels of political mobilization, usually under the military, coincided with social stability. From the time of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat’s hard authoritarian rule beginning in the late 1950s, however, Thailand experienced rapid economic growth and social change. After the last absolute monarch abdicated in 1935, other royals continued to exert considerable influence. The growth in royal influence accelerated once the new king consolidated his position in the 1970s. The expansion of education and economic growth boosted social mobilization in that decade. So did rising state, market, and television penetration of the coun-

POTEMKIN POLITICS

39

tryside. By the late 1960s, pressures for more participatory politics became a more or less constant factor in Thai politics, though mass support for elections was not yet sustained. Some civil society groups grew more assertive from the 1970s in battling against social exclusion and for democracy. By the late 1980s, many observers imagined that the era of military coups had ended and that Thailand was consolidating a democratic system underpinned by an increasingly vibrant civil society. This optimistic reading of Thai political changes survived a military coup in 1991 and indeed grew more pronounced as widespread mobilization helped to drive the military from power in 1992. Sustained pressure for a new constitution resulted, in the context of an economic collapse in 1997, in adoption that same year of a new constitution,Thailand’s most progressive to date. The economy’s nosedive and the new constitution were among the factors that propelled to power a relatively new figure in Thai politics, Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai Party took power following the first elections for the lower house of parliament under the new constitution in early 2001. Thaksin subsequently took credit for the country’s rapid economic recovery, and implemented populist policies that secured him a reliable political base in the relatively poor but populous northern and northeastern regions of the country. Northeastern voters in particular had a history of supporting politicians who were independent of the Bangkokbased figures who dominated the country’s politics (Phatharathananunth 2003: 157–162). In the 1950s some northeastern voters backed members of socialist parties, and in the 1980s and 1990s figures tied to the military, which was then fending off pressures from Bangkok-based elements for more democratic government. The second set of elections in 1992, which followed initial elections that enabled an ultimately unsuccessful military grab for power, featured parties supporting and opposing (the Bangkok press dubbed them “devils” and “angels,” respectively the military’s political dominance (Wyatt 2003: 305). The former fared well in the northeast. Leaving aside the critical events of the Thaksin era, that is the story through the past century in rough outline. Politics before Thaksin featured, first, a fairly regular circulation of elites, with military dominance tending to decline from the 1980s and various business interests and party politicians rising. Second, political participation was sharply circumscribed, though it was expanding apace by the later 1980s. Third, political competition was largely an intraelite affair with limited policy implications for most Thais. Fourth, liberal features such as a fairly free press and other freedoms were fragile but grew more entrenched over the 1980s and 1990s. Fifth, Thais viewed the judiciary relatively favorably, but it was not a central political player. Sixth, during moments of crisis the king could and did

40

THAI POLITICS

intervene to reset politics, often leading to new elections and, on occasion, a new constitution as well. With that framework in mind, we take up the narrative a second time, providing a fuller treatment. The King and Cabinet

The leaders of the coup assumed power in 1932 in the midst of a global depression. Accordingly, some of their immediate concerns focused on economic and state fiscal problems and the people’s welfare. The coup leaders nominally were committed to democratic politics. They formed a People’s Party, an executive committee, a cabinet, and appointed Phraya Manopakorn to lead the new government (Terwiel 2005: 262). Arguing that the level of education among Thais was too low to contemplate fully democratic elections at that time, they established an assembly that was half indirectly elected and half selected, and set the goal (not realized) of having a fully elected one in a further ten years (Setabutr 2006: 10–14). It took little time for the coup group to experience significant internal fissures. The country’s new leaders did not sit atop a tightly organized national political organization along the lines of a Leninist party. Neither did they command an organization akin to the new Democratic Party designed by Martin Van Buren in the United States in the early nineteenth century that aimed to transcend the influence of any individual (Aldrich 1995: 97–100, 107–112). Thailand’s new leaders were simply a cabal of individuals with miscellaneous networks snaking through disparate circles of the narrow elite. They were unlike the also little institutionalized Meiji oligarchs in nineteenth-century Japan who, despite their many differences, were able to sustain a degree of unity and leadership coherence for decades. The Thai leaders were prone to faction and fissure and it did not take long for the military to emerge as Thailand’s institutional solution to the problem of elite disorder. This rather fragile leadership group was able to hold on to power because few powerful organized groups could challenge it. In such a context, the military’s guns and comparatively tight organization gave it great advantages in political contests. It could be challenged, however, when divided, when the police grew powerful, or when monarchical charisma was restored. Generally speaking, the coup group did not work from any detailed script for Thailand’s social and economic modernization. They briefly advanced a sketch conceived by Pridi, perhaps the most influential figure within the coup group initially, for fundamental transformation along vaguely socialist lines, but quickly retreated in the face of royalist resistance. This resistance to Pridi’s plans provided an opportunity to drive him from Thailand for a time and for the military to consolidate its power under the leadership of Phibun Songkhram. Over the next two decades, Phibun

POTEMKIN POLITICS

41

was Thailand’s dominant political figure. Over that entire stretch Thailand was either without a king, or the king was being schooled in Switzerland, or the king was newly returned (1951) and still somewhat at sea amid the currents of Thai politics (though advised by a number of experienced royals). Phibun therefore exercised power in a palace-free context that is not easy to imagine from the perspective of early-twenty-first-century Thailand. The Rise and Fall of the Bureaucratic Polity

Phibun ruled for so long, in so many different contexts, that summarizing his political goals or his vision for Thailand’s transformation is challenging. Perhaps more than any other Thai leader before Thaksin, however, he had modernizing ambitions. More than any Thai leader before or since, Phibun was concerned with instilling in Thais strong self-discipline. His governments succeeded in rapidly expanding primary education. In the mode of Turkey’s great modernizer, Kemal Atatürk, Phibun devoted considerable attention to the outward appurtenances of modernity, prescribing for Thais various modes of dress and behavior. In one of his best-remembered injunctions, he called on Thai husbands to give their wives a peck on the cheek as they exited the home for a day’s work (Whittaker 2004: 68). Phibun also was, for a time, extraordinarily successful as Thailand’s national leader. When, after the fall of France during World War II, he was able to wrest control over lands that Thailand formerly claimed but subsequently lost to France in what would become Cambodia and Laos, he emerged a great Thai hero. Under Phibun, Thailand was allied with and effectively under quasi-occupation by Japan. Fortunately for Thailand, other elites, including Pridi, opposed Phibun and his war policies. They worked secretly with Allied powers with the result that, at war’s conclusion, it became possible for the United States to avoid for the most part treating Thailand as a defeated enemy state. This policy was made easier because Phibun had stepped down and Pridi had assumed national leadership in the war’s closing months. The unexplained death by gunshot in 1946 of the young king, King Bhumipol’s older brother, fed charges against Pridi, the regent, and forced him to leave Thailand. Phibun returned to power. At the end of World War II, over 90 percent of Thais worked in agriculture and fishing, generally with only the simplest technologies (Terwiel 2005: 291). Thailand at the mid-twentieth century was as heavily rural as England had been at the start of the eighteenth century. Thailand suffered economically during war but recovered fairly rapidly. It was, however, an extremely poor country in material terms. As late as the 1960s, 96 percent of rural households subsisted below Thailand’s poverty line (Walker 2012: 39). Thailand briefly, under the 1946 constitution, had a fully elected par-

42

THAI POLITICS

liament. However, the judgment that, as a result, Thailand was “on the verge of sustaining democracy at last” (Marshall 2014: 76) seems wrong. As new competitors for power in the army and the police emerged, Phibun launched a new stage in his political career, assuming the guise of a champion of democracy. He did not succeed, however, in building a new powerful political base. The army’s Sarit became Thailand’s new big man. His tenure as national leader was brief (1957–1963). It also was transformational. Sarit led Thailand away from Phibun’s modernist emphases on new and unfamiliar behaviors and values, including greater self-governance. Instead, Sarit emphasized more paternalist controls and traditional Thai values, including the centrality of monarchy. During his time in power, Sarit eased the way for the young king to steadily bolster his ceremonial roles around Thailand and to build up his charisma and influence (Chaloemtiarana 1979). Sarit used the king in part to combat centrifugal tendencies in the northeast and radical left sentiments. With assistance from a small but able group of technocrats, he presided over important changes in the state’s economic roles (see Chapter 3) that enabled the launch of a stunning record of forty years of stable and rapid economic growth. Perhaps the first influential political studies of Thailand date from the early 1960s. At this time, Thai scholarship on politics was scarce and US scholars’ work on Thai politics was influential. At a time when US social scientists tended to assume that the state would play a lead role supporting economic development, these studies often focused on the bureaucracy (Siffin 1966). David Wilson (1962) authored the most detailed study of Thai politics while Fred Riggs (1966) introduced the notion of a “bureaucratic polity,” a concept that would shape studies of Thailand for some time. Riggs noted the absence of political linkages between the lives of the vast majority of still rural and little-mobilized Thais and the tiny circle of Thais competing for political power in Bangkok. Wilson had suggested that this disjuncture was the key to Thailand’s social stability. Politics in Bangkok might feature intrigue, rumors, and coups, but these dramas were isolated from the rest of the country and generally sent scarcely a ripple beyond the narrow confines of the effective polity—state officials, including the military—centralized and headquartered in Bangkok. These conditions, as well as the political weakness of the monarchy and the pariah status of the local Chinese business class, left the bureaucracy free from external demands for performance. The bureaucracy ruled unimpeded and society as a whole allegedly lacked an underlying dynamic driving change. Thailand’s bureaucratic polity was possible due to an unusually low degree of political, or more broadly social, mobilization of the population. Modest levels of mobilization in turn were a product of a number of factors, including the poor quality of transport infrastructure and the limited extent to which many villagers were tied economically (in contrast to Bud-

POTEMKIN POLITICS

43

dhism and monarchy, both of which helped to integrate the country) to the national and international economies. This relative autarky could be explained by the fact that Thailand had not been colonized and, as a result, had poor infrastructure and only modest levels of foreign investment. Also helping to explain villagers’ relatively unchanged ways of life were the large numbers of immigrant Chinese who occupied many of the modernizing roles that became more visible in Thailand’s economy. The Chinese were the miners, the plantation workers, the wholesalers, the importers and exporters, the financiers, and to some extent the manufacturers. Ecological plenty, including land abundance, also meant that many Thai villagers could keep their families alive without fundamental changes in their traditional farming practices. In the context of this bureaucratic polity, Riggs argued that no group outside the state was in a position to hold those within the state accountable. This was inevitable as no political authority, after the end of absolute monarchy, was able to exercise effective authority over the bureaucracy. Hence, the bureaucracy provided government of, for, and by bureaucrats (Riggs 1966). Effectively, no farmers’ parties, labor unions, industrial federations, chambers of commerce, or citizens’ leagues operated above or outside the state, holding it accountable. The polity effectively was circumscribed by the state bureaucracy in Bangkok. Bureaucrats, for their part, demonstrating advanced “goal displacement,” largely were concerned with internal advancement within their particular agencies. They were enmeshed in challenging social contexts that tended to absorb their energies, with only modest residual resources devoted to considering possible ways in which the state could provide services to Thai citizens. Instead, officials typically were concerned to protect or enhance their positions within the formal and informal hierarchies that were embedded, in turn, within the hierarchical and nominally Weberian state structures (Siffin 1962). Riggs (1966) concluded that Thailand featured a fundamental mismatch between functional differentiation within the state, a product of modernizing reforms under King Chulalongkorn (Chapter 3), and far more limited change in society and politics. The resulting “isomorphic mimicry” (Fukuyama, 2014: 60) is described by Riggs as a “prismatic” society very much enmeshed in tradition, but with modern organizational forms (1964). The conditions that Riggs found noteworthy had not yet generated the sort of quasi-dependent society that Partha Chatterjee (2001) refers to as “political society”—a product of strong state development relative to that of society in postcolonial societies. Studies of Thai politics during this period, often informed by anthropological studies of Thai communities, typically emphasized the centrality of patron-client links and Thais’ fundamental struggles with insecurity. Scholars argue that the search for security was the primary factor driving Thais to

44

THAI POLITICS

seek to foster personalized relations with superiors able to offer protection. These patronage ties constituted a pyramid running from the country’s thousands of villages to the highest reaches of Thai society (see, e.g., Neher, 1979; Morrell and Samudavanija, 1981). Thais near the top needed resources to be able to lend security to their clients and, in turn, so that those clients could support their clients, and so forth. Providing for clients was psychically and karmically rewarding but required access to resources and, hence, encouraged corruption. Before Sarit rose to power in the late 1950s, it was not possible for the state elite to limit their sins to ones of omission. As they struggled to gain access to economic resources that they could use in their competition for political power and social prestige, they inflicted damage on the Thai economy and state finances as well. One policy rationale for state activism in the economic sphere was to try to offset the economic dominance of the immigrant Chinese. Creating state-owned enterprises run by, or at least controlled by, Thais rather than Chinese could serve economic nationalism as well as the interests of many state officials. A relative absence of Thai entrepreneurs suggested the need for the state to take the lead in championing Thai interests. This happy confluence of motivations that shaped state affairs eventually diminished in the 1950s. State-run enterprises and financing for these came close to bankrupting Thailand and eased the way for a new breed of technocratic economic managers to boost their policy influence after Sarit came to power in 1957. While he was in power, Sarit was able to concentrate political power in his hands. Not until Thaksin, two generations later, would a single individual exercise a comparable direct sway over Thai politics. Sarit strengthened Thailand’s alignment with the United States and against communism. He backed a model of development that gave considerable reign to technocrats backed with substantial levels of aid from the United States. His government pushed some important administrative reforms (Chapter 3) and opened up to private investment, both local and foreign. Even in retrospect, the results of Sarit’s policy changes were stunning and, in some respects, surprising. Thailand experienced unusually uninterrupted and rapid economic growth and accompanying social transformations. These would prove to be among the most important underlying elements driving political changes and the mobilization that emerged after Thaksin came to power. Sarit did his best to dampen any and all political ambitions beyond his own. After his coup against his own government in 1958, he ruled with an iron fist, suspended political parties, and closed parliament. His strong brand of anticommunism meant peril for political agitation by leftist politicians, unions, and farmers’ cooperatives. He discouraged participatory politics. He did, however, enable forms of ritual participation associated with

POTEMKIN POLITICS

45

the growing pull exercised by the monarchy. Sarit, the despotic and dissolute dictator, and King Bhumipol, the earnest young Buddhist monarch who grew up in Calvinist-influenced areas of Switzerland, established an odd partnership that served the interests of each and, in some respects, those of Thais in general. Using growing state capacities, employing massive US financial and technical assistance, and taking advantage of the king’s charisma, the state boosted its posture in the countryside as part of the struggle against communism. Over ensuing decades, Thai state resources flowed into rural areas in support of a variety of development projects. Offsetting such support were fiscal flows to the center as the result of a “rice premium,” that is, a tax on exports. By the 1970s, however, net flows to the regions were growing. Sarit’s military-based political regime survived his passing, though with some limited and in some cases episodic political liberalization. The legislature in 1968–1971 was sufficiently obstructive to motivate the dictators to close it down, helping to catalyze student resistance that eventually grew into a powerful movement demanding elections and a new constitution. Until the early 1970s, the military remained the dominant political force. With US military assistance, Thai military spending expanded and Thailand was drawn into conflicts to its east while US bases in Thailand were used to pummel communists there. By the late 1960s, seeds for further changes were laid by divisions within top ranks of the military, including the army, and expansion in the numbers of middle-class Thais, primarily in Bangkok, with higher expectations for government leaders, services, and rights of participation. The critical ingredient was a vastly expanded population of vocational and university students who would take the lead in protests against the military government that eventually led to its downfall. By the 1970s, market penetration of the countryside had boosted landlessness, leaving many peasants with only the most tenuous holds on survival and ripe for political mobilization. Thailand faced a “new historical conjuncture” (Walker 2012: 14). The Peasant Federation of Thailand rapidly swelled in size, albeit briefly, during the 1970s. Massive student demonstrations, divisions within the military, and the willingness of the king to intervene in the political crisis led to the end of military dominance of politics in late 1973, with a surprisingly limited amount of violence. The king appointed a respected former Supreme Court president, legal scholar, and university rector as an interim premier. A constitutional assembly drafted a new charter and, for almost the first time, Thailand practiced a relatively open form of democratic politics with the first elections in 1975. The media was unshackled, political parties proliferated, and mobilization among various groups in society intensified. The dominant overt political cleavage pitted supporters of more democracy, in some cases socialism, against a military habituated to strong influence in

46

THAI POLITICS

politics and backed by many powerful groups in society, including many political party−based politicians (Ungpakorn 2003b: 194–199). The background conditions that obtained as Thailand entered its first experience with democracy were unfortunate (and, seemingly, far more challenging than those of this century). The collapse of the military dictatorship coincided with the first round of sharp oil price increases and global economic instability that, to some degree, would plague Thailand into the mid-1980s. Real income growth for a time was only just adequate to absorb the rapidly expanding labor force. To Thailand’s east, communist forces would soon prevail in Vietnam and Thailand’s immediate neighbors, Cambodia and Laos, both Theravada Buddhist countries with still important monarchies. In Cambodia, King Norodom Sihanouk barely survived the coming to power of the communist Khmer Rouge. In Laos, however, the communists moved the royal family to a remote region of the country where they later died (Trankell 1999: 191). The fates of the Lao royals heightened anxieties in Thailand about its own strengthening communist insurgency and the ways in which political progressives might be contributing, even if inadvertently, to communist goals. These circumstances, together with a global trend of student political activism and radicalism, contributed to rising levels of political mobilization and polarization. Students in Thailand worked to organize groups of farmers to advance social justice. Rising levels of political mobilization on the left engendered a countervailing ugly rightist mobilization spurred by various conservative groups (for more details, see Chapter 6). More positively, amid the political chaos in Bangkok, democratically elected governments adopted important legislative initiatives that pointed to ways in which political institutions could contribute to the political integration of the country, including its majority of poor farmers. Unfortunately, that lesson generally was ignored, or could not be acted on given fragile government coalitions, by later political parties until Thaksin came to power in 2001. Thailand had a new democratic constitution by 1974 (SuwannathatPian 2003: 58). A large number of political parties competed for votes in elections in 1975 and produced generally weak and unstable governments. The first lasted a month, the second about a year. This period in Thai politics saw political parties advancing novel policies aimed at reducing rural poverty. Political mobilization increased rapidly, as did polarization. Parliamentary debate was lively. Ultimately, however, weakness and instability fed the rising anxiety on the political right and led to a hideous bloodbath in Bangkok in 1976. That incident, in turn, drew to a close Thailand’s first substantial experiment with democracy. The state and civil society had suppressed left political forces and those no longer assumed a significant place in Thai politics (Ungpakorn 2003a: 16). Thailand’s democratic interlude had several enduring consequences.

POTEMKIN POLITICS

47

Parliament and political parties established themselves as important political institutions. Newspapers briefly enjoyed far greater freedom and a tradition of serious journalism survived, at least for a time, even as government controls waxed and waned. Many among the generation of young student leaders joined the communist insurgents in the wake of the brutal repression of 1976. Some of them, and other student leaders as well, would go on to assume a variety of important public and political roles in subsequent decades. The defeat of the political left, never large, meant that politics overwhelmingly was dominated by pro-business figures of various stripes buying candidates and votes (Ungpakorn 2003b: 218). One important change was not directly related to the country’s political turmoil: in 1974, Mechai Viravaidya launched a remarkably successful and noncoercive campaign called the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) to drastically reduce fertility rates. The crude birth rate per 1,000 per year fell from above 35 in 1972 to 15 in 1999 (Index Mundi 2014). While not an entirely unmixed blessing, these reductions contributed to subsequent wage rises and poverty reduction. Political analysis of Thailand changed substantially during these turbulent years. By this time, of course, Thai scholars were actively analyzing the country’s politics. Radical analyses of Thai society and politics, in particular the work of Jit Phumisak, gained far greater exposure (Reynolds 1994). Many political activists and analysts, impressed with the brief mobilization of farmers and workers, contended that the alleged political passivity of the Thai masses was a thing of the past. They argued that the old patron-client paradigm used by many social scientists to understand Thai politics (Neher 1979) was passé. In its place must emerge a new commitment to the class analysis of Thai politics (Bell 1978). Most high-profile Thai champions of democracy, however, were drawn from urban and comparatively affluent backgrounds and continued to view the military, not class conflict, as the principal obstacle frustrating the entrenchment of a more durable democracy (Morrell and Samudavanija 1981). For most attentive Thais, perhaps, the struggle for democracy continued to be viewed largely through a state-society lens. Much of the English-language literature on Thai politics of the 1970s was largely descriptive, though leftist analyses employed familiar structural approaches (Trocki 1977). Rather like much more recent work on Thai politics, the literature in the 1970s often expressed breathless surprise that Thailand’s placid politics could have so rapidly become deeply polarized and violent (Prizzia 1985). Also similar to the time of conflict between Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts that began in 2005, much of the debate concerned the degree to which old models rooted in clientelism needed radical uprooting to accommodate new realities of mobilized workers and farmers or newly aware citizens.

48

THAI POLITICS

Democracy, Semidemocracy, and Democracy Again

The first government to follow this democratic period, appointed by the king, was highly authoritarian and led by Thanin Kraivichien. By the standards of Thai authoritarian government after Sarit, the Thanin government was uncharacteristically harsh and ideological. Thanin rather quickly alienated important groups, including in the military, and a coup eased him from power in 1977. Under his successor, Prime Minister Kriangsak Chamanand (1977–1980), Thai politics began to cool somewhat and Thailand began a gradual process of political opening that Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda (1980–1988), another army general, would sustain through his long tenure. When Prem stepped down, he was succeeded by a member of parliament (and former army general) Chatichai Choonhavan. Chatichai was the first sitting member of parliament to serve as prime minister since 1976. Several important developments emerged during the Prem years. First, gradually the economy stabilized following oil price−induced turbulence, and the groundwork was laid for a period of turbocharged economic growth and structural transformation of the economy that began in the mid-1980s. Over the ensuing decade, Thailand was the world’s most rapidly growing economy. Second, over time political party−based politicians grew increasingly important with only those positions controlling macroeconomic policymaking (Ministry of Finance, Bureau of the Budget, Bank of Thailand, Fiscal Policy Office) and planning (National Economic and Social Development Board [NESDB]) kept beyond the reach of elected politicians (Unger 1998: 67–68). Third, the political influence of the monarchy continued to grow and was important in quashing two bids by military officers to stage coups against Prem, in 1981 and 1985. Fourth, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) expanded in number and influence (Pongsapich and Kataleeradabhan 1997). Many of these were led by political progressives tackling rural poverty. Finally, steady and strong economic growth and astute use of amnesties contributed to a cooling down and reduced extremism in Thai politics. By this time, a broad and deep political consensus seemed to embrace a substantial part of Thailand’s rapidly expanding middle classes and, in particular, the also-growing circle of economic and political elites. That consensus supported to greater or lesser degrees a marketbased development strategy, openness in investment and trade, a central role for the monarchy in sustaining Thailand’s political stability, and a commitment to further political changes in the direction of greater democracy. By the 1980s, the challenges impeding the entrenchment of a democratic regime generally were seen as fourfold. First were the problems of military and authoritarian obstacles to elected governments (Girling 1981). Second was widespread ignorance of democratic principles and a related willingness to sell votes (Murray 1996). Third was the venality of Thai-

POTEMKIN POLITICS

49

land’s elected politicians (corruption was in fact widespread throughout the state and not only among elected leaders; Phongpaichit and Piriyarangsan 1996). Fourth was the weakness of Thai political institutions (Samudavanija 2002: 208–209). The Chatichai government (1988–1991) to some degree threatened to dilute the broad, if rather diffuse, elite policy and political consensus. Riding the wave of suddenly burgeoning Thai economic expansion and transformation, the new government reinforced the commitment to Thailand’s broad development strategy while giving elected political leaders more control over policymaking. This change opened the way for a perceived expansion in the scale of corruption. The new government worked to circumscribe the political roles of the military. It championed a foreign policy that exploited the waning of the Cold War in East Asia by advocating the turning of battlefields in neighboring Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam into marketplaces where Thai firms could invest and foreign firms based in Thailand could expand their business opportunities. This period coincided with Thailand’s accelerated economic growth. Riding the wave, business politicians gained leverage relative to other elite groups. An unusual degree of unity among the top echelons of the military, together with threats to some military prerogatives, gave the military the motive and means to bring down the Chatichai government. The perception of rampant corruption among the governing parties ensured considerable public support, at least in Bangkok, for the coup that the military carried out in 1991. That support was sustained when the military indicated a readiness to return power to elected leaders fairly quickly and, in the interim, backed Anand Panyarachun, a respected former diplomat and business figure, as Thailand’s premier. The Anand government was active and perceived to be free of the taint of corruption. The new government reviewed a number of high-profile contracts that had been awarded by the previous government. At one point, for example, then businessman Thaksin’s telecommunications contract looked as if it might come under review (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 46–49). The Anand government set up Thailand’s first important agency responsible for regulating activities affecting the environment (Unger and Siroros 2011). The government was liberal on economic policy, pushed for the removal of various regulations, and was a key promoter of the concept of a free trade area for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In general, unencumbered by factious coalition partners, the government was able to implement an impressive array of long-mooted economic and fiscal reforms such as a value-added tax (Christensen and Siamwalla 1993). The military supervised elections early in 1992. Two newly formed parties were among the three garnering the most seats. Voters in the northeast were important in enabling politicians linked to the military, many of

50

THAI POLITICS

whom previously had been part of the coalition overthrown by the coup, to find their way back into parliament. The coalition that came to power named General Suchinda Kraprayoon, the coup leader, as its premier. Suchinda had previously avowed disinterest in remaining in power after the return to elected governments and his about-face triggered a large protest movement that was concentrated in Bangkok and included a substantial element of the city’s middle classes (Englehart 2003; Murray 1996). The scale of the demonstrations and political violence as the military tried to quell the unrest prompted the king to again intervene openly in Thai politics. In televised and now iconic images, the king appeared seated above the kneeling military leader and would-be prime minister and the leader of the antimilitary demonstrations. The king admonished the two leaders to refrain from violence and to end their standoff. This intervention resulted in the brief return of Anand as acting prime minister until a new round of elections could be held later that same year. In those elections, parties linked to the military continued to do well, including another new party that drew particularly well in the northeast. Those parties that distanced themselves from the military, however, were able to form a new government. They were led by the Democrat Party under Chuan Leekpai (the party held near half its seats in the south). Following the second elections in 1992 and until 2001, Thailand was governed under often fragile coalitions of elected political parties. The military’s influence for a time was effectively reduced. While there were regional variations, the general quality of electoral politics was far from edifying. It appeared that economic gain and social status were the key motives inducing Thais to go into careers in politics. Military leaders, in particular, but others too compared political parties to family-based trading companies. Politicians often were able to realize considerable fortunes through corruption of one kind and another. The economic stakes were so substantial that they justified large investments in getting elected and building up factions comprised of other elected leaders. Only with a largeenough faction could politicians hope to compete for coveted cabinet portfolios that afforded access to investment returns (P. W. Chambers and Croissant 2010). One of the most substantial costs was buying votes. Vote buying on a large scale, argued most political analysts, while not sufficient to get politicians elected, had become a necessary condition (McCargo 1997: 118), although perhaps less so in Bangkok and in southern Thailand (Waitoolkiat 2006). Money politics grew increasingly important over the 1980s and 1990s. Several factors explained this development. Thais were growing wealthier. The stakes at play in parliament and, in particular, the cabinet, were large. Buying votes in large numbers as well as candidates with proven records was expensive. To recoup these investment costs, politicians engaged in

POTEMKIN POLITICS

51

corruption. Their concerns generally were not with drafting legislation so much as influencing policy implementation in ways fruitful to themselves and their allies. They also worked to bring pork projects to their constituents. For many Thais hoping for a more fully democratic regime, the military no longer was overwhelmingly the dominant threat to their political goals. The poor quality of elected political leaders and an electorate prepared to support them also had emerged as critical concerns. Banharn Silpa-archa, a rural-based politician with long experience in bringing projects to his constituents, gained the premiership in the mid-1990s and, plaintively but also prophetically, warned Bangkok audiences that there was more to Thailand than Bangkok (Unger, 1998: 39). The warning did not really take and eventually would have to be reinforced with Thaksin’s overwhelming electoral base. Partly as a result of negative perceptions of Thailand’s rural politics on the part of would-be reformers, the next major round of political reform that culminated in the 1997 constitution was designed to strengthen political parties, but also to encourage them to embrace policy-based competition. Thai scholars in the 1980s came to refer to Thailand’s democracy as a semidemocracy or, thereafter, to Thai-style democracy (Hewison and Kitirianglarp 2010). Democracy was attenuated in that often the prime minister did not have a seat in parliament, military influence was strong (particularly in the unelected Senate), and some areas of policymaking were effectively off-limits. The palace continued to play a central, if usually invisible, role. The regime was in some respects similar to a number of European transitional regimes from the early part of the twentieth century, though with less entrenched rule of law and weaker civil society. Those European regimes typically limited the size of the franchise and the powers of elected legislatures. In some cases, unelected upper houses provided established elites with a check on the rising political powers of emerging middle and, eventually, working classes. During the 1990s, political analyses gave more attention to the role of politicians with rural electoral bases (Ockey 1994; Robertson 1996). These figures increasingly were able to demand seats in coalition cabinets. A variety of local figures, such as influential monks, teachers, and village headmen who might be able to sway substantial numbers of voters, served as rural power brokers (Ockey 1991). The new literature focused its attention on local jaopho (godfathers) with substantial business interests typically tied to construction and various illegal activities (McVey 2000). Many of these local big men were nakleng, adept in employing violence, but also emphasizing loyalty and a readiness to bend and break the law as well as lend protection to subordinates and followers. In some instances, scholars drew attention to the Chinese ethnicities of many of these brokers and the

52

THAI POLITICS

secret society template that structured their operations. For a century, Thai kings and other elites had worried that democracy would result in Chinese dominance of Thailand. Were competitive elections having that result (Samudavanija 2002: 78–79, 166)? Anek Laothamatas (1996) argues that the economic and social gulf between rural and urban Thailand has created two different types of voters: citizens and clients. Many other scholars working on Thai politics focused on the still-burgeoning civic sector of NGOs and community groups mobilized on behalf of various “livelihood” interests (e.g., Missingham 2003). Typically, such groups might oppose a proposed dam or eucalyptus plantation (Unger and Siriros 2011). Increasingly important civic groups devoted to goals of political reform emerged as well (Chantornwong 2002). The latter hoped to clean up politics, generally meaning to reduce the role of money in elections and the extent of corruption in the administration and politics. The dominant reformist voice in Thai politics at this time had parallels with early-twentieth-century progressives in the United States. These Thais wanted to see politics cleaned up and generally were more concerned with the unseemly ways in which politicians gained and held power rather than the specific policy measures associated with their rule. Elected politicians were alleged to be only minimally accountable to their constituents or concerned with broad public policy. Business groups, however, and in some instances individual firms, were able to consistently demand a degree of performance from government (Laothamatas 1992; Unger 2003; Doner 2009). Their interlocutors generally were bureaucrats rather than politicians. A wide variety of civil society groups sustained pressure during the 1990s for the drafting of a new constitution. A new charter, they hoped, would diminish political corruption and enlarge the space available for more direct participatory democracy. As part of the latter goal, many Thais hoped to initiate processes of substantial political decentralization. The drafting of the new constitution featured wide participation. There was extensive consultation with various communities and groups around the country (along with protests), resulting in modifications of various kinds in successive drafts of the constitution. Parliament had no role in these procedures but would have to approve the final document before it could become law. Against substantial opposition from powerful groups, including prominent politicians and the Ministry of Interior, and perhaps only because by this time Thailand’s economy had begun a vertiginous collapse, parliament adopted the new constitution in 1997. The constitution promoted a wide agenda of changes in Thailand. It prompted a rapid program of decentralization that expanded the number of Thai elections and helped to promote greater political consciousness among many Thais (Phongpaichit and Baker 2012: 221). New elected governments were revamped at local and provincial levels. The constitution created or

POTEMKIN POLITICS

53

strengthened community rights that were then used by various groups to engage with Thailand’s judicial system to try to influence the planning and implementation of large construction, mining, and waterworks projects. The charter also set up a variety of institutions designed to create horizontal accountability such as a Constitutional Court, an Administrative Court system, and stronger anticorruption and election-regulating bodies (Chapter 4). A nonpartisan Senate was to serve as the lynchpin that would preserve these institutions from control by politicians. A final change to be noted here was the adoption of an electoral system featuring proportional representation (20 percent), in which voters indicated party rather than candidate preferences, as well as single-member districts (80 percent). The new electoral system reduced the number of political parties and encouraged more party voting. The Thai economy collapsed in 1997 and had to be rescued by an International Monetary Fund–led package of loans that required an extensive array of economic policy changes. While the Thai economy recovered from the worst effects of this blow remarkably quickly, the economic reforms inflicted considerable pain on large numbers of Thais, including a substantial number of powerful business figures. The Democrat Party that was responsible for implementing the reforms suffered in consequence. Some business figures, including Thaksin, came to feel it was unwise to allow political leaders such sway over their fortunes. In a sort of vertical integration, Thaksin would establish his own political party in 1998 and, rather soon, would transform Thailand’s politics. Thailand received substantial economic assistance, particularly from Japan and multilateral sources, in the aftermath of the economic collapse. Much of this assistance went directly to Thailand’s civic sector and local governments, which emerged stronger as a result. Veterans of the civic sector, working on issues of rural poverty and marginalization, often came to think of themselves as guardians of the interests of the rural poor. The king was the ultimate guardian of the interests of the poor, a responsibility he discharged most directly through his initiation and support of an enormous network of development projects around the country (Broderick 2013: 147– 175). While politicians might act as patrons for any number of individuals or specific communities, they did not normally present themselves as the champions of classes of individuals, whether farmers, workers, the poor, or businesses. Such overarching paternalism generally was the preserve of the palace. The Thaksin Transformation

The first lower house elections held under the new constitution came at the start of 2001. They proved unprecedented in a number of respects. In part

54

THAI POLITICS

due to the effects of the new electoral system, the Thai Rak Thai Party, Thaksin’s vehicle, came close to winning an outright majority of seats. It was able to form a government and quickly absorbed a number of smaller parties, turning its plurality into a majority in parliament. In no prior Thai election had a single political party emerged so dominant. No previous election had produced single-party government. After absorbing some smaller parties, Thai Rak Thai had a majority of seats in parliament and could have ruled alone. However, it elected to sustain a larger majority, ruling in coalition. Why, besides the effects of the new electoral system, did the Thai Rak Thai fare so well? Two factors probably were critical: Thaksin’s money and the party’s electoral strategy. As a result of having landed a couple of key government concessions, Thaksin was one of Thailand’s richest individuals. The wealth of some of his rivals had been diluted by the economic collapse of 1997 and had not yet recovered (Ockey 2005). With his wealth, Thaksin bought proven vote winners, drawing them away from their previous party affiliations to join the new party he founded in 1998 as candidates. His wealth presumably could be used to help those candidates secure their reelections under his party. Spending by Thaksin’s party in the 2001 elections probably set new records (Ungpakorn, 2003a: 31–32). The political warhorse and former prime minister, Banharn, claimed the elections were the dirtiest he had ever seen (Katerenchuk 2006: 206–207). The Thai Rak Thai’s novel strategy consisted of emphasizing its policy platform and making extensive use of television advertising. The party used an inclusive process to identify policy needs. The platform made many promises, including a variety of programs designed to get central government funds down to local communities. These programs included a rotating credit scheme, debt forgiveness, and a new universal health scheme requiring patients to pay only 30 baht (at the time, well under one US dollar) per visit. Drawing on his resources and the removal of regulations that had previously barred political advertising on television, Thaksin adopted a heavily centralized and capital-intensive campaign strategy that emphasized the party label and tied it to Thaksin’s candidacy. Thaksin was able to project an image as a new sort of politician with a vision for modernizing Thailand and lifting its economic fortunes. Given Thailand’s economic free fall in 1997, this message resonated widely and positively, including among poorer voters. His wealth, entrepreneurial energy, and apparent cosmopolitanism seem to have lent the notion some credibility in the minds of many voters. Thaksin’s personality—supremely assured and can-do oriented— probably enhanced that appeal. A major obstacle almost derailed Thaksin’s bid for political power in advance of the 2001 elections. The new anticorruption agency found that Thaksin had previously violated financial reporting rules that obliged

POTEMKIN POLITICS

55

politicians to report their assets and sent his case along to the Constitutional Court. In many previous and similar instances, the court had confirmed the findings of the anticorruption agency. There was every reason to believe it would do so again with the result that Thaksin would be barred from politics for five years. Thus, Thais went to the polls early in 2001 with strong reasons for believing that, within months of becoming premier, Thaksin would be barred from political office (see Chapter 4 for details). They elected him anyway. Thaksin was riding a wave of popularity unprecedented for a Thai politician. His support extended to almost all powerful groups in the kingdom as well as to less influential Thais. The Constitutional Court would have had to have been, and almost was, highly independent to have convicted him. One member of Thaksin’s circle, Surathian Chakthranont, analyzed the findings of the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) in terms that foreshadowed a great deal of commentary on the courts that would emerge after the 2007 constitution bolstered their roles further. NCCC officials, he suggested, manifested feudal values that “stole power away from the people” and tried to prevent them from enjoying the benefits of Thaksin’s leadership. The people, he argued, “wanted someone to serve them . . . not some pure, unsullied angel who would rule and lord over them” (Surathian, as quoted in Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 2–3). Thaksin promised that in power he would deliver 300 billion baht “to our people” (3). He arrived at court on foot, the better to work the crowds on his way. At one temple, more than 1,000 monks chanted rites for his benefit to ward off evil (3). Religious and other figures and movements launched drives to collect signatures in Thaksin’s support. His former classmates from the military cadet school appeared at his door with full press coverage to express their backing. The court ultimately found him guilty of two different charges but, when it added up the two sets of minority votes, produced a verdict of not guilty. Surathian described the decision, accurately enough, as “the minute that changed history” (5). Thaksin was able to sustain and further boost his popularity by a number of means. First, he was savvy in harnessing the news media to his cause. He went further than had recent governments in cowing the media and compelling most of it to provide his government with fawning coverage. Second, his habit of constantly announcing new initiatives and promising to solve even close-to-insoluble problems (ending Bangkok’s traffic problems in a few months, ending Thailand’s poverty in a few years) seems to have entertained audiences. Even policies that attracted strong criticism, such as the crackdown on drugs that resulted in thousands of what effectively were executions (much of the more audible criticisms came from abroad), probably gained him on balance support from the public. He does not seem to have suffered as a result of a couple of incidents in the far

56

THAI POLITICS

south in which his government killed, in one instance probably inadvertently, several score Muslims. Surely more important than such factors in sustaining Thaksin’s popularity, however, was the fact that his government delivered on the promises it made to Thailand’s relatively marginalized voters in its election platform. Such accountability of leaders to rural supporters was remarkable. The new health policy saved families from possible financial ruin in the face of major illnesses. For some rural Thais, the experience of having government serve their needs was akin to that of their Turkish counterparts in 1950 who, in the course of an election campaign, recognized for the first time links between national elections and “the conditions of their quotidian lives” (Waldner 1999: 62). When state services become clearly linked to popular welfare, mobilization ensues (Luebbert 1991: 313). This development of a degree of political responsiveness and accountability achieved through a more or less direct relationship between voters and the prime minister was surely crucial in engendering new levels of political commitment among many previously politically quiescent Thais. For many of these Thais, Thaksin was theirs, so that when he would later be politically besieged by competing political elites, his supporters were prepared to fight on his behalf. Thaksin also was lucky in his timing. Recovery from the 1997 economic collapse was gathering momentum when he assumed power. Thaksin’s policies designed to stimulate domestic demand and investor confidence surely hastened the economic upswing. Certainly, he urged voters to believe that was the case. Establishment progressives, the dominant political opinion makers since at least the 1990s, championed Thailand’s democratization and generally supported Thaksin initially. Thaksin borrowed from these and other figures the ideas for his government’s populist programs. Thaksin’s party was nothing if not inclusive, drawing on the talents of former communists as well as the rightists who had opposed them in the 1970s (Ungpakorn 2003a: 31–32). Many of these progressives, however, grew disillusioned with Thaksin’s rule over time. Growing opposition to Thaksin, mostly from journalists, academics, and people working with NGOs but also from some business interests and their political allies, posed no threat to Thaksin’s electoral base. Thaksin ignored complaints that he rarely visited parliament or that he was unwilling to listen to criticisms. He was dismissive of democratic procedures but could cite his party’s electoral performance as justification for his policies and governance style. He sometimes suggested doubt about the utility of the concept of rule of law, but presumably he generally was careful to avoid exposing himself to legal sanction. With his party dominating parliament, Thaksin could do pretty much whatever he wanted there. Initially, however, he did not enjoy unchallenged

POTEMKIN POLITICS

57

control over the Senate or the newly created institutions of horizontal accountability. Thaksin needed to gain control over the Senate to be able eventually to largely neutralize threats coming from the new accountability institutions. Well before the second Senate elections of 2006 in which many relatives of cabinet members gained seats, the nominally nonpartisan Senate had come sufficiently under Thaksin’s control so that most of those institutions no longer posed threats to his government. Thaksin had a mixed record with the security forces. He generally enjoyed strong support from the police (where he had launched his career), but the military proved more of a challenge. Within his inner circle were large numbers of retired military officials who acquiesced to increasing political influence over promotions. Two of Thaksin’s cousins in the military were among the beneficiaries of his influence. Close associates and former classmates also benefited and, by 2003, one of his cousins rose to become army commander (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005: 134–142). Nonetheless, establishing Thaksin’s control over the military remained a work in progress when a coup unseated him in 2006. Critically important to Thaksin’s tenure in power, but obscure and troubling, were his relations with the palace. In his annual birthday speech in 2005, the king noted the usefulness of criticism and the need for leaders (including the king himself) to be subject to it. It was hard not to conclude that the king was scolding Thaksin who was in the room to hear the speech. Some Thais believed that in usually subtle ways Thaksin had assumed ritual roles that were the preserve of the monarchy. In this conception, Thaksin was bidding to offer himself as an alternative “father” to the country. Thaksin and his party achieved further firsts in Thailand, becoming the first elected government to serve a full parliamentary term. In elections in February 2005, Thai Rak Thai secured a huge majority of the seats in parliament so that the opposition no longer had the votes necessary to bring motions of no confidence against government ministers. However, not long after this thumping victory, some things started to go wrong for Thaksin and his government. Although the government was able to ride roughshod over most opposition, a couple of institutions retained capacities to trouble it. One of these was the new system of Administrative Courts, which in 2005 ruled against the government’s plans to privatize the Electrical Generating Authority of Thailand. Another was the Office of Auditor General, headed until 2004 by Khunying Jaruvan Maintaka. At that point Khunying Jaruvan retired, but her successor did not gain royal approval. By early 2006, she was back in her post. Meanwhile, a media mogul and former business crony turned against the premier in 2005, apparently as a result of a business dispute. Sondhi Limthongkul, owner of the Manager media empire, began to speak regu-

58

THAI POLITICS

larly at large and well-attended rallies against the government and prime minister. Eventually he would help to found a movement known as People Against Dictatorship (PAD). This group might never have achieved deep political traction but for Thaksin’s announcement in early 2006 that he had sold his conglomerate Shin Corporation, including a telecommunications satellite, to the Singaporean state-owned firm Temasek. This was the largest corporate deal in Thai history (Marshall 2014: 161). The deal generated dismay among some Thais who argued that the country’s strategic assets (a telecommunications satellite) had been sold to a foreign government (Rojanaphruk 2006). Many Thais were disconcerted, if not outraged, to learn that their fabulously wealthy premier had structured the deal in such a way that his children would pocket the massive proceeds from the sale without being liable to tax. The sale of Shin Corporation provided an important fillip to the movement seeking to drive Thaksin from office. One final factor would prove to be critical in creating and sustaining the movement of opposition to Thaksin and his government: the widespread suspicion that the palace opposed him. In fact, it may well be that it was this notion that gave courage to the Administrative Courts and to the auditor general to challenge the government. The idea of blessings from above may also have engendered in 2005 the increasingly negative reporting on the government by Thai newspapers and, to a lesser degree, television. Alleged conflict between Thaksin and the palace would assume, and sustain, a central place in the political conflict that unfolded over subsequent years. This alleged conflict between Thaksin and the palace was extremely important, reverberated dangerously, and was not susceptible to open discussion because the smothering effects of lèse-majesté and defamation laws made such discussion highly dangerous. Hence, a major political question at the heart of the country’s political crisis retained the qualities of an enigma and, inevitably, was readily subject to abuse and innuendo by any who chose to seize the opportunity. Thaksin’s opponents seized the opportunity. They charged that he opposed the palace and was antipathetic to some of its more prominent agents, such as president of the Privy Council and former prime minister Prem, claims that initially could neither be proved nor adequately defused. Once the PAD was able to claim that it stood not only against Thaksin and his misdeeds but in defense of the palace, the movement became more potent and more dangerous for Thaksin, and indeed for the monarchy and for Thailand. King Bhumipol, meanwhile, was even more in the public eye than usual as Thais prepared for the lavish celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of his assuming the throne. One source suggested that a million1 yellow shirt−wearing Thais gathered in Royal Plaza in celebration and support (Krittikarn 2010: 61). These celebrations represented an apex of sorts.

POTEMKIN POLITICS

59

Thereafter, particularly among intellectuals, the institution of the monarchy grew increasingly controversial and was associated with the 2006 coup and the subsequent efforts to curb Thaksin’s influence, including the coup in 2014. A clear shift in the assessments of scholarly analyses of the monarchy emerged, perhaps particularly among foreign scholars. That shift was hastened when a formerly Thailand-based journalist, Paul Handley, published a book on the king. Even before the book appeared (Handley 2006), other scholars were noting more openly that the palace played active and extensive political roles (McCargo 2005). Some analyses noted that while the palace had on critical occasions sided with democratic forces, the king’s political views seemed to be broadly conservative and that in some cases he had sided with the military and against elected governments (Hewison 1997). Handley’s book necessarily rested largely on unattributed and unpublished sources, was in some respects peevish, but generally struggled to offer a balanced assessment of the king’s influence on Thai politics. The book’s impact, even among people who did not read it, recalled the story of the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale who remarked that the king wore no clothes. After decades of respectful treatment, even reverential hagiographies, the palace began to come in for bruising attacks. In Thailand’s polarized political context and amid the repeated shunting aside of elected governments, it was not long before substantial numbers of scholars and journalists (see, e.g., Chaiching 2010; Charoensin-o-larn 2012) seemed to conclude that the monarchy was the principal obstacle to Thailand consolidating a stable liberal democratic order. “Royalist” became an epithet. Scholarship on Thai politics also began to catch up with the immense changes that had been shaping Thailand’s silent majority of less educated or affluent Thais. In many cases, scholars sought to counter the assumption made by Thaksin’s opponents that he had bamboozled the masses who supported him. Rural Thais’ votes, these scholars insisted, were not for sale (Chachavalpongpun 2013: 11). As a result of geographical mobility, exposure to media, increased familiarity with elections, higher levels of education, and Thaksin’s premiership, rural voters had discovered that their votes could help to secure them tangible benefits. Their support for Thaksin was rational and their support for democracy was principled, not simply instrumental (Fullbrook 2012: 131–132). If many scholars rejected the notion that elites could easily hoodwink relatively poor and uneducated Thais, these scholars might nonetheless believe that the palace and its supporters could manipulate those Thais who embraced the monarchy’s social and political centrality. Many scholars argued that, far from underpinning Thai politics, the monarchy had destabilized them (Chaiching 2010: 172). Increasingly, they drew attention to the wealth of the Crown Property Bureau (Ouyyanont 2008) and, in particular,

60

THAI POLITICS

criticized the lèse-majesté law (e.g., Haberkorn 2013). Many scholars came to see the palace’s extralegal influence as the largest obstacle to consolidating democracy in Thailand (Hewison and Kitirianglarp 2010). Twenty-First Century Coups

The PAD grew more vociferous and more threatening in 2005–2006. Subsequently, Thaksin’s supporters took to organizing in his defense. The potential for significant levels of political violence began to emerge. When Thaksin was attending a meeting of the United Nations in New York City in September 2006, the military seized power in a coup. Among the justifications that the military offered for Thailand’s first coup in fifteen years were corruption in government, rising polarization and the threat of violence, corroding of checks and balances, and threats to the institution of the monarchy. The new military government installed a retired general and member of the king’s Privy Council, Surayud Chulanont, as interim prime minister. Initially, visible opposition to the coup was limited and many Thais clearly supported it, even if reluctantly. Many longtime avowed supporters of democracy in Thailand had concluded that there was something more damaging to the country’s long-term political trajectory than yet another coup. Presumably, a majority of Thais opposed the coup (though at least one early poll suggested otherwise), but relatively few of these Thais were as visible as the leaders of NGOs and journalists and scholars who welcomed it, even if with misgivings. The new government’s Council for Democratic Reform appointed a National Assembly and a Constitution Drafting Council. Eventually, it set a date for new elections in late 2007 (Marshall 2014). The new draft constitution was designed to prevent an elected government from becoming as powerful as Thaksin’s had been and to strengthen the mechanisms that impose accountability on elected governments. The constitution assigned the judiciary central roles in pursuit of these goals. The military, for its part, not only rapidly boosted its budgets, but also secured stronger positions in control of Thailand’s internal security apparatus (Chambers 2010). Perhaps the most contentious provisions in the new constitution called for a Senate to be composed about equally of elected and of appointed representatives. In many other respects, the new constitution maintained the spirit of the earlier constitution, for example, by supporting a variety of political and community rights and encouraging decentralized political participation. The drafting of the new constitution did not involve the open and participatory processes that characterized its predecessor. When drafting of the new charter was complete, it was put to the Thai public in a referendum. The military stacked the deck in favor of approval

POTEMKIN POLITICS

61

by making clear that a no vote would give the military carte blanche to impose whatever constitution it might want. Despite this and other means to sway the outcome,2 42 percent of Thais voted to reject the new constitution. These no votes were concentrated in Thaksin country—the north and, particularly, the northeast (Hewison 2012: 152–153). This outcome promised future tensions. The coup, it seemed, had changed little, but underlined columnist Chang Noi’s point that “reconciliation does not come out of the barrel of a gun. Unity cannot descend from above” (Chang Noi, as quoted in Marshall 2014: 166). New elections were held in late 2007. Despite the best efforts of the coup-installed government, Thaksin’s new political vehicle, the People’s Power Party (PPP), swept back into power. The gap in voting for seats determined by proportional representation between the PPP and its leading opponent, the Democrat Party, was narrow, with the latter enjoying a tiny lead. The PPP, however, secured its advantage in the constituency races and thereby the right to establish a new government. Following the 2007 elections, Thaksin picked Samak Sunthornwej, a political veteran, to lead the new government. Samak made no apologies for, neither did he dissemble about, his status as a proxy for Thaksin, who had not yet returned to Thailand. Once his allies were back in office, Thaksin did return to Thailand, but only fairly briefly in 2008. Before the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions, a special court whose rulings offered almost no recourse to appeal, convicted him of abusing his power to help his wife buy public land at an auction, Thaksin went off to Beijing for the Olympics. As of 2016, he had yet to return. The Constitutional Court in September found Samak guilty of accepting a trivial fee for appearing, as he had been doing for years, on a televised cooking show. Samak had to relinquish the premiership and was banned from office for five years. He was succeeded for a couple of months as leader of the party and prime minister by Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law. Somchai held office until the Constitutional Court found, with more reason, that the PPP had committed electoral fraud in prior elections. Retroactively applying a new law, the court duly banned him and all members of the party leadership from politics for five years. The party was shut down and, with a new leadership, renamed Pheu Thai. The political struggle, however, was far from being limited to the government party and the courts. Once Thaksin’s proxies were back in power and Thaksin had returned to Thailand, the PAD again took to the streets. They escalated the pressure in late August 2008 by occupying Government House for a prolonged period. Then, at the end of 2008, they occupied airports, including Bangkok’s key international airport for almost a week, ending their occupation only after the court decision forced the government from power and cleared the way for a hastily arranged Democrat Party–led

62

THAI POLITICS

coalition to assume power. Important military figures were among those who helped stitch together the new coalition. It was made possible by defection from the previous government coalition by a group of members of parliament led by former Thaksin ally Newin Chidchob. With Thaksin’s allies forced from power, a new movement devoted to supporting Thaksin emerged. The United Front for Democracy and Against Dictatorship was designed in substantial part on the PAD model. The UDD made its first big splash in 2009 when Thailand was hosting a summit of ASEAN and its dialogue partners in Pattaya, a seaside resort about fifty miles east of Bangkok. The UDD forced cancellation of the meetings when a tide of protesters swarmed into the hotel that was hosting the proceedings. Many visiting heads of government were hustled to a hotel roof and flown away by helicopter. Subsequent demonstrations in Bangkok were angry, but ultimately were dispersed with minimal bloodshed. In this respect, they failed. The protesters did achieve one goal—disgracing the government. They failed, however, to dislodge it. Thaksin would have to try another stratagem to boost his negotiating leverage. In late February 2010, while the Supreme Court was preparing to rule on the disposition of some $2 billion of Thaksin’s assets, mobilization of the Red Shirts got under way. At this point, there were some voices within the movement wondering whether they were serving the goal of democracy or the financial concerns of the “Big Boss.” There also was talk among Thaksin’s close aides of creating a “people’s army.” Following the Supreme Court decision to seize over 60 percent of the frozen assets, the Red Shirt mobilization was unleashed (Crispin 2012: 108). The Red Shirts protested against the government and demanded that it resign and call new elections. This time, the protesters stood off against the government for two months before military forces were used to bring the demonstrations to a close. In March the government engaged in televised talks with the leaders of the protests, until Thaksin intervened and brought the talks to an end. There was considerable violence in early April that failed to tar the government badly. In May, the prime minister made a peace offering that included the early scheduling of elections. The offer was accepted by the protest leaders, but that acceptance was then withdrawn and new demands advanced, apparently largely at Thaksin’s insistence (Marshall 2014). The protests continued. The denouement to the standoff proved grisly. In all, over a couple of months more than ninety people were killed, most of them unarmed and many killed by the military. It is not clear just what went wrong. In the finale, the military came under fire by figures embedded within the crowds as it moved in on the protesters. This fire and perhaps the military’s poor training in such operations accounted for the large number of fatalities. This time, the extensive bloodshed worked to discredit the government.

POTEMKIN POLITICS

63

The Democrat Party−led coalition government called new elections for July 3, 2011. Thaksin selected his younger sister, a businesswoman and political neophyte, to lead the Pheu Thai Party. This bold stroke proved to be inspired and probably was in part responsible for the whopping election success as Thaksin’s forces triumphed at the polls and again assumed control of government. Their margin of victory was much larger than it had been in 2007. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra not only proved to be effective at winning votes for her party, but as national leader she gradually helped to dampen Thai political passions. She was ridiculed by her opponents for her obvious lack of knowledge about many aspects of politics and policy. Nonetheless, she proved politically deft and was careful to mend ties with the military leadership and to render homage to the palace. She also proved to be fairly adept at assuming the role of an injured innocent in response to attacks by critics. If given time, her leadership and policies might have enabled Thais to modulate their divisions. One side would have to accept its electoral weakness; the other would need to tread with circumspection on matters of greatest sensitivity, eschewing, for example, near-term efforts to create a fully elected Senate. That is not how things developed. There appeared to be indications of a deal between Thaksin and elements of the establishment. The government was taking steps to reassure elites about the moderate nature of its planned policies. In May 2012 Thaksin suggested in a speech to the Red Shirts that he was grateful for their past help, but perhaps he no longer needed them. The Pheu Thai Party then made a foray in 2012 aimed at rewriting the entire constitution, including weakening oversight institutions, creating a fully elected Senate, and doing what would be necessary to allow Thaksin to return to Thailand. The Constitutional Court blunted that initiative, however, ruling that an entirely new charter would require a vote in a referendum. This apparently surprised Thaksin and his team. He spoke again to the Red Shirts to suggest that he might after all need their support again (Marshall 2014: 193–199). Then, in late 2013, the party blundered badly. In the third reading of a bill aiming to grant an amnesty for many of those imprisoned following the 2010 political conflicts, during the wee hours of the morning, the party first radically altered and then passed the bill. The amnesty had been extended to cover all parties, including Thaksin himself, and, to the dismay of his supporters, the leaders of the previous government that Thaksin’s supporters held responsible for the killings by the military in 2010. This major blunder was followed by others. There were more attempts to amend the constitution, this time only select articles, including another effort to create a fully elected Senate, and a declaration that any court challenge to the bill would be ignored. These moves provoked storms of protest and criticism. Eventually, the former secretary-general of the Democrat Party, Suthep Thaugsuban,

64

THAI POLITICS

resigned his seat in parliament to assume leadership of a new mass movement, the People’s Democratic Reform Council. Several other Democrats later also resigned their seats to commit themselves to the new movement. The movement’s specific goals emerged slowly, and even then not terribly clearly (Rojanaphruk and Sinlapalavan 2014). Its broader goals, however, were clear enough. It sought to extirpate the Thaksin regime. As one step toward that goal, it wanted the government to resign. When in December, the government did resign and called new elections for early February 2014, the PDRC in a key turning point opposed the elections. Before new elections could be held, the movement avowed, it was necessary to adopt a spate of reforms (e.g., decentralization, election of provincial governors, decentralization of the police, and probably a new electoral system). While not always spelled out explicitly, the PDRC had in mind a long period of reform (perhaps eighteen to twenty-four months) before new elections. Surely not entirely as a result of coincidence, this approach to reform in broad outline is what Thais would get with the coup that came in May 2014. When the government resigned and called elections in December 2013, and the PDRC backed its calls for democracy by refusing to sanction elections, the conflict entered a new phase. The PDRC was able to sustain much of its support, but its rejection of elections led some of its backers to defect and many others to lose conviction. Had not the civic uprising demonstrated that Thaksin’s foes could rise up and prevent the grossest abuses of power if they should arise again? Would it really be so dangerous to see the Pheu Thai win another election? Might not the Democrat Party considerably whittle down the Pheu Thai’s hold on parliament in the new context? Even some key leaders of the Democrat Party distanced themselves from the PDRC’s no-elections-now line. Nonetheless, the PDRC, in coordination with a few other smaller groups, hewed to its line and over the following months staged successive rallies of various types, often in several locations at once. A couple of the larger rallies drew enormous support. It clearly was making up its tactics as it went along, but sought somehow to force the government from power so that a new government, perhaps appointed by the king, could oversee the adoption of reforms before new elections. Violence might force the military to stage a coup. As a result, the police, generally seen as supporters of Thaksin, worked hard to avoid escalating tensions by using excessive force. The PDRC and other groups disrupted the February elections so that a new government could not be constituted. Perhaps a constitutional crisis would compel some sort of external intervention, as had occurred (twice) in 2006. Meanwhile, a raft of cases made their way through the Constitutional Court, the Administrative Courts, and the National Anti-Corruption Commission. In early May 2014, the Constitutional Court ruled that Prime Min-

POTEMKIN POLITICS

65

ister Yingluck, along with many other members of her cabinet, had to step down as a result of having illegally removed a high-ranking official from the National Security Council so that one of her relatives could be promoted (International Crisis Group 2015: 4). This court activism unfolded in a context of extreme polarization and distrust. For a couple of weeks, a number of groups scrambled to mediate, looking for means of defusing the conflict, but without any indications of having made headway (Bangkok Post 2013b: B1). The PDRC and its allies insisted that reforms must be agreed on first before further resort to elections could be allowed. The Red Shirts and their allies argued that elections were the most appropriate way, indeed the only way, to resolve political differences. The stalemate dragged on, and no new flexibility emerged on either side. The military ostensibly called the parties together for talks that, predictably, went nowhere. At that point, on May 22, the military announced that it was seizing power. It quickly became clear that the coup would be more thoroughgoing than its 2006 predecessor. The military adopted harsh measures violating assorted human rights, clamped down on the media, and claimed extensive reach for military courts. It moved rapidly and aggressively across a wide range of issues. Initially, it enjoyed wide public support as it made sure that rice farmers received long-delayed payments. The generals moved on various mafia groups involved in a variety of activities. To the surprise of many, having stabilized conditions in Thailand, the military retained its repressive rule. Strong foreign criticism from the dominant democratic powers had little evident effect, and those powers would subsequently soften their stances somewhat. As more of a sense emerged for the kind of constitution that was going to be produced, it became increasingly clear that the military would take no risks. The new constitution would feature several different safeguards designed to guard against the return to power of Thaksin or another comparable figure. Only after the first elections under a new constitution, perhaps in 2017, would it begin to be possible to judge the extent to which the military leadership and its allies had proved successful in entrenching a new political order. Notes 1. Estimates of crowd sizes on the street in Thailand are difficult, disputed, and widely disparate. 2. One slogan offered: “Love the King. Care about the King. Vote in the referendum. Accept the 2007 draft charter” (Marshall 2014: 170).

3 Performance of the Thai State

modern era. States are highly complex, as are the factors that go into determining how they perform (Day 2002: 2). There is a close association but no necessary relationship between having a high-capacity state and a robust democracy. Singapore, for example, enjoys the first but not the second. Many countries (e.g., India) have sturdy democracies but do not have highly effective states. Historical sequencing may have an important impact on the likelihood of high-capacity states to emerge. If such a state has not already been entrenched before participatory democracy takes root, establishing one may prove difficult (Shefter 1994; Fukuyama 2014). The right kind of state helps make it possible for citizens to enjoy a better life. In a democracy featuring an accountable and effective state, citizens are more likely to experience broad-based social cooperation, accountability of political leaders to voters, rule of law, and popular participation in politics and policymaking. In John Locke’s terms, a civil state is the expression of a “unitary political capability” (quoted in Dunn 1999: 56). It crystallizes a particular “sociospatial capacity for organization” (Mann 1986: 3). Still more, it can offer steady advances in social welfare and in the material conditions of life. Democratic political competition features efforts to control access to key positions of executive authority over the state. It is therefore important to understand the nature of the Thai state. Absolute monarchs established a moderately effective state in Thailand well before the country’s participatory features grew pronounced.1 As a result, democratic politics in Thailand have potential to draw on that inheritance to transform the lives of Thais. A political coalition controlling the state could use it to achieve broad-ranging social goals. In general, if the state over which a political coalition wins a degree of control has weak capacities, that coalition will only to a limited extent be able to translate its

THE STATE IS THE MOST POWERFUL POLITICAL INSTITUTION OF THE

67

68

THAI POLITICS

political triumph into administrative realities and into practices that structure the lives of citizens throughout the realm. In such circumstances, political competition is more apt to be a contest for control over policy implementation, or perhaps over largely symbolic issues (Shefter 1994). Control over lawmaking becomes less central. A more capable state, in contrast, may enable a political coalition to do much of what it promised citizens that it would do. To some degree, such a coalition will be able to use the state machinery to implement its political goals and to rule across the length and breadth of the territory over which the state reigns. Not only control over policy implementation but also over making policies becomes more important. The impact of Thaksin Shinawatra’s policies on the lives of many Thais was testament to a reasonably capable state. As a result, Thais engaged in their protracted political conflict are competing for control over the state in pursuit of various, rarely articulated, goals. They presumably hope to control policymaking as well the state’s regulatory authority. While the Thai state is fairly effective, it also retains extensive and costly infirmities. In addition, Thailand has lost the political unity and moral rooting that once underpinned its state. The nature of the political coalition that commands the state in the future will influence the state’s future capacities and may struggle to re-create the political bases of a comparatively effective state. The Thai state’s limited capacities to curb corruption, to regulate effectively and consistently in many policy areas, and to effectively control the security forces point to its limitations. These weaknesses have enabled the development of street politics as a potent political force over the past decade. The state does not exercise a particularly effective monopoly on violence.2 A key strategy used in Thailand’s political contest since 2005 involved prolonged occupations of public spaces. These occupations aimed at bringing down governments by disrupting movement and commerce. They were possible in part due to ineffective executive control over state security forces (BTI 2012).3 Not only criminals have wide access to weapons. Some political groups receive military training as well as weapons. Faced with threats from European imperialists, beginning in the late nineteenth century the royal court in Bangkok consolidated a reasonably centralized and effective state, establishing control over the people and territory of Siam. The Thai state’s effectiveness rested on the centralization of political authority and the king’s legitimacy rather than on high levels of institutionalization. As Day (2002) notes of historical Southeast Asian states in general: they may have looked like Leviathans, but this largely was an illusion. All power was charismatic. Charisma “was not a temporary phenomenon of crisis, but the permanent, routine, organizing principle of

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

69

the state” (B. Anderson, quoted in Day 2002:11). These states rested largely on personalized networks that linked up families (157). To a degree, the Thai state today remains rooted in personalized networks. It is possible that the recent withering of Thailand’s long-established elite consensus will tend to hinder the growth of the state’s capacities, an issue we take up in this chapter’s conclusion. Beginning late in 2013, the People’s Democratic Reform Council determined to bring down the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra by disabling the state. The movement called on bureaucrats to abandon their offices or at least slow their work in support of the goal of overthrowing the elected government. In many cases, the movement was received enthusiastically when it called on various government agencies. The duly constituted government in power had only a modicum of control over the state apparatus. When the military, following failed elections, removed the Yingluck caretaker government in May 2014, among its earliest steps was to transfer personnel in various ministries. Officials with strong connections to Thaksin were seen as potentially obstructive. Clearly, the political divide that polarized Thailand ran through the organs of state. The new military government, backed by draconian powers, nonetheless was hampered by bureaucrats operating in neutral gear, keeping their options open while waiting to see which political groups would next hold power. The elements of state capacity are complex. State capacity rests on technical and organizational skills as well as normative and political conditions. States’ technical capacities depend, for example, on organizations that record, organize, and retrieve data. A state needs communications, organizational infrastructure, and skilled administrative staff to accomplish goals, whatever those might be. Equally important are politically rooted coercive and coordinating capacities that enable a political coalition that reigns over the state to manifest its political dominance—to rule. A state’s capacities to transform the lives of citizens are inevitably linked in varying degrees to the breadth and nature of its political and social bases and the policy commitments of the dominant political coalition. Also important is the nature of society and its interactions with political institutions and the state. Politically, a state needs to be enmeshed with a dominant political coalition that sustains it (Shefter 1994: 14–15). This need to politically root state dominance is particularly acute in Thailand where the state functions less as a machine than as a set of complex human networks. The Thai state, and Thai society more generally, is governed more by norms that direct the attention of its officials up and down the social hierarchy than by norms that encourage them to adopt modernity’s incessant hindsight and foresight. In other words, we should not expect to find the

70

THAI POLITICS

Thai state governed by the law’s compelling majesty or other deep-rooted commitments to impersonal procedures. Instead, we must be attentive to the broad political coalition, composed of complex personalized networks, that oversees the state. The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. We begin by giving some sense for the scale and capabilities of the contemporary Thai state and, drawing on survey data, the ways in which Thais understand it. Thais have limited confidence in the state and considerable tolerance for corruption and authoritarian rule. Next, we review some of the comparative social science literature on state formation, emphasizing analytical concerns with resonance for understanding the Thai case. We then briefly characterize premodern Thai states. Vestigial features of these states survive today. Finally, we examine how the Thai state performed in different periods over the past 120 years. We describe three episodes of top-down reform of the Thai state that aimed to impose greater accountability on the bureaucracy. Each of these periods was associated with eras of concentrated political authority. The first of these began at the end of the nineteenth century under King Chulalongkorn. The second emerged in the middle of the twentieth century under Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat. The third developed from the end of the past century and was associated with former prime minister Thaksin. In each instance, the champions of these reforms aimed to make the state more responsive to their command.

The Thai State in Digest Population

By some measures, Thailand is a fairly average country. In population (67 million) it ranks twentieth in the world (2011), just a bit larger than France. Its per capita income in international dollars is 80 percent of the global figure, comparable to those of Jamaica, Macedonia, Tunisia, and Peru. In purchasing power parity terms, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is closer to the unweighted global average (UNDP 2010: 206–210). The Thai state is of modest size measured by expenditures as a share of total economic activity, or when looking at the number of people employed by the state—just over 2 million plus the security forces (UNDP 2009: 56)—as a share of the total labor force. The permanent civil service has not grown much in recent times, but since 2004 the number of Thais working for the government on long-term contracts expanded by almost 50 percent. Total personnel costs account for some 7 percent of GDP, high compared to

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

71

Malaysia and the Philippines (Bangkok Post 2015b: 10). The armed forces, measured by personnel, were not unduly large. Thailand had just over 300,000 armed forces personnel, not much larger than the number of Buddhist monks.4 Military budgets rose sharply following the coup in 2006. Nonetheless, as a share of GDP, they remain fairly modest (Abuza 2015: 11). Following decentralization mandated by the 1997 constitution, the share of spending and of employment with the central government declined as a share of the total and those of local governments grew. Nonetheless, the size of the central government civil service far outstripped those working for local governments (around 13 percent of the total; Office of the Public Sector Development Commission 2009: 22–24). John Stuart Mill articulated a widely held view that states, ultimately, reflect the character of the people that staff them and perhaps also those people over whom they rule (quoted in Ricci 1987: 160). Surely there is something to this homely observation. It is therefore worthwhile to review various data on Thai social and political attitudes. These data reveal considerable acceptance of corruption, an apparent tolerance for authoritarian government, and only modest levels of “discipline” among Thais. Thai Orientations

Using World Values Survey data from Waves 5 and 6, it is possible to examine Thailand against a group of eleven other lower- and middleincome countries.5 When World Values Survey respondents were asked if it ever was justifiable to accept a bribe, only 28 percent of Thais suggested it was not. In Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, and Vietnam, more than 80 percent offered that response. Only Malaysians’ response rate (35 percent) was remotely close to the Thai one. These data support widely reported and persistent findings of tolerance of corruption in Thailand (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). In March 2012, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), an independent consultancy firm, surveyed about 1,400 respondents in 13 countries in Asia. In the opinion of the survey respondents, Thailand ranked about in the middle of the pack in terms of corruption. Thailand generally ranked above Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and on a par with China and India (PERC 2013). Thailand’s rankings among 183 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) were perhaps worse. In 2013 its score of 35 put it at 102 among the 137 countries scored, comparable to scores received by India, the Philippines, and Mexico (Transparency International 2013). World Values Survey data also suggest, though with some ambiguity, that Thais are tolerant of authoritarian government. When asked about the

72

THAI POLITICS

desirability of a political system in which experts make the decisions for us, only 10 percent of Thais described such an arrangement as “very good.” Only in Vietnam did fewer respondents endorse such a regime. However, Thais did not exactly condemn such a regime. While 36.5 percent of Vietnamese suggested such an arrangement would be “very bad,” only 5.1 percent of Thais concurred. Asked about the desirability of having a strong leader ruling unconstrained by elections or legislature, fewer Thai respondents saw this as being “very bad” than in any of the other countries (2.8 percent vs. 65.1 percent in Vietnam, 58.5 percent in Ghana, and 50.6 percent in Egypt). Although the number of those who saw it as “very good”(16.2 percent) put them in the middle of the pack, when the “fairly good” numbers were added to the “very goods” Thais again emerged endorsing such an arrangement more strongly than did those in the other countries. These data, then, suggest that Thais are quite tolerant of corruption and of authoritarian rule.6 What of the state’s disciplinary features? The concept of social discipline often is associated with the work of Michel Foucault and his analysis of means of generating social and political order and dominance. These means emerge in part from the “technology of observation” (Smart 1985: 85), whether by the self, civil society, or the state. Surveillance and circumscription enable the channeling of human energies in support of the goals of political power holders (cited in Smart 1985: 71–91). To what extent did the state succeed in fostering a regimen of self-discipline among Thais that emphasized the shaping of drives in conformity with the needs of state and capital? The World Values Survey instrument asks respondents to agree or disagree with the statement “Work should come first even if it means less spare time.” Most people in all twelve of the countries agreed or agreed strongly. However, only in Brazil and Zambia were there more respondents than in Thailand who disagreed or disagreed strongly. Respondents also were asked to note which qualities (e.g., independence, hard work, feeling of responsibility), from a list of ten provided, were important for children to have. Hard work was mentioned in the other eleven countries by between 49.1 percent (Malaysia) and 88.3 percent (Bulgaria) of respondents, but only by 23.3 percent in Thailand.7 Thais also gave less emphasis than did most others to feelings of responsibility (lower only in Ghana and Zambia), religious faith (lower in Vietnam and Bulgaria), and unselfishness (just lower in Malaysia and Turkey). In short, as they emerge from this highly abbreviated sketch, Thai attitudes on discipline do not suggest the sort of pattern we might associate with Confucians or Calvinists. Next, we review theories on how states emerge. This literature draws heavily on European cases. We then examine the often contrasting Thai experience with the emergence and development of the state.

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

73

State Formation Historians generally argue that modern states arose first in Western Europe, early in the modern era, over half a millennium ago.8 For example, while French kings in the eleventh century served as elected overlords with direct authority over only their own domains, by the fifteenth century they dominated other lords. Even King Louis XIV in the seventeenth century, however, operated with an administrative staff of fewer than 1,000 to govern his 20 million French subjects (Bendix 2001: 321, 334). Alexis de Tocqueville noted that only in the eighteenth century did many European states establish centralized systems of justice and of violence (1978: 606). Monarchs degraded the traditional powers of nobles, eventually asserting a centralized system of justice and taxation and a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. These processes were halting and uneven. Only in Sweden was the state able to institute direct rule across its territory before the French Revolution (Tilly 1992: 25). The emergence of still more powerful states came with new communications technologies and as states became intertwined with rising social classes and nationalism. These processes were associated with the explosion of collective powers that came with the second Industrial Revolution beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century (Bendix 2001; Mann 1993). An enduring tension in the histories of states (as with other large organizations) involves, on the one hand, the effort to make the state the instrument of the sovereign and, on the other hand, patrimonialist tendencies for the officers of the state to treat their offices as their own property. Until comparatively recently, it was natural almost everywhere and at all times for many state offices to be, or become, the property of officeholders. State offices were “prey to colonization” by powerful lords. Venality—the selling of state offices—risked capture of the state by great families. It could serve, however, to politically integrate new absolutist states (P. Anderson 1985: 47). A form of venality enabled Thai politicians in the 1980s to purchase, on a contingent basis, select ministerial portfolios. This practice undermined state autonomy while furthering the wider political integration of the state. Early European monarchs, whatever their centralizing ambitions, did not have the means of communication to exercise effective direct control over great distances (Mann 1986). These problems were only aggravated as royal courts attempted to extend their reach across a variety of cultural and linguistic frontiers. As a result, kings might delegate most or all of the tasks of governance in a given area to a local lord. These “federal” arrangements varied in their specific features. The lords might be expected simply to acknowledge the suzerainty of the monarch while governing unimpeded. Early Thai states featured such segmentary patterns. Lords might also be expected to contribute forces when the monarch waged war or to transfer

74

THAI POLITICS

revenue to the monarch. However tightly coupled relations between monarchs and lords might be initially, over time they would tend to be bound less tightly and what began as the king’s contingent grant of authority would become a property that the lord would hope to hand down to his heirs. In this chapter, we examine a series of top-down episodes of Thai state efforts to wrench control over the state from the grasp of its officers to establish or restore the authority of the executive. In Europe, a principal impetus to state building was the enormous logistical and fiscal burden of waging war. The European state system in the modern period until the nineteenth century featured frequent wars, and the need to make war and pay for it helped induce greater state capabilities (Tilly 1992). Nobles supplied taxes and soldiers so that kings could offer the collective good of defense along with private goods of plunder or glory. Over time, the central state apparatus came to dwarf the resources under the control of regional lords. The Tudor revolution in England shifted the heart of administration from the royal household toward new state offices (Boot 2006: 35–36) and, in Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus created the “rudiments of a modern government” early in the seventeenth century (Boot 2006: 61). Peter the Great in Russia tried to root the notion that Russians owed service to an abstract state rather to his person (Blanning 2007: 238). Prussia, early in the modern era, was a small insecure kingdom prone to war, but an innovator in crafting a high-capacity state that would be an effective instrument of the sovereign. Typically, Prussian state reforms aimed at, and to a remarkable extent achieved over the eighteenth century, rationalization and centralization (Van Creveld 1999: 138). States started to develop universalizing and homogenizing ambitions (Scott 1998). States tended to first instill discipline in the military. From there, discipline diffused outward through the state apparatus and society. Armies “were prototypes of the modern bureaucracy” (Boot 2006: 74). A Japanese visitor to Europe in the late nineteenth century remarked that “the spirit of the military organization . . . extended to all corners of society” (Mishra 2012: 40). By contrast, a Portuguese visitor to Siam in the sixteenth century, while impressed with the kingdom’s bounty, judged it easy “to conquer and hold” (Van der Cruysse 2002: 17). The country had no standing army until early in the twentieth century (Day 2002: 231–232). In Prussia during the eighteenth century, Frederick William I barred the sale of offices and redirected revenue flows to a central treasury. Older systems of geographical organization were superseded by function-based ones. By the latter part of that century, officials were gaining office through competitive exams and most of them had graduated from universities (Van Creveld 1999: 129–136; Gorski 2003). Even the king’s intercessions in the workings of this new bureaucracy were largely eliminated. Rather remark-

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

75

ably, from a Thai perspective, Frederick William II (Frederick the Great) described himself as “the first servant of the state” (quoted in Van Creveld 1999: 137). Around the same time, Vincent de Gournay (who coined the term “laissez-faire”) supplied the neologism “bureaucracy” (137–138). In a bureaucracy, the specialized servants of the state took control over it. The agents of the sovereign became the principals, a condition Fred Riggs (1966) would later describe as a “bureaucratic polity” in his well-known 1960s study of the Thai state and politics. Bureaucratic reform in Thailand has attempted to counteract these patrimonial proclivities. Many popular explanations of the rise of modern capable states in Europe during the early modern era emphasize the demands of warfare. In a study of modern Southeast Asian states, however, Dan Slater (2010) suggests that state building came in response to intense urban political conflicts that threatened to unseat dominant political coalitions. Another account links the development of state capacities to the rise of capitalism (P. Anderson 1985). While capitalists’ capacities to dominate politics varied across states, states’ propensities to adjust in fundamental ways to capitalists’ needs were more universal. In Thailand in the nineteenth century, European imperialists compelled the state to support the interests of capital. Imperial powers subjected Thailand to the usual panoply of unequal treaties. It lost control over its tariff policies and generally ceded control over its money as the state began to employ large numbers of foreign advisers, particularly at its commanding heights. The state’s commitment to serve the needs of capital again strengthened in the middle of the twentieth century. Philip S. Gorski offers still another explanation for the rise of effective states. He suggests that certain religious beliefs and practices (those of Calvinists in particular) in Europe engendered social discipline that enabled the emergence of efficient and effective states. Even relatively decentralized states could develop impressive capacities in such social contexts. With people working harder and following rules more regularly, exercising “incessant hindsight and foresight” (Elias 1982: 374), states were better able to oversee a boost in productivity and to regulate effectively (Gorski 2003: xv–xvi). These processes were particularly powerful where bottomup processes were in play, such as within Calvinist communities in the Netherlands or Switzerland where elders “monitored and disciplined everyday life conduct, penetrating into the last house in the most isolated little village” (Gorski 2003: 17). Francis Fukuyama emphasizes the importance of a shared sense of moral mission in successful US efforts to reform the state in the late nineteenth century (2014: 158, 162, 206). In Europe, Calvinists offered an impressively austere model of social organization approximating totalitarianism but rooted in civil society. Their consistories monitored the community’s behavior and excommunicated deviants while

76

THAI POLITICS

shaming the potentially reformable (Wolfe 2010: 37). At this point in the story of the state’s development (with significant societal support), we can begin to descry Weber’s iron cage of modernity. The disciplinary state was on the road to producing what Rabindranath Tagore termed “compressed bales of humanity” (quoted in Mishra 2012: 226). Social discipline was implicated in Europe in ever more controlling states and societies. Recent centuries have seen an “ever-deepening hegemony of instrumental reason” (Reynolds 2006: 27). The subjection of society to “technique,” Jacques Ellul argues, required the application of impersonal criteria for making policy determinations. Industrial societies were producing “progressive de-humanization—a busy, pointless, and, in the end, suicidal submission to technique” (Merton 1964: viii). Antoine Mas offers that “standardization means resolving in advance all the problems that might impede the functioning of an organization . . . to anticipate both difficulty and its resolution. From then on, standardization creates impersonality, in the sense that organization relies more on methods and instructions than on individuals” (Mas, as quoted in Ellul 1964: 11–12). By contrast, in Thailand the strong hold of affect-laden as well as instrumental ties binding superiors and inferiors has blunted the advance of standardization and impersonal procedure and, therefore, of strong institutions and the rule of law. By the late nineteenth century, some European states had assumed the outlines of the states that are familiar to us today. With the emergence of strong political institutions buttressing them, they were able to traverse the challenges associated with industrialization and urbanization. Also late in the nineteenth century, Thailand’s state began an aggressive program of reform. It would be many decades, however, before industrial society emerged to challenge the state in fundamental ways. More decades would pass before a truly mass polity began to pose the state new challenges. The Thai state was shaped by ideological currents and organizational challenges quite distinct from those that produced European states. We now consider those local historical conditions.9 The Thai State Generalizing across several centuries of “Thai” history and many different specific states, some distinctive patterns emerge, though these features often were shared by other Southeast Asian states. State leaders typically had insecure tenures and weak influence over leadership succession. One sixteenth-century Portuguese account of Siam reported the death by poisoning of one king by his queen, the usurpation of the throne by her lover, and the assassination of both at a banquet (cited in Van der Cruysse 2002: 16).

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

77

Dirk Van der Cruysse suggests that, in Ayutthaya, “successions were always uncertain, bloody disputes that regularly wracked the kingdom the moment a king closed his eyes for the last time” (76). Thai states themselves typically featured limited authoritative or infrastructural powers. Charismatic leaders “made a virtue of improvisation” (Day 2002: 9). Monarchy featured “a singularly personal character structured around the interests” of the powerful (Barme 2002: 100). Yet some of these states were able to reign over considerable areas. Presiding over these states were absolute despots without the means of exercising their powers much beyond their courts. Pacification of extensive areas depended heavily on exploiting the powers of ceremony, ritual, and religion. These latter practices enabled a far wider geographic span of regulation than did authoritative state institutions. Hence, monopolies over cultural or religious ideas were of great importance. Princes, accordingly, invested heavily in spectacle.10 Ceremony and ritual helped to generate social solidarities and commitments to collective purposes (Mann 1986; Wolfe 2010: 43). Early European accounts of Siamese courts almost invariably included lengthy descriptions of spectacle. One Dutch observer in the seventeenth century reported the ceremony associated with kathin (presenting robes to monks), replete with trains of elephants, musicians, goldcrowned lords, Japanese soldiers, and so on (Van der Cruysse 2002: 61– 62). Royal letters passing to and fro between Siam and France were treated with great veneration. A letter written by King Narai to Louis XIV was written on sheets of gold, rolled up, and placed in a case that was put into caskets covered with gold brocade and loaded onto a ship. While at anchor, passing ships had to furl their sails, and the oarsmen stood and saluted (213). One of the French ambassadors to the court of King Narai of Ayutthaya commented, “I had never been to such a show before, and thought I had become the pope” (325). Early Southeast Asian states were shaped by Brahmanic influences. In large parts of India, Brahmans’ monopoly of ritual practice produced “normative pacification” (Mann 1986: 357). India’s social formation featured a pervasive Brahmin structuring of most facets of life (Basham 1954; Mann 1986: 353–359). Clifford Geertz’s analysis of the Balinese “theater state” describes a “culture of ceremonialism” that attracted subjects and induced their compliance. This concept of power suggests that “pomp, drama, and display . . . [can] order human affairs” (Geertz, as quoted in Reynolds 2006: 43). A Buddhist revival in regions of present-day Thailand was triggered by links with Sinhalese Buddhism late in the first millennium (Wyatt 2003). Buddhism would help to underpin monarchical rule, and the clergy contributed to the diffuse normative order that provided social stability even as

78

THAI POLITICS

political conflict remained near constant. Buddhism shifted from “a weak and localized folk Buddhism . . . into a universal, institutionalized religious tradition” that fostered deeper social integration over a wider geographic span (26).11 As with the Brahmanism that governed much state ritual, the new Buddhism lent itself “to royal patronage and manipulation” (52). In Craig J. Reynolds’s review of the literature on Southeast Asian states, he notes the recurring notion of the institution of the state as a foreign import. Searching for the state in Southeast Asia was “often the discovery of an entity with shortcomings” (Reynolds 2006: 32). Oliver William Wolters introduced the notion of a “mandala state” to “counter the aping of foreign models and the Eurocentric connotations of ‘state’” (Wolters, as quoted in Reynolds 2006: 38). These states’ fortunes were highly dependent on the king’s “flexibility, resourcefulness, and powers of improvisation” (40). They were not centralized and were only weakly institutionalized. They rested on “unstable, constantly shifting relationships” (Reynolds 2006: 40). Weber, on the subject of charismatic authority, notes that “charismatic structure knows nothing of a form or of an ordered procedure of appointment or dismissal. It knows no regulated ‘career,’ ‘advancement,’ ‘salary,’ or regulated and expert training of the holder of charisma or of his aides . . . nor does it embrace permanent institutions” (Weber, as quoted in Day 2002: 3). Tony Day suggests that Southeast Asian states were held together by “family-like networks” and that “relations of power . . . assumed statelike form” (Day 2002: 38–39). Thai states expanded through a sort of franchise arrangement. Typically a king, after defeating competitors nearby, would install a son or other relative to run the local shop. Frequently, the original chief or king would remain in place, now reigning as a vassal. Often kings would not interfere in the internal management of the newly acquired operation, but would insist on the maintenance of the original brand through acknowledgment of the king’s suzerainty over the new state. These franchise arrangements were described in anthropological literature as segmentary states (Reynolds 2006: 42–43). In Southeast Asia, these states featured loose organization, fluid form, uncertain successions, and generally low levels of institutionalization. Largely normative ties bound people across states and shaped social life as much as did the state’s authoritative institutions. The critical resource for early Thai states was labor, and political struggles revolved around efforts to control it. Labor, of course, worked land to grow food, but it also provided soldiers for wars and the public works that sustained communications and the monuments and temples that underpinned state ceremonies. Somewhat like settlers in an area rich in livestock seeking to assert their ownership (think of Texans settling the longhorn-rich northern reaches of Mexico early in the nineteenth century), when elites could not effectively contain labor they resorted to reg-

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

79

ular roundups and branding. The roundups were censuses to provide information on labor resources, and the tattoos indicated each person’s status and, in some cases, the name and location of the lord or king to whom the person owed labor (typically six months a year; Wyatt 2003: 60; Kasetsiri 1999). Political loyalties in this Thai context were personal, had limited concrete effects, and generally were restricted to the lifetimes of the reigning kings (Wyatt 2003: 45–46). Power rested largely on moral and charismatic authority, and often when a king died, his empire would crumble (Wyatt 2003: 44–48). Ayutthaya’s kings were drawn from only five prominent families (Kasetsiri 1999). Yet relatively few successions in Ayutthaya over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries went smoothly, and they often featured successful power grabs. While wars were frequent, they typically involved little effective military organization. In many cases, a successful deployment of forces might deter conflict. In other instances, the antagonists might forestall a bloodier conflict by resorting to a rule-bound conflict involving two soldiers who represented the opposed forces (Penth 2004: 64). The Chakkri dynasty reigning in Bangkok from the late eighteenth century featured, by contrast, relatively smooth successions and comparatively tranquil domestic politics. The greater political stability of the Bangkok era probably stemmed in one way or another from greater integration with the global state system and the world economy as well as the greater security threats associated with Western imperialism. Control over trade, including royal monopolies, favored the incumbent. It did not, however, prevent other families from achieving great affluence, influence, and prestige. Nonetheless, by the second third of the nineteenth century, the imperialist threat to Thailand also helped to shift the terms under which elites carried out their competition. The Chakkri dynasty began to practice primogeniture, and this too helped to stabilize the state. Nonetheless, by the middle of the nineteenth century, centralized political control in Thailand was weak. King Mongkut’s efforts to reform the state met elite resistance (Wyatt 2003: 172). His authority over the state was probably considerably weaker than had been that of Rama I. Expanding trade was diversifying the economy. The old system of rigid labor controls was coming unstuck. Large numbers of newly arrived Chinese and much smaller numbers of Europeans and others stood outside the traditional social order. Chinese workers instigated occasional riots on sugar plantations and at tin mines. In the countryside banditry was on the rise, and in the northeast millenarian movements emerged (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 47–52). Thailand needed stronger centralized rule. The historical legacies bequeathed to would-be state builders were not promising. Many Thais and foreigners expected Thailand to succumb to colonial rule.

80

THAI POLITICS

Ultimately, a knight on a white horse in the person of King Chulalongkorn arrived to save the day. Without his influence, Thailand might well have gone the way of Hungary or Poland, with powerful nobles preventing the assertion of the authority necessary to cope with rising security threats. By placing his close and able relatives in key positions, the king was able to bend the bureaucracy to his purposes and to forge “a unity and coherence of policy” (Wyatt 2003: 206). This pervasive use of relatives to build a modern bureaucracy alerts us to tensions within the king’s modernization project. In the discussion below, we describe how the Thai state moved from its parlous conditions during the time of King Mongkut to its vastly enhanced capacities today. While those changes were products of a fairly continuous process, we focus on three periods during which strong executive power was used in efforts to boost the state’s capacities to serve the leader’s will, or the needs of capital, or (in the rhetoric of the most recent episode of state reform) the will of the citizenry. Each of these episodes was loosely analogous to what students of US politics refer to as “critical elections.” These elections bring to power new political coalitions intent on using political authority for new purposes. They restructure state and polity to defeat their political opponents, to control voters and the uses of state power, and to create new capacities (Shefter 1994: 63). Accountability to King, Capital, and Citizenry State reform is a ceaseless task. In contemporary states, political leaders regularly set forth new kinds of goals. To reach those goals, they expect to use the state apparatus and often it must be adjusted to serve those new ends. Ideological, social, and technological changes shift the means available to pursue goals. In addition to these kinds of factors, however, centralizing state reform is an inevitably Sisyphean task because of the powerful undertow of forces that resist such reforms. Entrenched groups penetrate the state and “colonize” parts of it. Groups of state officials appropriate parts of the state and treat them as their private patrimonies. These kinds of forces work to undermine principal-agent relations, making the agents into the state’s principals (Unger 2003). These forces are powerful in Thailand where highstatus individuals seek, and are expected, to act as patrons. Playing that role requires them to search for resources to be able to serve their clients. King Chulalongkorn’s Reforms

King Chulalongkorn’s great success in reforming the Thai state depended on his longevity as king and his own and his predecessors’ fertility. His

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

81

lengthy tenure enabled him to play a prolonged waiting game until, eventually, the powerful lords of the older generation who resisted relinquishing their powers passed away. Chulalongkorn had many brothers and sons to place in leadership positions (Wyatt 2003: 207). The conjuncture of global political forces and emerging norms that accompanied his reign and threatened his kingdom also helped him to consolidate power at home. Chulalongkorn and his family built a far more effective state than that which they inherited. In some respects just as important, they also created an image of both an effective state and a civilized elite. Part of the trick of presenting the Thai state to the West as a successful one lay in giving the state a familiar form, relying on “isomorphic mimicry” to reassure the intended audience (Fukuyama 2014: 3). State reform involved the bending of Weberian rationality “to accommodate . . . an older, ‘patrimonial’ kind of patronclient politics” (Day 2002: 169). The Thai elite were intent on meeting the expectations of powerful Westerners by appearing civilized (Peleggi 2002). In this effort, they were quite successful. When Chulalongkorn ascended the throne in 1868, he inherited powers as weak as those of any of his Chakkri predecessors. Powerful competitors challenged the monarch’s rule from within the kingdom as well as without. But the strong regent exercised great sway. While imperial powers had shattered the power of Thailand’s competitors, Burma and Vietnam, these security boons simply posed Thailand with new security challenges of a more profound sort. Meanwhile, disorder was rising in Thailand. While the fifteen-year-old king (the regent was in place until 1873) and many of his close advisers (for the most part drawn from his twenty-six brothers) recognized Thailand’s parlous circumstances, they were unable to do much about them (Terwiel 2005: 201–204). Powerful families checked the ambitions, often through passive resistance, of the Young Thailand group of royalist reformers around the king. A political crisis in 1874–1875 threatened to unseat the king from power. His inability to effect reforms was alarming. During King Chulalongkorn’s reign, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam came under formal French control and Great Britain tightened its grip on Burma and the Malay Peninsula. Thailand lost nearly half the area it had controlled at the time of Rama III. The king was discovering that his powers were highly limited and his kingdom’s circumstances were alarming. Waiting, however, can be an effective strategy. By the time King Chulalongkorn was age forty, the old powerful nobles and the former regent had died and he and his brothers steadily increased their power. They had received partly Western educations, and the king dispatched his sons to Europe for their studies. During the regency, he traveled around Southeast Asia studying the organization and practices of Western colonial administrations. As king, he made trips to Europe as well. Many of his brothers and sons that he used to staff high-level positions proved able. The royals were

82

THAI POLITICS

able to build on the more modest reforms they had instituted earlier and launch the Chakkri reformation in 1892. They sustained the reforms more or less until the king’s death in 1910. A common tactic while biding their time to assume effective control over the state was to incubate new state agencies within the royal household, later shifting out these agencies to the ministries for which they were intended. The Department of the Army, Department of Education, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among others, got started in this way. They adopted novel practices such as using paper, filing systems, and ledgers; keeping financial records; and occupying offices. Over time, ministers met more frequently, shared information more effectively, and asserted stronger control over outlying areas of the kingdom (Wyatt 2003: 83–84, 186). The reforms had at their core three goals. First, they sought to create a modern state that could assert effective centralized control over the population and territory of Thailand. Second, the king and his circle aimed to concentrate executive authority and control over revenues in their hands, weakening the power of Bangkok’s competing great families. Third, as a practical matter, their immediate goal was to be seen by the imperialist powers as having effective control of a modern state. They wanted to be seen as a state as well as to in fact create a comparatively rationalized and centralized instrument of domination. For these purposes, they drew on British colonial models that would be readily legible to the imperialist powers. Of course, the Thai royals also needed to strengthen the state in fact, and not only in image, to exercise effective control and fend off imperialist pretexts for further encroachments. Excessive banditry and disorder, particularly if it threatened Western commercial interests, might provide such pretexts. Therefore, the king had to develop the capacity to quell revolts and banditry. Nonetheless, the Thai elites’ goals were conservative. They did not entertain ambitions to fundamentally transform society or overturn traditions in the fashion of Japan’s Meiji oligarchs or Turkey’s Young Turks, and certainly not on the model of Leninists. Japanese diplomats sent to Persia in 1880 to study local reforms judged that they were not deeply rooted but aimed “only for a fair outside appearance” (Mishra 2012: 107). The same Japanese observers might have reached similar conclusions concerning Siam’s reforms. In 1885 at a time when tensions with France were growing, a group that included some of the first nonroyal Thais with European educations, based in the Thai legation in London, wrote a letter to the king to urge sweeping reforms as the best defense against colonial intrusions. The reforms mooted included instituting jobs by merit (at the time, all top jobs went to royals), the creation of various rights, and the adoption of a constitutional monarchy and cabinet government (Terwiel 2005: 201). The king, betraying a relative de-emphasis on formal institutions, wrote in reply: “We

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

83

must first of all see that we can get the right kind of people” to be our future leaders. If not, he concluded, Thais would be “better off without” the reforms (Wyatt 2003: 185). The king was articulating the view, so irritating to many progressives today, that institutional adaptation would have to proceed in tandem with the emergence of skilled leadership of the right sort— good people. By 1885, only a few hundred Thais had been exposed to modern educations and generally only the Chinese had independent sources of capital other than land. While new schools were introduced in the 1880s, it took about a decade for them to generate much interest on the part of Bangkok’s elite (the royals responded more rapidly). The shortage of skilled personnel encouraged Prince Damrong to organize over 100 provinces into 18 monthons to reduce the need for officials to staff offices in every province. As more commoners gained educations and the royals overcame their aversion to employing commoners, these shortages of skills eased. By the end of the century, recruitment based on educational qualifications was more in evidence and more commoners were being educated abroad (Wyatt 2003: 185– 205). Indeed, before he died in 1910, Chulalongkorn was despairing that the new breed of officials without personal ties to him were not loyal. At least in part, these new officials had come to think of their posts as their due by virtue of their educations (Kesboonchoo-Mead 2004: 85, 117–118). The reforms under King Chulalongkorn were extensive and included the creation of a new function-based state apparatus to replace the old partly geographically based system and, critically, the centralization of all revenue flows (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 53; Rajchagool 1994: 113– 114). The reforms established a class of salaried state officials to staff the new apparatus and created new military forces using modern weapons and trained by Europeans. The state introduced conscription in the early twentieth century as the traditional institutions of labor control were dismantled. The main infrastructure investments were in railroad building. Together with the new military forces, railways would enable the court to assert its primacy over peripheral regions of the country. Other big infrastructure projects included canal building. The Saen Saeb Canal in Bangkok enabled some 100,000 Thais in the 1890s to move into the former jungle area that sheltered wild elephants north of the canal (now within the heart of Bangkok) to begin farming (Terwiel 2005: 205–212). Prince Damrong took command of the Ministry of lnterior at the age of thirty. The resident commissioners that he delegated to run the monthons could override provincial governors, take control of budgets, and reform courts and police. Meanwhile, state revenues doubled, the regularized use of law in governance grew, and the state expanded its social services as well as the security of property and person. Because Damrong’s ministry worked, it often took on the functions of other agencies

84

THAI POLITICS

such as irrigation, provincial taxation, public health, and survey work (Wyatt 2003: 194–196). The king also considered adopting important political reforms. His experiences in this regard, however, were discouraging. He experimented with a cabinet of sorts, instituted in 1892. Of the twelve seats, his brothers held nine. Even this apparently safe experiment was not a success, however. The cabinet was regularly beset by squabbles and the king soon gave up on the idea. Chulalongkorn made his first European trip in 1897, and came back convinced that Thailand could adopt features of the West without sacrifice “of our individuality as an independent Asiatic nation” (Wyatt 2003: 197). Perhaps somewhat prematurely given the coming losses of territory to France and Britain, the king seems to have grown a bit complacent in concluding that Thailand had survived its greatest challenges and secured its survival. As a result, the impetus for further modernizing reforms weakened. Wanting to avoid taking on excessive foreign debts, the king decided against a major irrigation scheme that promised great economic benefits (Feeny 1979). More generally, he and many other royals concluded that, for the most part, further fundamental reforms of state and politics were neither necessary nor advisable at that point. The unhappy and relatively brief career of Prince Dilok Nabarath hints that the modernizing ambitions of the Thai royals had their limits. Prince Dilok returned to Thailand after earning a PhD in Germany. He saw great scope for state leadership in modernizing agriculture, increasing education for farmers, and forming cooperatives. He was struck by the primitive techniques employed in Thai agriculture and the absence of a rational and systematic approach (Nabarath 2000: 62). He pointed to Thais’ easygoing and careless ways, and their tendency to spend their wages on merrymaking rather than devotion to thrift. The Thai “concept of freedom,” he concluded, “often leads to a great lack of self-discipline” (92). His vision of the state’s leadership role seems to have been closer to that of Japan’s Meiji leaders than those of most of his relatives. The prince may have been mocked and isolated for his views. He had little impact on Thai agriculture, and ultimately killed himself (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 88). The expansion of education proceeded rather slowly. Much of what was achieved was implemented through the facilities of Buddhist temples and under the leadership of Prince Wachirayan Warorot. The prince standardized texts and curriculum, adding new technical subjects (Wyatt 2003: 203–207). By the end of the century, the state committed itself to the goal of universal primary education, but it took several more decades before that goal would be reached. Through the reforms launched by King Chulalongkorn and his relatives, a century ago the Thai state achieved a degree of effective control

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

85

over the territory and population of contemporary Thailand. It performed the core functions of the night watchman state, at least as seen from the perspective of the small elite that controlled it. Building on late-nineteenthcentury administrative reforms designed to consolidate centralized control over the state revenue and territory of Thailand, the Thai state preserved Thailand’s political independence and, across the drastically reduced territory of Thailand, approximated rather loosely a uniform and standardized set of administrative practices. The 1928 Civil Service Act would institute, in principle, merit-based systems of hiring and promotion (Samudavanija 2002: 67). Nevertheless, we repeat that while creating new capacities was critical to the palace, the appearance of having done so was also vital. Where the appearance and reality might be confused, handwaving rather than sustained reform might do. Decades after these reforms had been launched, it was clear that the distribution of resources within the bureaucracy was not driven by program goals and that factionalism and personalism were rampant (Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 49, 197). Further, the ritual performance elements of the monarchy and the reformed state remained central to their core missions. In any case, bureaucratic reform was not sustained after King Chulalongkorn passed from the scene. The end of absolute monarchy in 1932 enabled the bureaucracy to escape accountability. The rather weak character of organization in society (other than among the Chinese), the strength of hierarchical norms, and the absence of meaningful (or, during some periods, any) political parties all meant that the bureaucracy could rule with little external interference. Even the need for revenue, which drove European monarchs to accommodate the voice of nobles in assemblies, did not have the same effects in Thailand. Fighting no sustained wars, the state’s revenue needs were modest. Thailand did not have a large class of powerful nobles controlling labor and land or a large wealth-creating bourgeoisie. The royals confronted no corporate groups ready to defend traditional privileges and rights. Rapidly expanding trade provided a relatively easy, in both administrative and political terms, source of revenue. With trade handled largely by the politically vulnerable Chinese, it could be taxed, within the limits prescribed by the unequal treaties (these came to an end by the 1920s). Taxes on liquor, opium, and gambling also provided significant shares of revenue and these too came disproportionately from the Chinese. As William Skinner notes, both Chinese virtues (trade) and vices sustained the Thai treasury (cited in Unger 1998: 30–31). The Chinese pursuits of pleasure and profit diminished pressures on the Thai state. With revenue and foreign exchange flows adequate, needs for reform were less pressing and less apt to concentrate the mind.

86

THAI POLITICS

Creating a State Receptive to Capital

The years following the end of absolute monarchy were marked by upheaval, depression, war, Japanese occupation, and economic instability. The economy generally performed poorly. The new regime expanded education considerably and made some minor moves in the direction of local elections (Wyatt 2003: 238–241). After 1945, Thailand aligned itself with the United States in the Cold War and the United States provided assistance totaling near 30 percent of the average state budget from 1951 to 1957 (Wyatt 2003: 262) as well as a great deal of technical support (Muscat 1994). The reforms of King Chulalongkorn had laid the foundations for a reasonably effective state. Authorities delineated Thailand’s (diminished) territory, undermined challenges to central authority, fostered nation building (particularly under King Vajiravudh, 1910–1925), and convinced Westerners that Thais could run their own state. The conditions for economic growth, however, still were not in place. The state was not yet able or inclined to provide security of property, particularly to the critical immigrant Chinese. Under wartime conditions and thereafter, macroeconomic management suffered. Neither were state officials able to effectively monitor economic activity. The collection and dissemination of basic data was not advanced, even by the middle of the twentieth century. A World Bank report from the late 1950s noted that Thai state agencies worked without a guiding vision and, as a result, the state was uncoordinated and ineffective (cited in Unger, 1998: 1). Technical skills remained in short supply and the administrative hierarchy was preoccupied with challenging and distracting status concerns. Glen Parker, a US adviser to the National Economic Development Board in the early 1960s, observed in one agency of the bureaucracy “no sense of direction whatsoever . . . but rather a considerable amount of aimless thrashing around” (Parker, as quoted in Unger 1998: 73). In a remarkable turnaround following decades of minimal if any per capita economic growth, the Thai economy began to grow rapidly in the 1960s. A group of sober officials gained control over the macroeconomy and a new regulatory framework, underpinned by a new sociopolitical coalition, enabled this growth. The state’s capacities grew during ensuing decades as a result of rises in education and skills. Other factors that contributed to a more active and effective state included rising pressures from business firms selling goods in foreign markets and, with closer social ties between the Thai and the Sino-Thai, more affinity between people working in the private sector and officials of the state. Field Marshal Sarit came to power in two coups in 1957 and 1958. He signaled a sharp departure from the political leaders who had preceded him.

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

87

He was not particularly cultivated or cosmopolitan. He was less interested in encouraging Thais to police their own behaviors than in ensuring that they quailed before the state’s coercive powers. He had no great interest in Western ideas and drew instead on indigenous models celebrating both monarchy and ritual. He gave rein, however, to a small circle of technocrats to manage Thailand’s macroeconomy. These figures used the pressure exercised by the United States and the World Bank to set the Chinese business class to work, launching Thailand’s highly successful economic development. Reforms aimed at creating basic economic policy making institutions that would enable state officials to see what was occurring in the economy and, generally on a free market basis, to regulate it. They provided the Chinese with stronger assurances that their business ventures would not confront competition from state enterprises. The state also began to work to attract foreign investment. Meanwhile, Thailand’s rapidly expanding population was generating a large stream of workers ready to staff positions in new enterprises. This basic shift in Thailand’s economic strategy under Sarit was the product of a complex conjuncture. After the end of absolute monarchy, economic policies had shifted sharply. Driven by economic nationalism, war, and the pursuit of economic rents, the Thai state had expanded its economic roles, creating many state enterprises. Most of these drained state resources to little purpose. Several projects grouped under the National Economic Development Corporation (Nedcol) collapsed in the 1950s, saddling the state with heavy debts (Unger 1998: 61). In this context, the notion that state failure represented more of a threat to economic development than did problems of market failures appeared plausible. As a result, one of Sarit’s key reforms lay in providing investors with assurances that the state no longer would invest in new commercial and industrial enterprises competing with private capital. The Nedcol mess motivated technocrats to gain control over the country’s financial, monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate policies. Dependence on foreign aid gave weight to foreign advisers supporting Thailand’s technocrats. The latter were unusually unified under the leadership of Puey Ungpakorn. Critically, the new strategy was consistent with Sarit’s political interests. By reducing state support for its own enterprises, he could undermine his political opponents whose economic bases were in the state enterprise sector without cutting off his own access to massive rents. Meanwhile, the military grabbed extensive resources (Wyatt 2003: 272), largely US aid, to develop capabilities to deal with a growing communist insurgency and to ensure the comforts of military leaders. The state in general boosted its capacities to exercise more direct control over outlying areas of the country. Sarit initiated a revival of the monarchy and of the ceremony associated with it. The monarchy became linked with the state’s expanding

88

THAI POLITICS

agenda of social services and its determination to establish direct control over its territory. Sarit used the young King Bhumipol’s charisma to try to wean Thai villagers’ hearts and minds from communist sympathies (Chaloemtiarana 1979: 205–214; Wyatt 2003: 271). The king began to make regular trips upcountry to see and be seen. Political participation of a sort, rooted in the monarchy’s charisma, expanded. Thailand’s technocracy at the start of this period in the late 1950s was not deep, but was unified and able to design and implement critical reforms in macroeconomic policymaking. A new Budget Bureau was established under the Prime Minister’s Office in 1959. The government also created the National Economic Development Board to plan economic development and the Board of Investment to promote investment (Wyatt 2003: 273; Unger 1998: 63, 72–76). These institutions were designed to boost central regulatory control over the economy and were quite successful. Planning, however, or sector-specific industrial policies, remained largely notional. Sarit’s reforms enabled sustained and rapid economic diversification and expansion. With only modest state investment (largely in primary education and transport infrastructure), impressive economic growth (and environmental damage) was based on private sector competition, cheap labor, and natural resource abundance, including large and rich expanses of agricultural land. Thai technocrats chalked up a remarkable record of delivering macroeconomic stability. This record probably was thanks in large part to low political mobilization among popular groups. In addition, Thailand was in a good neighborhood, one in which many economies were growing strongly and the United States, for security reasons, was pouring in resources in the forms of aid and military spending. Foreign direct investment initially was modest. US firms concentrated in the mining, service, and consumer goods sectors. Japanese firms engaged in trade and later began to produce manufactured goods. Thailand’s modern manufacturing sector rose sharply with foreign investment driving much of the expansion from the late 1980s (Unger 1998: 64–65, 115–120). The economic reforms launched under Sarit involved a stiff dose of doing minimal harm. The state failed to do many of the things that it might have done to make growth more equitable and, perhaps, to speed shifts in the economy’s structure. But at least it did not impede growth significantly. Chinese entrepreneurs enjoyed increasingly free rein to get rich and, in the process, the economy boomed. Thailand certainly was not a larger version of Hong Kong—the state was more interventionist in Thailand and, more important, more subject to penetration by narrow business and political interests. As a result, when opportunities for political participation expanded, material enrichment figured prominently among politicians’ aims. Demands from Thai citizens for more services beyond those necessary to sustain the rural-based market economy were slow to emerge. Foreign

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

89

exchange earnings until the 1970s were based largely on the export of unprocessed primary commodities (Unger 1998: 63). Both farmers and business groups were politically weak. State and right-wing forces brutally crushed farmers’ mobilization during the brief democratic interlude in the 1970s. Business firms were to a degree self-organizing, creating the commercial and financial institutions needed to service market activities. The state’s most important contribution to economic growth beyond providing a stable macroeconomic environment, transport infrastructure, and some security for investors was a variety of incentives that, increasingly over time, served to offset the trade regime’s antiexport bias that persisted into the 1990s (75). Nonetheless, new challenges did begin to emerge during the 1970s and 1980s. One was the rise of demands for political participation and for welfare services from the citizenry and its representatives in parliament. Gradually, politicians grew more powerful while bureaucrats’ powers diminished (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 238–240). Politicians began to direct state resources to their districts, often for construction contracts. Exporting businesses pressured the state to provide effective support and avoid creating obstacles to their activities, particularly from the early 1980s. These pressures became politically effective because the local business class was now Thai, rather than foreign (i.e., Chinese assimilation was proceeding apace), and because its role in generating economic growth, jobs, foreign exchange, and state revenues had grown sharply. Thais had become more structurally dependent on private capital. Recurrent administrative reform campaigns became a feature of Thailand’s political landscape. Few governments were in power long enough, however, to move from reform pronouncements to actual implementation of new policies. Moreover, it is difficult to determine whether there was sufficient political will to implement such reforms, had governments stayed longer in office. The Prem Tinsulanonda government, in office during most of the 1980s, managed to implement key economic stabilization measures and structural adjustments, including currency devaluations and setting a ceiling on foreign borrowing (Unger 1998: 95–98). It also introduced some budgetary reforms and made some modest improvements in infrastructure and regulatory policies so as to be less discouraging of foreign direct investment. It did not implement comprehensive reforms of the state. Surviving patterns of haughtiness, unresponsiveness, and enervation were evident in the civil service (Sirisumphand 2009: 3). Business and political influence over the bureaucracy made inroads, but service to other citizens generally did not improve much. Not infrequently, the king would make public complaints, in effect bashing heads to induce bureaucrats to cooperate with one another and to respond to citizen demands. These incidents were of interest in part because they suggested how little was in fact

90

THAI POLITICS

required to make the bureaucracy more effective—a degree of accountability to political direction. As prime minister from 2001, Thaksin also adopted this mode, sallying forth to force bureaucrats to respond to citizen needs. In the village of At Samat, as street protests opposing his government mounted early in 2006, Thaksin made a great television spectacle of one of his more sustained efforts of this kind. Discussion turns next to Thaksin’s premiership. A New Model of Public Administration

The third of our episodes of reform of the state contrasts sharply with the previous ones. First, the foreign model for emulation itself had changed. The new public management model that inspired the latest reform drive was results based. It emphasized accountability, setting targets, measuring results, and so forth. Its focus no longer was as much on the regularity of procedure that bureaucracy seeks during the industrial age as on enhanced efficiency and responsiveness to citizen demands (Hood 1998: 4–5). Thai governments at national and local levels made increased use of private contractors to deliver services (Harding and Leyland 2011: 86). Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein suggest that the challenges of globalization and demands for public participation around the world generated hopes that civil society would play larger governance roles, driving democratization of the state. The new public management aimed to shift “public administration away from a distant, uncaring, and inefficient centralized state administration into a more proximate, empowering, if less tidy system of multilevel government, subsidiarity, and a new public management” (2006: 374). Many would-be reformers of the Thai state saw the state’s key weaknesses as those associated with a lack of accountability or responsiveness. The bureaucracy was fragmented and, nominally, too committed to bureaucratic procedures, with rules and regulations becoming ends rather than means. Amid hierarchy and corruption, a culture of arrogance and superiority coincided with low morale and motivation, “lethargy and inflexibility” (Sirisumphand 2009: 3). It is unclear how well the new strategy for state reform fit the Thai sociopolitical context, one lacking a strong civil society able to hold bureaucracy accountable but marked by bureaucratic and statist traditions (Gilley 2014: 148). Another difference between the most recent and earlier reforms reflected the vast changes evident in Thailand since the onset of the Sarit reforms forty years earlier. By the start of the twenty-first century, Thailand’s economy was no longer primarily agricultural, its society no longer so heavily rural. The level of education had risen sharply. Experience with elections was rising. Even poor rural Thais were becoming exposed constantly to television, and, later, to the Internet. Improved roads and bus

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

91

services induced greater geographic mobility that, together with relative affluence, undermined the old socially self-sufficient villages and traditional sources of authority. The Thai state was taking on an ever widening range of regulatory and welfare services. As the state and its economic partners impinged increasingly on rural livelihoods, it began to generate resistance movements. In remote rural areas communities banded together, often with assistance from urban-based NGOs, to oppose dams, power plants, and plantations (Unger and Siroros 2011). The results-based reform initiative in Thailand was in substantial part pushed by the International Monetary Fund in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1997. It also, however, was congruent with Thaksin’s interests in boosting services to rural voters and bending the state to his will. Thaksin inherited these reforms and gave them strong backing. The Thaksin government came to power in early 2001 and soon set up an Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC), aimed at promoting good governance through the Strategic Plan for Thai Public Sector Development.12 From 2004, state agencies used a performance-oriented framework to measure progress against plans. Strategic plan−based budgets replaced line-item budgeting. State agencies identified performance indicators for all their activities. The government launched a performance appraisal system based on the Balanced Scorecard, where salary rewards would reflect performance as measured by performance indicators. Bureaucrats at all levels would spend more time quantifying their activities. For management reforms to be effective, account has to be taken of social and organizational conditions (Schedler and Proeller 2007; Barzelay 2006: 8). Formal institutions are parasitic on informal ones and work only “because they are embedded in implicit and informally shared expectations” (Helmke and Levitsky 2006: 3). Successful results-based state reforms may depend on a civil society inclined to monitor state performance, thereby giving officials incentives to follow rules (Weingast 2003: 110). Transparent, performance-based monitoring, with its implications for government accountability, is not rooted logically or historically in systems of political clientelism. In clientelistic political systems, the key incentive structures confronting politicians militate against transparency or accountability. Thailand’s prevailing political logic of clientelism works against many assumptions embedded within the literature on the new public administration. In clientelist political systems, citizens sell their votes in exchange for particular goods and services. Politicians target benefits on particular groups and make the delivery of those goods contingent on citizens keeping their side of the deal. Politicians have incentives to maximize their discretion in how they target policies, with few specific rules guiding the distribution of benefits (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007: 1–12). The result is that

92

THAI POLITICS

politicians need not fear being judged at the polls on the basis of their stewardship of the national economy, their implementation of administrative reform, or any other collective goods (Lyne 2007: 167). Typically, political clientelism involves promises of favorable policy implementation rather than policy pledges. Where clientelist arrangements pervade political and administrative systems, the motivations of politicians who design and officials who implement policy reforms may well be compromised. After Thaksin came to power in 2001, he wanted to push a new political paradigm in Thailand, in which the centralization of power and electorally based political dominance would be the key elements. Under this model, decentralized clientelism would be of declining political importance. Thailand’s clientelist system operated through decentralized networks of local brokers loosely associated in political factions, parties, and networks. Under Thaksin, single-party dominance featuring more direct linkages between voters and the executive became possible. Thaksin drew from the new public management only the model’s centralizing elements, ignoring those that emphasized decentralization (Harding and Leyland 2011: 97–100). Thaksin was the first Thai political leader since Sarit able to assert effective political control over the bureaucracy. He was intent, in the words of one of his supporters, on breaking the “old feudal-bureaucratic order” which “stole power away from the people” (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 3). Thaksin himself spoke of the need for an enabling and informing bureaucracy, rather than one focused on administering and controlling people (3, 87). Under Thaksin, government delivery of various social services improved, probably in part due to the increasing use of information technologies. Thaksin boosted accountability by making important campaign pledges and delivering on them. At the same time, he weakened horizontal (the ability of other government institutions to monitor and sanction his actions) and some vertical (the ability of voters or civil society groups to gain information through the media of government malfeasance) accountability mechanisms. He concentrated power in his hands and politicized the bureaucracy, making it more responsive to his direction. He did not institutionalize a new set of relations among administrative and political institutions and civil society groups. Most positively, Thaksin generated the novel belief that voters could put in power politicians to serve their needs. By making promises to Thai voters and delivering on them, Thaksin greatly weakened Thais’ traditional political apathy and strengthened key elements of vertical accountability. Particularly as he was checked repeatedly by established political elites, Thaksin made appeals to relatively marginalized voters, promising that their interests could be served by the Thai state, and mobilizing their support in his political battles.

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

93

Conclusion As we have noted, by the standards of poor and middle-income countries, Thailand has an impressive state. Under absolute monarchy it was able, loosely speaking, to exert its domination over the entire population and territory of Thailand by the early twentieth century. Thereafter, often with a military regime at the helm, it fared quite well in sustaining a stable, if not strikingly law-abiding, social order. This order was underpinned by a broad normative consensus among elites over much of the second half of the past century. The state effectively protected elite property and expanded the services it offered to nonelites such as primary education and widespread access to health services in the last third of the twentieth century. The state was able to penetrate society relatively easily, though not necessarily able to mobilize it, because society was atomized and had relatively few corporate or other organized features (Unger 1998). While the political project of establishing state dominance was quite effective, the technical tasks of developing supple and flexible instruments of administration did not progress as rapidly. Neither did a political project of mobilizing social energies in support of state capacities. Such a strategy may have needed to be rooted to a degree in a broader moral enterprise. Most important, Thais have yet to devise strong political institutions linking citizens to the state to bolster leadership accountability and responsiveness. Hence, the state’s somewhat limited capacities, rooted in a low political participation framework sustained by king and consensus, were threatened by the rise of mass political mobilization weakly mediated by political institutions. The three episodes of reform that we discussed in this chapter all enabled centralization of authority. The challenges of instituting coordinated decentralization and wider political participation as part of the process of inclusion have been proving more difficult. Thai society and state are faced with needs to enable cooperation among more actors while abiding more regularly by impersonal rules and meeting rising performance standards. Thailand’s high rate of traffic fatalities (number two in the world) (Bangkok Post 2014a: 8), its ongoing trafficking in people, and the environmental and human rights costs associated with its fishing industry all testified to poor state enforcement of law. If Thais have yet to find a means of holding their state accountable, international pressures may occasionally serve the purpose, at least in some policy areas. Thais still must confront the task of refounding state and politics on a more sustainable basis. We explained that, in Thailand, formal relations of authority do not necessarily supersede personalized connections. Examples of the powerful hold of personal links among members of factions within formal state agen-

94

THAI POLITICS

cies were glaringly obvious during the episodes of highly polarized street politics in Thailand beginning in 2005. It quickly became clear that authority over the state’s coercive instruments was contested. Leaders of the governments associated with former prime minister Thaksin often were unable to secure the full cooperation of the military in evicting protesters from Government House or, subsequently, from Thailand’s international airports. Neither was the government coalition of Thaksin’s opponents able to count on full cooperation of either the military or the police in coping with prolonged occupations of public spaces by Thaksin’s supporters.13 The horrible spasm of violence in 2010 was caused in part by intramural battles within the military. The military’s top brass itself often seemed unable to exert effective control over its subordinates. One inactive general in 2010 actively and openly organized armed resistance among demonstrators to any official coercion. Other active duty or retired security forces acted less openly but more effectively in generating mayhem on Bangkok’s streets. The dismal failure of the state to provide an adequate accounting for the violence may have been partly rooted in the army’s distaste for airing its dirty (divided) laundry in public (Human Rights Watch 2011). The question of just who controls the military in Thailand came to the fore when Thaksin was still in power. Privy councilor and former prime minister Prem suggested in a speech to military officers in 2006 that they owed their loyalty to the king and not to the elected government under Prime Minister Thaksin (Nanuam 2006: 1). Other parts of the Thai state also have proved particularly resistant to reform. These include the police and the Ministry of Education. The State Railways of Thailand (SRT), for example, enjoys large revenues and has vast landholdings but has a poor safety record and incurs very large losses. It operates largely beyond the regulatory reach of the rest of the state.14 The Government Lottery Office operated for decades with little transparency in service of its own stakeholders, including its retirees. We noted four arguments concerning the emergence of effective states. One view saw such states emerging in response to the demands of recurring wars. The Thai state during the Bangkok era did not engage in continuous and costly wars. However, Thailand’s survival as an independent polity was threatened by imperialist powers and induced the late-nineteenth-century reforms we sketched above. The external threat helped the king to establish his authority over other lords. A second account seeking to explain state strengthening looked to the organization of civil society and levels of social discipline to explain the emergence of higher-capacity states. This explanation has limited relevance to the Thai case. Levels of social discipline in Thailand remained modest, though they certainly rose substantially through the second half of the twentieth century and into this century. Ultimately, building a strong state

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

95

and other formal institutions in Thailand will be possible only when social (informal) sanctions reinforce those of the formal legal system. A third explanation for rising state capacities emphasized capital’s ability to compel states to serve its interests. By the 1980s, the business class was structurally and politically powerful enough to be able to some degree to compel the state to act on its behalf. Business grew structurally powerful as it supplied rising shares of Thailand’s foreign exchange earnings and generated increasing employment and state revenue. Politically, internationally competitive sectors of business also developed stronger institutional bases for voice as well as sustaining ties, often informal, with individual politicians. In addition, increasingly over time, international organizations, foreign states, and advocacy organizations were pressing the Thai state for reforms in areas such as fishing and human trafficking. The last explanation for rising state capacities pointed to the effects of episodes of severe domestic political unrest with the potential to threaten core elite interests. Mass-based political contestation in Thailand existed only briefly before this century. Such contention, with violence, emerged again from 2005. We might interpret the latest episode of state reform under military dictatorship beginning in 2014 as a response to these episodes of contentious politics. What impact on Thai state capacities will the ongoing mass-based political conflict have? On the one hand, given the importance of personalism in Thai social life, we might anticipate that the undermining of elite consensus will tend to divide key social networks that, in the past, underpinned the state’s coherence and effectiveness. On the other hand, the prolonged conflict could instigate a relatively inclusive elite project aimed at modifying the previously dominant political coalition and crafting a newly invigorated state. Perhaps the timing for a major effort at state reform is propitious. As Thais have grown more mobile, concepts of power and the state presumably have grown more abstract (Blanning 2007: 424). A relatively strong social coalition seems prepared to work to try to sharply curb the extent of corruption. Thailand’s economy and polity are faltering, and pressures for better state performance are rising from outside Thailand as well as within. Ultimately, modern high-capacity states are deeply embedded in systems of law, both formal and informal. The weakness of the rule of law in Thailand in many respects lies at the heart of the state’s infirmities. In the next chapter, we explore these weaknesses in depth. Notes 1. Effective relative to other middle-income states, less so relative to other East Asian states. One often cited index rates Thai state effectiveness relatively high

96

THAI POLITICS

(61st to 66th percentiles) relative to all other states (World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators 2013). 2. World Governance Indicators percentile scores for control over violence and terrorism this century have been low, ranging from 9 to 38 (World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators 2013). 3. The overall Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) rated Thailand at 42 of the 119 countries it covered, based on measures of rule of law, stability of democratic institutions, political and social integration, political participation, and stateness. Thailand fared rather better on BTI’s stateness measures than on other rankings. 4. The armed forces are better known for the large number of generals—estimates range from 1,400 to 2,000—relative to the size of the military (the civil service also is tending to concentrate toward the higher ranks). Given the limited war fighting in which the Thai military has been engaged in recent decades, the low salience of conventional security threats, and the generals’ “doubtful military competence” (Freedom House 2010), its military is surprisingly large. 5. This group does not include countries in the midst of acute conflict such as Iraq, those with oil-dominated economies, or countries with small populations. The reference group we constructed for Thailand included Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Turkey, Vietnam, and Zambia. In terms of purchasing power parity per capita incomes, these countries ranged from about $1,400 in Zambia to $15,000-plus in Turkey (the figure for Thailand was above $8,000). The group included countries large in population terms (India, Brazil, Indonesia) but also a couple of smaller ones (Zambia, Bulgaria). It also included three other countries from Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam). For the 2013 comparison (from Wave 6), we no longer included Bulgaria, Indonesia, Venezuela, or Zambia but added the Philippines to the mix. 6. By the time of Wave 6, those replying “very bad” had increased to 28.3 percent. “Very good” and “fairly good” responses were down, combined, to 30.7 percent (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). These sharp differences across surveys may indicate problems with the date. 7. The data from Wave 6 portray Thais as more committed, relative to the data from Wave 5, to the values of hard work, thrift, and perseverance (World Values Survey, Wave 5, 2005–2008; World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). 8. We can point to precedents earlier and elsewhere, most obviously China in the third century BCE (Fukuyama 2011: 98–101). In early modern Europe, however, a sustained dynamic emerged that resulted in ever greater state capacities soon outstripping any competitors. 9. “Thai states” in this discussion refers to those that appear to be more or less, if only on geographical grounds, direct antecedents of the current Thai state. This includes states apparently established by Tai ethnic groups as they moved down from China into what is now Thailand. For simplicity’s sake, we refer to these people throughout the discussion as “Thai” rather than “Tai” or “Siamese.” 10. European princes also did so. For example, the elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus, after becoming king of Poland devoted himself to offering lavish hunting, balls, and operas. The Prussians, however, took another and, ultimately, more successful course. They ruthlessly reorganized state finances, built up the army, and crafted a high-capacity state (Blanning 2007: 451–455) along with an “ethos of service among the Prussian elite” (235). 11. Christianity seems to have had a similar impact on the Hungarian polity in the tenth century (Lendvai 2003: 31).

PERFORMANCE OF THE THAI STATE

97

12. The discussion in this section draws heavily on Punyaratabandhu and Unger (2009). 13. Following the 2006 coup, military control over top military personnel decisions was consolidated. 14. The coup government installed in 2014 appeared to bring the SRT under the state’s central authority.

4 Rule of Lords and Rule of Law

legal equality of citizens needs to be more fully realized; illegal behaviors need to be curbed, including high-level corruption; legal institutions need to be more independent of political power; and citizens need to be able to rely on the law, rather than patrons, for their security. Making significant progress toward these goals will be possible only if informal institutions— various Thai attitudes and behaviors, together with a willingness to apply social sanctions to curb illegal behaviors—reinforce the beleaguered formal institutions of Thailand’s justice system. In strengthening the rule of law, Thais will have to confront, transcend, and manage the hypocrisy problem. Given pervasive lawlessness, until supporting social norms exert more force, enforcement necessarily can only be highly partial. Hence, it is important that enforcement appears to be relatively random, or impartial. In particular, enforcement should not appear to depend on social status or partisan identity so that the hypocrisy problem can be managed and rule of law made tenable. Thailand’s political conflict since 2005 was fundamentally shaped by the weakness of law in Thailand, and that conflict in turn threatened to weaken legal institutions further. The sudden centrality of judicial instruments in political struggle after 2005 risked undermining faith in them. In a context absent reliable mechanisms for third-party enforcement of agreements among vying groups, possible weakening of the judiciary in Thailand was a grave concern.1 Further reliance on the judiciary to police political competition looked difficult to avoid. The Thai political system, when not under authoritarian rule, tended to employ constitution writing and amending, and coups, among the instruments of conflict resolution (Harding and Leyland 2011: 81, 114). The record of the legislature, political parties, and civil society in THAILAND’S LEGAL REGIME NEEDS STRENGTHENING. IN PARTICULAR,

99

100

THAI POLITICS

brokering broad social bargains was thin. Further, illegal behavior was pervasive among politicians and through much of society. Judicial institutions offered rare centers of effective legitimate authority. The concept of the rule of law is tough to pin down. It may be even harder to achieve than is the creation of an effective centralized state, or successfully entrenching political accountability. It requires not only certain institutions and procedures but also a supportive normative context. These challenges are daunting in the Thai social context due to strong predispositions toward personalism and the suffusion of elements of enchantment that underpin social hierarchies and weaken commitments to impersonal procedures. Many Thais are tolerant of corruption, and the patronage system nourishes it. Thai cultural habits and social structures pose formidable obstacles to the entrenchment of the rule of law and, hence, constitute a fundamental impediment to the consolidation of a stable liberal democracy. One scholar describes the phrase “rule of law” as an “essentially contested” concept, one that is complex and normative (Stimson 2006: 317). Others go further to argue that the phrase is essentially meaningless empty rhetoric (Sanchez-Cuenca 2003: 62). Generally, we intend to convey when we refer to rule of law that most laws are written down, that it is relatively easy to learn what laws apply in particular circumstances, that there are clear procedural and substantive constraints on the arbitrary exercise of power, that justice is blind, and that the procedures through which we can appeal legal decisions are relatively clear and accessible. Critically important is the notion that law constrains behaviors of the powerful as well as those of the rest of society. In sum, rule of law might be defined “as compliance with the law, when the law is general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, performable, and stable.” Where there are coups or revolutions, the system of rules is destroyed and there is no rule of law (Sanchez-Cuenca 2003: 69). Judicial review in constitutional regimes, argues John Rawls, serves “as the exemplar of public reason” (2005: 231). Pierre Bourdieu points to the value of the “pious hypocrisy” that judicial reasoning is grounded “in the transcendent norms of which . . . [judges] are the guardians” (1998: 77). Rule of law obtains only where political actors in conflict resolve their differences through legally sanctioned procedures. This is possible only, at least until norms are sufficiently strong, where the law’s institutional arrangements correspond reasonably closely to underlying distributions of raw power in society (Maravall and Przeworski 2003: 3–4). Too wide a gap will saddle formal law with burdens that it will be unable to bear. An analysis of law in Thailand contributes to this book in three ways. First, the concept of rule of law lies at the heart of, and is intermeshed with, understandings of liberal democracy and modernity, including a modern state. In the nineteenth century, Thai legal institutions partially shaped the framework within which “negotiations about the meanings of modernity

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

101

took place” (Loos 2006: 3). Second, analysis of the concept and practice of rule of law in Thailand provides us with insights into issues of dominance and strategies for seeking security in Thailand. Third, past studies of Thai politics too often gave short shrift to studies of law and the judicial system (Engel 1978: 2), though this has been changing (Ginsburg 2009; Dressel 2012; Harding and Leyland 2011; Haberkorn 2013; Engel and Engel 2010). Fourth, the rule of law affords a particularly useful lens through which to try to understand politics in Thailand as well as the challenges confronting many other more or less illiberal democracies. Certainly the judiciary has been drawn directly into the vortex of Thailand’s political chaos, most clearly since 2008. The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. First, we discuss in greater depth why the rule of law is critical to democratic politics generally. Next, we review Thai historical experience in building a modern system of law under absolute monarchy. We then discuss why, despite the rule of law’s great importance, it is so difficult to achieve generally, and specifically in the Thai context. We examine four separate issues: the traditional social roles in Thailand of lords, patrons, and spirits; the great difficulties of importing law from one social context into a different one; Thai attitudes toward law; and distinctions between procedural and substantive rationality. After that, we look more concretely at the place of law in Thailand today. We discuss the judiciary’s autonomy and status. Finally, we focus on Thailand’s constitutional experience, the significance of the 1997 and 2007 constitutions, and the accountability institutions those constitutions created. We do not consider here Thailand’s laws on defamation or lèse-majesté. These are discussed in Chapter 5 in a review of the state regulatory system that inhibits information flows and public political deliberations. Why the Rule of Law Is Important Across Europe the Catholic Church, even before the rise of absolutist states, stimulated the strengthening of systems of law. When the church took on the Holy Roman Empire in the eleventh century, it sought to strengthen itself in part through appeals to law, and the church elaborated its own canon law. The unearthing in northern Italy of the Justinian Code, together with the institutionalization of legal studies in emerging universities, strengthened legal systems (Fukuyama 2011: 266–270). Princes found Roman law an attractive means of centralizing their power. More broadly, the revival of Roman law in Europe in the medieval period was “one of the great cultural movements of the age” (P. Anderson 1985: 24). No comparable cultural movement has emerged in Thailand to aim at entrenching impersonal rules and procedures.

102

THAI POLITICS

Broadly speaking, the place of law in Thailand is consistent with patterns found elsewhere in East Asia. As in East Asian Confucian (and other) societies, Thais often are prone to emphasize the importance of ethical leadership and not just the roles of formal law. Also, as elsewhere in much of East Asia, law is not powerfully and autonomously bolstered by religiously rooted protectors of the law, as was the case among Christians, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims (Fukuyama 2014: 357). By the mid−seventeenth century in England, all citizens were in theory equal before the law. Early modern political theory gave considerable emphasis to the rule of law, as in the work of the jurist Jean Bodin (Van Creveld 1999: 149, 176). The rule of law and shared citizenship were linked in Europe from around the start of the eighteenth century (Mann 1993: 217–218). Legal theorists pushed law away from conceptions of divine and immutable laws to an understanding of law as a product of human governance (legislation, or positive law). Montesquieu viewed law as a means of protecting us from tyranny. His notion of checks and divided powers was rooted in a concern to fence in the potential threats to the liberty of civil society. In France, the revolution’s aftermath enabled imposition of a single uniform law of the land (Van Creveld 1999: 174–183). Systems of law are closely implicated in those of governance and domination. Historically, the emergence of modern national systems of law was associated with the rise of centralized monarchical states in Europe. Kings found it expedient to substitute their systems of justice for the decentralized and nonuniform systems that had obtained locally. Those diverse local legal systems hindered the maintenance of a wider social peace and the free movement of goods and services. Among the powers that kings stripped away from local lords were judicial ones. This sort of centralization occurred also in Thailand with its late-nineteenth-century judicial reforms. Liberal democratic states feature rule of law. Rules regulating state violence are public and universal. Where rule of law enables the monopolizing and domesticating of violence, individuals can more readily vote, associate, and make arguments (Warren 2006: 386–387). The rule of law constitutes part of the core of concepts of good governance and is a prerequisite for a stable quality democracy. Competitive elections alone cannot produce vertical political accountability, but are “parasitic on a well-entrenched and effective practice of subjection, of effectively enforced and binding rules, a government of rules and not of persons” (Dunn 1999: 331). An English jurist suggests that it is the rule of law that distinguishes good from bad government (Bingham 2011). We discuss below the particular historical and cultural legacies that impede the entrenching of rule of law in Thailand. First, however, we examine the history of past legal reforms.

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

103

Building a System of Modern Law in Thailand Until at least the last third of the nineteenth century, concepts of law and kingship in Thailand were intimately intertwined. While in practice monarchical power often was constrained by competing lords or distance and scarce information, and in principle it was curbed by the requirements of righteous action, there were no institutionalized checks on monarchs’ absolute power. Manu, possibly a mythical Indian legal sage of antiquity, suggested that the law, and not the king, was sovereign (Basham 1954). This assertion implied that any legislation—positive law—had to conform to existing natural law. In Thailand, monks could and did criticize Thai kings. Nonetheless, the vagueness of much law and the extent of the king’s authority, including that over the clergy, in practice resulted in limited checks much of the time. King Chulalongkorn noted during his reign the absence of checks on his powers or of demands for such limits. David Engel characterizes the king’s take on his situation: “The traditional Thai monarchy was so central to the society, to the people and to the effective functioning of the government, that the king would not permit it to be weakened or restrained by any law or rival institution” (1975: 17). European sovereigns had adopted Roman law in part as a means of centralizing their rule. In Siam, however, effectively centralized rule probably depended in the end on getting the right personal networks aligned, as noted below and in Chapter 3. Much Thai traditional law that was concerned with the regulation of government and society was devoted to careful elucidations of the relative status of individuals. This was the fundamental concern underlying the sakdina system and the laws adopted, for example, in the fifteenth century by King Borommatrailokanat, including the Law of the Civil Hierarchy and the Law of the Military and Provincial Hierarchies (Wyatt 2003: 62). King Chulalongkorn radically transformed the Thai traditional legal system. These changes aimed at overturning the imperialists’ unequal treaties and at underpinning a strong centralized state. By the end of King Chulalongkorn’s long reign, a new “conceptual framework of law and kingship” had emerged (Engel 1978: 121). This outcome was not entirely what the king had anticipated in launching reforms and he recognized that his own influence over the rapidly expanding ranks of officials was declining. No longer were the newly appointed higher-ranking officials all his brothers and sons. Shortages of skilled personnel eventually helped to stall the pace of reforms and obliged the king to reach out beyond the ranks of the royals. Newer officials, gaining access to high-level positions in the bureaucracy by virtue of their education, tended to feel less beholden to the king for their positions. Whatever feelings of gratitude they did feel were often directed to their more proximate superiors. For example,

104

THAI POLITICS

the loyalty to the king of officials of the new Ministry of Justice was mediated by those officials’ direct loyalty to the king’s son, Prince Ratburi, the minister of justice who had hired them (Kesboonchoo-Mead 2004: 117). The king sensed that his personal hold over key officials was declining. It was diminishing, however, only in part due to the corroding effects of impersonal legal norms. Also important was a degree of competition among sources of personalized authority. King Chulalongkorn launched an extensive series of reforms amounting to an “entire transformation” of Thailand’s legal system (Harding and Leyland 2011: 9). While he argued the need to proceed conservatively, to sustain Thai traditions and beliefs, the cumulative impact of his broad reforms from 1895 and ongoing to 1935, long after the king’s death, was great. However, he batted away most of the limited pressures to constrain the institutions of monarchical rule (Engel 1975: 45). The most important goals underlying his reforms were to entrench his power against domestic and foreign challenges. By rationalizing and centralizing administration and taxation, as well as the system of justice, he undermined the independent powers of the nobility. He made the king the true center of the political system. Walter Vella describes the reforms as: “The Thai king was no longer an executor of traditional law; he became a legislator with unlimited powers” (Engel 1975: 56). The reforms effected a sort of shift from natural to positive law, making the government more than “a mere custodian of the sacred law. . . . Instead, the judiciary had become an organ for the interpretation of man-made laws” (84). The king was all powerful, and legal reforms weakened the constraints that inherited notions of natural law had imposed heretofore. At this point, the status of law in Thailand was perhaps comparable to its position in Hungary in the fifteenth century. As King Mathias I then remarked, “It is not the laws that are the source and guarantee of this just system of law, but the King, who is not the servant or tool of the law but stands above it and determines it” (quoted in Lendvai 2003: 84). Thai ideas of kingship, and hence of law, were rooted in the HinduKhmer-Mon-based Thammasat. Rama I’s compilations of Thai law came to be known as the Law of the Three Seals. These laws constituted a vital part of the regalia of a king. They linked the monarch to prior dynasties based in Ayutthaya and, hence, offered legitimacy to his new dynasty (Loos 2006: 4). They were not codified so that a law of the land could be disseminated to Thais. In fact, the laws were consulted only rarely. Publication of the laws would have been a treasonable act (Harding and Leyland 2011: 7). A young Siamese noble and an American missionary printed copies of the Law of the Three Seals, but Rama III had the books confiscated and, possibly, burned (Loos 2006: 33, 39). Perhaps any explicit articulations of law posed threats to the ruler and his agents as they could facilitate challenges to their authority. If this was indeed the reason for concealing the law texts, it would have offered a wonderfully clear statement of the prece-

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

105

dence of men (rulers) over the law. In Siam at that time, any legal appeal was viewed as an accusation against a judge and, in fact when any ruling was overturned through appeal, the judge who gave the subsequently overturned ruling would be subject to punishment. Perhaps the desire to conceal the laws’ specific content reflected a conviction that secrecy contributes to mystery and majesty. Whatever the reason, it is worth emphasizing that 180 years ago, Thais were barred from perusing the laws that, at least to some extent, regulated the public realm. Some traces of this traditional orientation have survived to the present. The 2012 assessments by the World Justice Project (WJP) suggest Thailand does poorly at publicizing and making accessible the law (Agrast et al. 2013: 143). Thailand’s legal system before King Chulalongkorn launched his reforms was complicated, cumbersome, and expensive, and judges were susceptible to bribery (Engel 1975: 77). One American who negotiated with the Siamese was not impressed with the role of law in Siam, finding the government “a perfect despotism” and equity and justice “empty names” (E. Roberts 2012: 305). In describing the old administrative system as a whole, King Chulalongkorn said in a speech in 1888 in which he was seeking support for extensive reforms, that existing practices were “muddled, inefficient, overlapping, chaotic, hopelessly confused, corrupt, disorderly, and altogether untidy” (Loos 2006: 44). Earlier, on the ending of the period of regency, the king launched what proved to be an abortive series of reforms, including changes to the courts in Bangkok. He aimed to clear up the backlog of cases and to enhance his powers in the process. The grand jurists of the established order were not pleased and, together with other allies, were able to derail these reforms. The king thereafter retreated, abandoning his reforms for well over a decade. Even after he resumed them, the judiciary was not his top priority. He did not fill the post of minister of justice for some time, possibly signaling the lower priority he assigned to it or perhaps the absence of royals with legal training (Wyatt 2003: 177, 195). The king was skeptical of the need to place primary emphasis on the development of the judicial system, arguing that strengthening the state’s administrative apparatus was a higher priority (Kesboonchoo-Mead 2004). Prince Rabi, the king’s son, assumed leadership of the Ministry of Justice at a young age (Tips 1998: 3). With his Oxford-nurtured conviction that the judiciary must be autonomous from political control to guarantee rule of law, he came in conflict with his father, his uncle Prince Damrong, and others who saw the judiciary as a key arm of the state and an instrument of rule by law (Kesboonchoo-Mead 2004: 112). Their resistance to his initiatives eventually resulted in Prince Rabi resigning his position. When he did so in 1910, thirty senior judges who were part of his entourage also resigned (Loos 2006: 21–22).

106

THAI POLITICS

The key impetus behind many of the king’s reforms, particularly the legal ones, was the desire to be recognized by the imperialist powers as capable of applying law in a civilized fashion. The unequal treaties stated explicitly that their revocation would require the adoption of modern law codes (Harding and Leyland 2011: 7). Judicial reforms were at the heart of a general strategy for overturning the unequal treaties to which Siam was subject beginning in 1826. As King Chulalongkorn noted, the Japanese, once their “laws and courts were in perfect, systematic order” had been able to negotiate an end to extraterritoriality (quoted in Loos 2006: 47). If judicial reforms could create a system comprehensible to foreign powers, they might lead to the end of legal extraterritoriality (Engel 1978: 2). Reforms to the legal system were extensive and sustained. Ministry of Justice officials and foreign advisers simplified and centralized the court system. Thais adopted a three-tiered structure of provincial courts and elaborated civil procedure codes and evidentiary rules. They strengthened Ministry of Justice powers over other ministries and provincial courts (Engel 1975: 64–82). Prince Rabi established a law school to train students in judicial administration. Despite the crying need for administrators, the school adopted high standards, weeding out most aspirants. The deficit in capable personnel was made up with foreigners. These accounted for two-thirds of the judges sitting on the Supreme Court between 1899 and 1936.2 They also served as advisers to judges. Hence, most new statutes were drafted first in English before being translated into Thai (Loos 2006: 4, 45–54). The legal reforms of the Chakkri reformation were a remarkable example of top-down changes adopted both to enhance the ease and effectiveness of governing and to assume a civilized and comprehensible guise in the eyes of imperialists. For King Chulalongkorn, these reforms were important, but not his leading priority. Certainly, however, the judiciary gained considerable prestige that it retains today. This prestige and the degree of political insulation that it produced helped to account for the judiciary’s prominent political roles in Thailand’s political conflict that emerged after 2005. Reforms did not, however, usher in ever stronger rule of law. We turn below to consider the broad social factors impeding such a development. Why It Is Difficult to Deeply Entrench the Rule of Law in Thailand Most Thais have not adopted a militant adherence to impersonal and somewhat inflexible norms that in other social contexts appear natural. Abiding by the letter of the law often compels people to engage in pointless behaviors and to compromise the interests of their friends and families in the service of an abstraction. Once the concept of rule of law has taken root, it

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

107

may prove a blessing, “the nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular religion” (Bingham 2011: 174). Taken to extremes, however, perfect impartiality may confound our sensibilities, perhaps even those of saints. In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo underscores the familiar potential for legal norms to vitiate justice. “Probity, sincerity, candour, conviction, the idea of duty, are things which, mistaken, may become hideous” (Hugo 1996: 245). His absurdly moral and upright character, Jean Valjean, is unable to shake his criminal past and is hounded by the law-loving Inspector Javert who “personified justice, light, and truth . . . [S]upported by authority . . . reason, precedent, legal conscience, [and] the vengeance of the law . . . he hurled forth the thunder of the law, he avenged society . . . he displayed in full glory the superhuman beastliness of a ferocious archangel . . . there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous St. Michael” (Hugo 1996: 245). In contrast, Thais, particularly if of sufficient status, can ask to be seen as individuals. For better positioned Thais, legal procedures can be expected to reflect broader norms that acknowledge individuality. An underaged driver who caused the death of nine people while driving and using her phone was largely able to elude legal sanction in consideration of her youth and her family’s resources. A young man who killed a policeman while driving his car similarly was able to elude the law thanks to his family’s wealth, which made it possible to take into account the man’s troubled psyche. The cold law depicted by Hugo would appear forbidding in the Thai social context. It fails to recognize us as individuals with unique karmic legacies. It fails to offer individual-conforming latitude. These points were made by a Thai columnist observing queuing patterns in women’s bathrooms. Rather than form a single line so that the person at the head of the line could occupy the next available stall, women lined up before each stall door. Why? She suggests it was important “that some space be left for chance or for personal manipulation to exist.” While Thais certainly understood the concept of rule of law, she opines, they tended to prefer arrangements that allowed for the effects of “choice . . . karma . . . for something personal—charisma, connections or personality cult” (Achakulwisut 2011: 9). The rule of law and good governance more generally might tend to contravene the emphasis Thais placed on social relationships and connections (Vanijaka 2013: 11). Pervasive Thai spirit practices may partly reflect a desire to escape “the tyrannical indifference” of rational bureaucracy and other systems of impersonal procedure such as rule of law (Day 2002: 85). Monarchy, Patrons, and Spirits

Generally speaking, the concept of the rule of law does not occupy a central place in the worldviews of most Thais. Until fairly recently and for most

108

THAI POLITICS

people, the law was “distant, incomprehensible, and generally available only to those who had the right connections and price” (McVey 2000: 8). Rather than viewing their social milieu as one governed effectively by impersonal norms, most Thais looked to personal connections to afford them influence and protect them from calamity. In contexts in which the powerful enjoyed considerable discretion enforcing rules, establishing bonds with a powerful patron was the key means of reducing risks (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007: 10). Insecurity and a resulting desire for protection were pervasive (Day 2002: 18–19). One scholar describes Thais’ fundamental social goal as being the creation of a network of personal ties that can serve their various economic and social needs (Wichiarajote 1973). Only “power relationships,” not abstractions, could map the “political sphere” (Winichakul, 1997: 79). Another scholar argues that “justice and protection were not to be found in government and the law but in personal relationships” (McVey 2000: 8). Further, she argued, “the idea of a civically recognized moral boundary between legal and illegal activity is a middle class urban notion which still has little meaning in provincial Thailand” (14–15). In Thailand the law was often a symbolic instrument signaling control and legitimacy, or it was used to meet specific (often foreign) demands. For individuals, it might not be a reliable or intelligible means of securing influence or protection. For those purposes, social links in systems of patronage were more dependable: “The patronage system, not the legal system, ordered society and was the principal means to resolve problems” (Haines 2005: 53). Not only were the informal institutions associated with the patronage system not complementary to the formal ones linked to the rule of law, they were downright corrosive. As one scholar agues, “Patronage is a personal relationship, a system of informal networks operating outside open legal systems, distributing—or redistributing—power and resources as personal favors. As such it is the antithesis of civic values and in particular of equality before the law” (Black 2001: 35). Still powerful forces of enchantment worked in Thailand against commitment to procedural solutions. In particular, Thais were shaped by the broad scope and deep penetration of ideas associated with the righteous rule by kings. Concepts tied to the institution of monarchy promised to link the profane realm to a sacred one. The monarchy afforded a powerful and reliable center to the polity around which all other actors could array themselves. These monarchy-linked ideas were in many respects strengthened in recent decades even as fundamental countervailing social changes were at work to undermine them. This was possible as a result of Thais’ great respect for the long reign of the current king, Bhumipol Adulyadej. Another source of enchantment in Thai social life related to the roles of spirits. A further factor working against precommitment to impersonality

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

109

was the powerful and enduring tug of an outlook that privileged personalism as the bedrock of solutions to social problems. The challenge for Thais’ intent on reforming the country’s legal system at the end of the nineteenth century was to shift a system rooted in ideas about karmic law, spirits, and status hierarchies to a comparatively pedestrian affair based on procedures, questions of evidence, and the power of the state (Engel 1978: 5). Thais were remarkably successful in this effort, but not entirely so. Legal Content and Social Context

Effective legal institutions require some degree of fit between dominant social norms and the formal norms of the legal system (Wongtrangan 1990). A lack of fit creates, by definition, lawlessness as common behavior falls outside the bounds of formal law. The results are likely to include selective enforcement, corruption, and, as perceptions of hypocrisy mount, an undermining of the legitimacy and respect for formal law (Klausner 1983: 190–195). The importance of fit between formal law and social norms points to the potential difficulties in transplanting legal institutions. To be effective and sustained, legal institutions must be embedded within particular social settings. A Brazilian government official notes more generally that “institutions can at most be imported, never exported” (quoted in Haggard, MacIntyre, and Tiede 2008: 221). Sally Engle Merry argues that to be effective, ideas about rights and law “need to be translated into local terms and situated within local contexts of power and meaning. They need, in other words, to be remade in the vernacular” (Merry, as quoted in Munger 2007: 828). Montesquieu had his doubts about the potential of transplanting laws and institutions from one system to another (Leyland 2010a: 122–123). These difficulties are compounded when the social contexts—histories, cultures, degrees of stratification—between systems vary sharply. Frank Munger asks whether legal reforms can foster “a civic culture supporting public involvement and government accountability.” Does an effective system of law require an affinity between the local social context and the spirit of the laws? He refers to “transplant risks” where institutions and policies from distinctive settings are implemented in new contexts characterized by different meanings and cultures (Munger 2007: 818). In her study of legal and human rights consciousness, Merry insists that “law is intimately involved in the constitution of social relations and the law itself is constituted through social relations” (Merry, as quoted in Munger 2007: 823; emphasis in original). Modern systems of law seek to replace a host of location-specific customs with a single comprehensive and uniform system (the law of the land). The new system being introduced, however, confronts older legal orders

110

THAI POLITICS

that are tied effectively to a supporting infrastructure of norms and practices. In Thailand, villagers in the mid-twentieth century typically viewed formal law as an instrument of state control to be avoided. Law did not so much protect villagers’ autonomy from the threat of tyranny as it constituted that threat. As implemented locally, the legal system did not necessarily make the state more intelligible to villagers. It was not a predictable system on which they could base calculations of their interests (Jacobs 1971: 48–52; Maravall and Przeworski 2003: 2). Its requirements often flagrantly contravened local custom. In any effort to impose social patterns from above, there is a degree of friction and pushing back from below. Certainly in Thailand, the new legal system introduced late in the nineteenth century was shaped and stretched by established custom in the periphery (Engel 1978: 2). That custom gave to local spirits considerable responsibility for sustaining local communities. While some late-twentieth-century observers saw the expansion of state law as undermining the roles of local spirits (e.g., Keyes 1977: 153), other students of Thai law believed that in some respects the two systems of law were complementary and reinforcing. Rapid social changes in Thailand in more recent times, however, may have undermined a formerly symbiotic element in Thailand’s “interlegal” regime under which officials could cite and employ both customary and modern law (Engel 1978: 2–4, 13–14). David Engel and Jaruwan Engel (2010) argue, based on their study of personal injury cases in northern Thailand, that the past complementarity between the two systems was lost, largely as a result of greater geographic mobility. Village- and householdbased spirits once supported state law. The spirits, however, were rooted in homes and villages. With greater mobility, individuals left their homes and villages, and the sturdiness of formal as well as informal law suffered. Thai Attitudes Toward the Rule of Law and Its Institutions

Generally speaking, although the Thai bureaucracy was frequently rigid, few Thais were inclined to describe their fellows as zealous adherents of principles. More often, Thais were celebrated for their tolerance, flexibility, and pragmatism. The bureaucracy was prone to rigidities, however, stemming from a tendency to focus on the letter, rather than the spirit, of laws and regulations. Officials often were averse to assuming any risks that might be entailed in departing from the letter of laws. Thus, many officials were disinclined to make decisions that in any way departed from standard operating procedures and, instead, passed those decisions up the hierarchy. These rigidities, however, generally were easy to loosen, for those fortunate to have the right connections, through the solvents of personalized vertical bonds or of gifts. Suppleness was evident in pervasive corruption.

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

111

At times, this malleability could be used to make principles flexible in constructive fashion, as with the strategic use of amnesties. Less encouragingly, the same flexibility underpinned an extraordinary degree of impunity on the part of the military and police in particular, and those of high status in general. Thai society was broadly complicit in widespread illegality because social sanctions were not extensively used against louts. Affluence might, echoing Proudhon’s or Balzac’s views of wealth being illicit, result from theft, but it was desirable and its achievement was an indicator of accrued merit. It also signaled that an individual was valuable, in a position to bestow protection and favors on others. Highly corrupt figures moved through the upper reaches of society while basking in their wealth and power. Widespread awareness of a prominent individual’s illegal activities did not put them outside the bounds of the society of political elites.3 Neither was corruption likely to be prosecuted. Successful prosecutions, when they arose, seemed often to be the result of a falling out among thieves, information provided by foreign governments, or gross incompetence among criminals. Absent serendipitous (from the perspective of prosecutors) developments, defendants could afford to engage in widespread corruption with minimal efforts to cover their tracks (Race 2007). Further, even when justice was effective, it generally operated slowly. Thai cultural predispositions militated against uniform application of the law. Thais seemed often to invert the relationship familiar in many societies in which the essence represents the core truth values while the surfaces are potentially misleading and in any case superficial. By contrast, in Thailand surfaces were serious business, and considerable effort and psychic commitment were invested in their cultivation (Jackson 2004; Mulder 1985; Krittikarn 2010: 81). In religious matters, “correct ritual practice” received more emphasis than “correct belief” (Jackson 2010: 36). This distinction, applied to law, enabled great flexibility as the essence (elite impunity) could blatantly violate the surface (commitment to rule of law) without unduly devaluing the importance of the pleasing surface claim of blind justice. The Thai term pakchee (coriander, or cilantro, the strong flavor of which can disguise any number of curiosities) speaks to this flexible capacity. Law involves sets of more or less broad rules in light of which specific cases are to be understood. Confronted with a particular case or regulatory decision, a judge or administrator is expected to strip away the idiosyncratic foliage to reveal the stark branches that constitute the case’s core elements. The suggestion that Thais are prone to invest surfaces with meanings may indicate a tendency in law to invert the relationship between surfaces and underlying principles. The result, then, would be that principle would tend to be obscured among particular facts, the nominal forest lost among the trees.

112

THAI POLITICS

One area in which we would expect to find deficiencies in Thailand’s legal system is in following a norm of impartiality. This norm reflects a commitment to equal treatment of all citizens (Mendus 2006: 423). Given the great importance of personal ties in Thailand, to say nothing of hierarchy, blind justice would represent a radical force. While legal equality was established formally, with exceptions for royalty, in Siam during the legal reforms of the Chakkri reformation over a century ago, Article 56 of the Criminal Code allows judges under some circumstances to weigh a defendant’s education, occupation, and intelligence in pronouncing sentence. Judges use this flexibility to benefit the august, even for serious offenses, arguing that stiff sentences against professors or civil servants would deny the country the benefit of the defendants’ talents. Such was the reasoning of the judge who commuted the sentence for aggravated assault of a professor who killed his wife (Klausner 2012: 47). Even when state officials act against subordinates for illegal behaviors, sanctions tend to be limited to job transfers or, in extreme cases, dismissal from service. Survey data suggest that, on the whole, Thai views of the judiciary were favorable. In a survey of attitudes from 2011, the courts were the only institution that Thais recognized as having considerable integrity, with the military ranking a distant second. Not surprisingly, avowed Red Shirts were less generous in assessing the courts than were Yellow Shirts. However, World Values Survey data from Wave 6 showed that respondents who identified with the Pheu Thai had more confidence in the courts than did those aligned with the Democrat Party. Confidence levels were high (above 75 percent) for both groups (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). The 2011 survey found the courts rated at the top of institutions in terms of their neutrality, with 63 percent of respondents so describing them against only 17 percent for the media and 15 percent for the police. However, when asked whether there were double standards in the judicial system, fully two-thirds (more among more educated respondents) suggested that there were (Asia Foundation 2011). Survey data from 2005–2006 revealed regional variations in Thai attitudes toward the justice system (Punyaratabandhu 2007). Presumably having in mind the virtues of impartial justice, most Thais held that the law should be strict and inflexible. In the northeast, however, almost one in five strongly disagreed with that view. Fewer than 4 percent in the south did so. Only 5 percent of southerners, but one in four northeasterners, held the view that the law was applied very fairly (Punyaratabandhu 2007). Some 37 percent of the least educated respondents reported never in the past three years having heard of cases of corruption while only 11 percent of the most educated made that claim. While 52 percent of urbanites indicated having heard of corruption cases very often, only 28 percent of rural respondents said the same. In the south, 66 percent reported extensive

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

113

exposure to corruption, but only 14 percent of northeasterners did so (Punyaratabandhu 2007). These reported differences likely did not stem from different practices in these regions or among various strata. Rather, the differences probably reflect divergent propensities to see or acknowledge exposure to corruption in the context of a survey. Slightly fewer respondents from the northeast than from other regions perceived double standards in the justice system, despite the region being associated with Red Shirt sentiment. Many vocal Red Shirts were particularly critical of double standards in the legal system (Asia Foundation 2011). Data drawn from the World Values Survey enables comparison of Thailand with eleven other lower- and middle-income countries. As noted in Chapter 3, only 28 percent of Thais believed it never was justifiable to accept a bribe. In Egypt, Turkey, and Vietnam, more than 80 percent offered that response. There may be much Thai public acceptance, and even admiration, of politicians’ corruption. What Thais did not accept was corrupt politicians who were not generous in sharing their booty. Thais’ confidence in the justice system was middling, with 26.2 percent reporting a great deal of confidence. Corresponding figures in Vietnam (62.2 percent), Turkey (36.8 percent), India (34.5 percent), and Malaysia (29.1 percent) were higher (World Values Survey, Wave 5, 2005–2008).4 Asian Barometer Survey and other survey data revealed that few Thais reported awareness of corruption in local government. The number among participating Asian countries was lower only in Vietnam. The number of Thais indicating awareness of corruption in national government also was low, though the numbers of Singaporeans (plausibly) and Vietnamese were lower (Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 3, 2010–2012; Punyaratabandhu 2007). Asian Barometer asked respondents if, in a tough situation, it was acceptable for the government to ignore laws, and almost half of Thai respondents said it was. Among Asian countries, only in Mongolia and Singapore did more respondents take that view. In Thailand, 70.8 percent were confident that the courts would punish the guilty even if they were high ranking. In several Asian countries—Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam—even more respondents had similar confidence. When asked to react to the statement that the government treats all citizens equally, 19.1 percent of Thai respondents strongly agreed, more than in any of the other Asian countries (Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 2, 2005−2008). In sum, the more objective, though perhaps not more reliable, indices we reviewed suggest an overall picture ranking Thailand’s justice system and Thai attitudes toward impersonal procedures as middling. The courts are reasonably well respected despite perceptions of double standards. The police, as in so many countries, do not enjoy comparable respect. In terms of their attitudes, Thais reveal considerable tolerance for corruption and authoritarian rule (see Chapter 3). Also striking is a tendency for Thais to

114

THAI POLITICS

reflect (at least in their survey responses) a certain willful blindness, a downright Panglossian obliviousness to their system’s defects (Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 3, 2010–2012). Interesting regional differences in attitudes are evident, with southerners tending in general to be more skeptical of the quality of law in Thailand. The better educated also tended to have what might be regarded as more realistic assessments of the Thai public realm. The degree of rule following in a society presumably represents a more or less stable equilibrium. It makes limited sense to follow some (e.g., traffic) rules when few others do so, and much more sense when most do so. Shifting Thailand from its low legal compliance equilibrium (in many issue areas) to higher levels of compliance presumably not only will require more effective policy and policing but also widespread popular support reflected in changed attitudes and behaviors. The Poverty of Procedure

Commitments to rule of law, or elections, and to some degree even to markets all require acceptance of impersonal and procedural solutions as substitutes for substantive rationality. Rather than struggle directly over preferred substantive outcomes, citizens resort to rules to begin to sort out matters. Reliance on such solutions is difficult if we do not first relinquish hopes of finding truth, of being led by the best members of our community, or of founding a fully just socioeconomic order. Only when people have abandoned faith in their capacities to find truth or to identify the most virtuous among them are they likely to grasp at the straws of impersonal procedures as means of adjudicating, selecting representatives, or allocating resources. These sorts of commitments to impersonal arbiters of values are rooted in a prior willingness to turn to procedural solutions (Kaviraj 2001: 290–292). In the absence of such abstract commitments, and in contexts within which the good is understood to be knowable, resort to the vagaries of procedures can jar sensibilities. Think, for example, of contemporary evaluations of the concept of trial by ordeal. Oswald Spengler argues that skepticism and the loss of enchantment were essential (and impoverished) underpinnings of a commitment to procedure (1991: 34–35, 59–60, 187). Moderns manage despite their lost trust in the capacity of reason to yield truths by leaning heavily on procedural reason, “a reason that puts itself on trial . . . [as] there is neither a higher nor a deeper reality to which we could appeal” (Rawls 2005: 377). What remains is a “procedural doctrine that leaves questions of substance to be decided by the outcome of actual free discussions engaged in by free and rational participants” (380).

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

115

The Judiciary’s Autonomy and the Place of the Rule of Law in Thailand There are, of course, no precise thresholds beyond which lapses in the rule of law and procedure obviate quality democracy. Exact measures of governance quality are not possible. Nonetheless, typically most of us can spot the differences in the roles and practices of law in, say, Nigeria and Norway. Thailand, which traditionally featured more the rule of lords than of law, lies between those two cases in terms of levels of corruption, the closeness of correspondence between laws on the books and actual practice, and the extent to which justice is blind and law constrains the powerful. Various efforts have been made to capture these differences quantitatively. They suggest that the rule of law was indeed more entrenched in Thailand than in Nigeria, but a long way short of Norway. The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, for example, put Nigeria in the nineties among the ninetyseven national systems of justice that it rated on four of the eight dimensions of rule of law that it gauged. By contrast, Norway ranked between first and fourth on six of the dimensions (Agrast et al. 2013: 122–123). Specific ranks for Thailand appear below. Lawlessness among Thai politicians and high-ranking officials was widespread. WJP data have Thailand scoring extremely poorly on legislative corruption (Agrast et al. 2013: 143). Many leading Thai politicians long have been steeped in corruption. General Phao Sriyanond, for example, was the head of the police and the second most powerful politician for a time in the 1950s. He also was one of the principal figures in the opium trade. When his main political competitor, Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, died at the end of 1963, he left behind a fortune valued at close to $150 million, extensive landholdings, and several houses. As a share of Thailand’s GDP then, the $150 million figure would translate today into something just shy of $20 billion.5 Many political groups have been controlled by figures with interests in drugs, prostitution, smuggling, or gambling (Wyatt 2003: 263, 275, 307). One prominent general and politician had to immediately step down after being named prime minister in 1992 when it was learned that, due to his alleged ties to the narcotics trade, he was barred from the United States. Ruth McVey frames the corruption issue baldly: “What the Thai state declares to be illegal is often understood as officialdom laying claim to another source of monopoly. The person wishing to exploit such a resource will gain the complicity of the appropriate officials, and the business goes ahead to mutual profit. For those playing the power game, whether bureaucrats or entrepreneurs, the state’s rules do not set boundaries as much as they set the price” (2000: 14).

116

THAI POLITICS

Flexibility in application of the law, such as grants of amnesties, served Thais well in the past. However, such approaches were most likely to work well in environments dominated by informal political coalitions or ideological consensus. In the context of Thailand’s political polarization and violent clashes, the relative weakness of law assumed great importance. Over recent decades, King Bhumipol Adulyadej played a key role as the ultimate source of third-party enforcement of political agreements. He was able to bring overt political conflicts to a close. With the palace playing more discreet political roles after 2007, the system needed an ultimate arbiter, a role to which the legal system in theory could be well suited. With King Bhumipol aged and ill, his absence as an umpire grew evident in efforts in 2015 and 2016 to craft a new constitution. The drafters sought some sort of minimally legitimate mechanism to deal with the possibility that a deadlock akin to that of 2014 would emerge again, with no effective authority able to exercise power. The form this effort took in 2015, the National Committee on Reform and Reconciliation Strategy, helped to doom the first effort to draft a new constitution. For whatever reasons, it was rejected by the military government itself. A relatively weak impulse toward rule following by Thais inside and outside the state meant that amid sharp polarization between competing visions of political virtue there were few powerful impartial instruments, such as legal procedures, for enforcement of political bargains. This problem emerged clearly in Thailand with the disintegration, growing increasingly pronounced after 2005, of the decades-old elite consensus that had shaped the country’s politics. A succession of governments discovered they had only partial authority over the country’s security services and, thus, were unable to dislodge massive protests that shut down government offices, airports, and entire business and other urban districts for long periods (Bangkok Post 2016b: 11). Leading figures in parliament announced both before and after key judicial rulings their intent not only to ignore the rulings but to retaliate against the courts and the anticorruption agency by impeaching their officials (Crispin 2012: 112). It is not difficult to cite a large number of cases of unequal application of the law, of elite impunity, and even instances of slaughter of civilians by security forces. Some of the most horrendous cases took place when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in power. They included a war on drugs launched in 2003 in which, by one count, 2,873 were killed in a threemonth period without any due process “including whole families, women, children, old people” (Choonhavan 2013: 13). A further couple of incidents occurred in 2004 in the far south at the Kru-Ze mosque and the site of a demonstration at Tak Bai, killing a total of 110 people (Freedom House 2007). Human Rights Watch observed in a report that “no soldier has ever been prosecuted for abducting, torturing or extrajudicially killing Muslims

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

117

in the South” (Ungpakorn 2011b: 9). The “Red Drum” incident (see below), stretching from 1971 to 1975, was so effectively hushed up that long afterward some in the military denied it ever happened. Nonetheless, considerable evidence suggested extensive military killings, perhaps over 3,000 people, in southern Thailand. The victims were alleged communist insurgents, or their sympathizers, and many of them were either killed or incinerated in large metal oil drums (Marshall 2014: 84). In the 1970s, many leaders of farmers’ organizations were killed. Similar killings in later decades included those of miscellaneous activists campaigning for community and environmental rights. Over ninety people were killed, many before dozens of witnesses amid political demonstrations in April and May 2010, and most of them were unarmed civilians (Human Rights Watch 2011) Virtually no state officials have been brought to book for these various actions. There are also many cases in Thailand of corruption not associated with violence. One lawyer working for Thaksin on the case that eventually resulted in his criminal conviction was jailed after trying to smuggle a pastry box (hence the references to Pastry Gate) stuffed with 2 million baht into the court building housing the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Political Office Holders (Rojanaphruk 2008). They apparently aimed to bribe officers of the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions. A Thai Chamber of Commerce survey in 2013 estimated corruption consumed around one-third of capital spending and public procurement spending in the country (Amornvivat 2015: 11). Cases of encroachment on national forests by rich Thais seemed to be endemic. Enforcement in these cases was difficult given that the infractions were pervasive, prosecutions were slow, and many perpetrators were rich and well connected (Bangkok Post Online 2015b). Buddhist temples were receiving gifts annually of some 100 billion baht with little transparency and some monks living very well. The coup government set up a National Legislative Assembly in 2014 as part of its broader efforts to curb government malfeasance and sponsor political reconciliation. Close to 30 percent of its members opted to use their budgets to hire members of their families as staff assistants (this was not illegal) (Saiyasombut 2015). This development gives some sense for why the military government determined to establish a new National Ethics Assembly. Police enjoy broad powers and are subject to relatively few curbs on their powers of search, arrest, and detention (Kittayarak 1990: 66–68). Thailand’s Human Rights Commission suggested that it is all but impossible to bring charges against the police successfully (Freedom House 2007). Impunity among the security forces is widespread and quite casual. The former head of the Central Investigation Bureau confronted charges in 2015 of leading a cartel that took bribes from police officers who wanted promo-

118

THAI POLITICS

tions as well as from oil smugglers and gambling den operators (Bangkok Post Online 2015a). One of the few goals on which most of the political antagonists seemed to agree in 2014 before the coup was the desirability of decentralizing and reforming the police. Thailand had about 230,000 police officers, with 32,000 serving in the top three ranks that required attendance at the police cadet school (Interpol 2016). The number of prisoners, including pre-trial detainees, grew sharply after 2006, rising to well over 300,000 (International Center for Prison Studies 2016 ). Thais generally believe the police are engaged in extensive corruption. One indirect indication of the scale of the revenues they realize is the high prices that would-be recruits paid in 2012 for the correct answers on a police entrance exam (Tangprasert 2012: 1). Public works contracts in Thailand often were not subject to open procedures, and persistent rumors long suggested that the costs of projects were padded by some 20 percent, cream to be skimmed by high-ranking politicians (Freedom House 2007). Thailand’s Suvannabhumi Airport allegedly involved comparable overcharges.6 A number of sources suggested that these margins rose during the tenure of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to perhaps as high as 35 percent or more (Arunmas 2012: B2). Policy corruption, using state power to legislate or regulate favorable outcomes for a favored few, existed on a large scale (Besley 2006: 10, fn. 15; UNDP 2009: 56), whether spending on infrastructure or “populist” programs.7 The rice subsidy scheme of the Yingluck government (2011–2014) paid farmers a hefty 40 percent premium above market prices. A substantial, though contested, share of those margins went to various rice millers, warehouses, and politicians (Khanthong 2014: 9). As noted above, the WJP rated ninety-seven countries on a wide variety of measures relating to the rule of law. It reported rankings on eight dimensions. Thailand fared best among these dimensions on the effectiveness of its criminal justice system (35) and fundamental rights (38). Its corruption ranking slipped sharply from the prior WJP report (28 of 66), falling to 65 of 97 in 2012. Among other upper-middle-income countries, its corruption ranking was 24 of 30; among other East Asian countries, 11 of 14. It stood out for its corruption among the police and, in particular, within the legislative branch (Agrast et al. 2013: 143). The judiciary enjoyed high status. Judges and, more recently, prosecutors gained royal audiences when they assumed office, swearing an oath of loyalty in an audience with the king. While judges were civil servants, all appointments, promotions, and transfers were controlled by the Judicial Service Commission (Kittayarak 1990: 49). The judiciary was in some respects associated with the monarchy. King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) lent royal patronage to the local bar association and his government helped to finance it (Thailand 1968: 311). Judges sit in courtrooms on a sort of throne

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

119

in front of a picture of the king and may be seen as speaking for the monarch (Engel 1978: 14). They were not known for living luxuriously and tended to mix rather little socially with people in other circles. At one time, judges tended to come from elite families. Their affluence was judged a prophylactic against their being corrupted (Klausner 2012). When the absolute monarchy was overthrown and a seven-member group was established to write a constitution, two of the members were former judges, one the Supreme Court chief justice, and one a prosecutor (Setabutr 2006; 6). The more prominent civilians among the coup group of 1932 had links to the legal profession. When King Bhumipol needed an interim political leader in 1973, he turned to an esteemed jurist (and university rector) who later served on the Privy Council. The king put several other prominent judges on the Privy Council. Nonetheless, in the process of drafting the 1997 constitution, the judiciary came in for considerable criticism, much due to its refusal to limit its control over the Judicial Service Commission. The judiciary was seen as fending off efforts to impose accountability on them. The squabble over the commission had some history. At the end of 1972, the cabinet of the military government of the time approved a measure that shifted control of the commission away from the judges to the Ministry of Justice. This reform was seen in the context of that time as stripping power away from one of the few remotely autonomous centers of power (Prizzia 1985: 52–53). The judiciary launched a lobbying effort to block the move and gained support among opposition lawmakers. Law students at Thammasat University protested the move and a joint letter from all Thai universities to the prime minister registered opposition as well. Ultimately, the cabinet relented, submitting a new bill more to the judiciary’s liking (Klausner 1999: 57–64). The judiciary was embroiled in other conflicts as well. Advocates of a new constitution in the 1990s hoped to curb corruption by political parties. For these purposes, the new constitution created a host of new institutions designed to provide horizontal accountability. Senior judges, however, viewed the new entities, including the Administrative and Constitutional Courts, as constituting a fourth branch of government that would dilute their authority. They balked, but advocates for the new courts overcame the judges’ resistance. Then, immediately after the new constitution was adopted, the Supreme Court and Senate were embroiled in a lengthy imbroglio over the judiciary’s role in selecting the Constitutional Court judges (Raksasataya and Klein 2003: 36–40). Following the 2014 coup and in the context of drafting a new constitution, a variety of legal reforms were considered. There was talk, for example, of boosting transparency and due process guarantees, of minimizing conflicts of interest by barring prosecutors from serving on the boards of state enterprises, and of a stipulation that would require the attorney general

120

THAI POLITICS

to provide public explanations when his or her office decided not to pursue charges. Another proposal mooted would have made more readily subject to appeal the judgments of the Supreme Court’s division that handles political cases. There also was a proposal to make a third of the members of the Judicial Service Commission subject to appointment by parliament (Chetchotiros and Bangprapa 2015: 3). This last proposal generated stiff resistance from the judiciary. We turn below to a more detailed review of Thailand’s history with constitutions and the new guardian institutions created by the 1997 and 2007 constitutions. Constitutions, Courts, and Accountability Institutions The newly created Constitutional Court’s prestige suffered due to its role in Prime Minister Thaksin’s hidden assets case. The court ruling in 2001 (see below) enabled Thaksin to retain the premiership to which he had only recently been elected. The court was in a difficult position. Had the court ruled against Thaksin, who was then riding a massive wave of popularity, the justices would have come under fierce criticism. As it was, they let him off the hook. Important legal rulings have helped to shape political and policy conflicts in recent years. These developments are relatively novel. From 1932 to 1948, leading politicians confronted no judicial constraints and simply made their own rules (Wyatt 2003: 256). Perhaps this helps explain why Thailand’s first constitution lasted longer than its successors, from 1932 until 1946 (Harding and Leyland 2011: 14). The legal machinery largely was insulated from political tasks. Even during the polarized political conflicts of the 1970s, labor disputes, for example, were settled not through grievance procedures or the courts but by the intervention of the cabinet or by violence (Prizzia 1985: 32). In other periods, mediation might be handled by a military strong man without any formal political role. Before 1997, or even 2007, the judiciary’s political roles in Thailand were comparatively limited. The forlorn hope of curbing politicians’ corruption expanded the judiciary’s roles after 1997. The desperate desire after 2007 to hedge in Thaksin’s power induced further resort to the courts. The term “judicialization” is often used to describe the roles of activist courts in expanding or strengthening citizens’ rights (Sieder, Schjolden, and Angell 2005). Thai courts also have grown more willing to address the kinds of issues that courts tackled in Latin America and elsewhere in support of various citizens’ rights. Generally, however, in the Thai context judicialization referred not to the courts carving out legislative roles, enlarging the sphere of citizens’ rights, or giving substance to often unobserved ones. Instead, it referred to the courts assuming more overt political

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

121

roles in the context of heightened intraelite competition. The courts were later used in the frantic scramble for means of resisting Thaksin’s centripetal tug. Establishing institutions invulnerable to the wiles of powerseeking politicians is a challenge in any political system. Many relatively fragile democracies resorted to the courts in hopes of achieving a degree of horizontal accountability. Particularly with the 2007 constitution, Thailand did as well. Only where political behavior is significantly constrained, particularly that of political elites, do we get constitutionalism. Constitutions are designed to entrench systems of governance. In Thailand, in the past, new constitutions offered some of the benefits of regalia, signifying the legitimacy of a new individual or group taking power. More than a few of Thailand’s new rulers deemed it worthwhile to adopt a new constitution. Fred Riggs and David Wilson suggested in the 1960s that constitutionalism in Thailand had not attained much force, reflecting power arrangements rather than constituting changes in power relations (cited in Connors 2007: 40). Thailand’s constitutions, however, did reflect real differences in regime aspirations, evident for example in choices made concerning an upper house and whether its members were to be elected or selected, or both. Over fourscore years since absolute monarchy ended, the average Thai government had only a short tenure. On average, Thais attempted coups, and adopted constitutions, with the frequency that the United States held presidential elections. Thai leaders provided for the writing and promulgation of a score of constitutions. Once it got started in 1932, Thailand launched more constitutions than any other state (Harding and Leyland 2011: 34). Particularly since parliament grew more powerful, by the early 1990s, much of the time not given to writing new constitutions was devoted to debating and adopting amendments to existing ones. Thailand’s more enduring constitutions have more closely reflected underlying distributions of power. In these instances, the written constitution more or less matched the “real” one. In general, real constitutions are not the formal written rules but the actual centers of power: monarchs, federations of industries, dominant political parties, or social classes that condition the exercise of political power (Sanchez-Cuenca 2003: 82). Thais’ real constitution, in the view of many Thais, affords the monarchy far more centrality, not simply symbolic but actual political power, than can be read in most constitutional statutes. The 1932 constitution and the 1959 interim constitution survived far longer than many of the more aspirational charters (Harding and Leyland 2011: 14, 34). In recent decades, Thai constitutions clearly have constrained elite actors. The 1997 constitution was important in making Thaksin powerful, and the 2007 constitution made it possible for his opponents to foil his ambitions; hence, the prolonged struggles among politicians, parties, and

122

THAI POLITICS

others over constitutions and their amendments. We might paraphrase McVey to conclude that constitutions influenced the price that elite actors paid to achieve the outcomes they desired (McVey 2000: 14). However, as the stakes rose and elites were willing to pay higher prices, constitutional rules increasingly became immovable obstacles. In any case, the crafting and amending of constitutions was a serious business. Challenges to the 2007 constitution and threats to amend or overthrow it provided much of the fodder feeding the fires of Thailand’s political conflict. One interpretation of the 1997 constitution was that it represented an effort by parts of Thailand’s elite to entrench a model of governance and to root it in law before Thais would have to manage a political regime without the guiding paternalism of the king (McCargo 2002). Among his supporters (the vast majority of Thais), there was a belief that the king’s occasional overt interventions in politics had saved the country from further bloodshed and division and kept Thailand on the admittedly rutted, lengthy, and circuitous road to a stable democratic regime. Respect for the king and questions about his succession had Thais wondering for decades how they would fare without him. For at least a few Thais, the new constitution held out the promise of enabling them to muddle through by leaning on the feeble crutch of the rule of law as the majesty of charismatic authority weakened in the future. More than a century and a half earlier Alexis de Tocqueville had worried about the same problem. He noted in France that “the spell of royalty is broken, but it has not been succeeded by the majesty of the laws” (quoted in Bramsted and Melhuish 1978: 61). Thais confront quite a leap as they try to shift from reliance on the monarchy to the hope that constitutions might protect their rights and provide a stable political framework. Some Thais were skeptical from the outset that the lengthy aspirational 1997 constitution suited Thailand’s social conditions. Meechai Ruchupan, a former Senate speaker, dismissed the document as a foreign import (Ungpakorn 2003a). Leyland observed that “it is hard to imagine a more comprehensive attempt to change social facts by law” (2007: 152). King Bhumipol himself apparently understood what a slender reed constitutional protection seemed to offer in the eyes of most Thais. He regarded constitutions as foreign imports and evanescent, unlike the monarchy with its deep cultural and historical roots (Ginsburg 2009: 86–89). A Thai champion of the monarchy, Pramuan Ruchanaseri, insisted that “the [1997] constitution is not above the King in any way. . . . The status of the King does not come under the constitution” (cited in Ferrara 2011: 67). One of the 1997 constitution’s enduring legacies lay in the creation of a clutch of new horizontal accountability institutions. These institutions quickly confronted extreme politically charged challenges. Along with the courts, the new accountability institutions assumed the political center

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

123

stage. Thaksin’s opponents used the array of accountability institutions in their battles against him. Threats of legal action as well as actual recourse to the courts were a dominant idiom of political contests by 2013. New Accountability Institutions

Thailand’s 1997 constitution had a number of highly distinctive (to Thai constitutional experience) features. It attempted to enable broad participation in policymaking (as well as in drafting the constitution itself), to stabilize political party competition and link it to effective governance, to increase access to official information, and to decentralize politics and administration. It expanded and clarified the legal status of a number of rights. It strengthened the role of the prime minister. Here, however, our attention focuses on yet another feature of the 1997 and 2007 constitutions: their elaborate articles and provisions for new institutions designed to curb abuses of power. The creation of new horizontal institutions of accountability in “postpolitical constitutions” (Ginsburg 2009: 83–84; Hirschl 2004) is widespread around the world. These constitutions attempt, in essence, to limit the stark powers of parliaments and presidents in illiberal democracies. In Thailand, these new institutions were first created in 1997, not primarily to ward off abstract threats to liberty or to property, but to try to achieve a modicum of good governance and, in particular, to curb corruption. By 2007, there was more emphasis on preventing Thaksin from being able to regain political power and concentrate it in his hands. This latter emphasis also was evident in the drafting of a constitution after the 2014 coup. It is worth listing some of the bodies, in addition to the existing countercorruption agency and Constitutional and Administrative Courts, mooted for inclusion under the new charter (not all of them retained, not all institutions of horizontal accountability, and not all of them new). They give a sense for the document drafters’ hopes for good governance and stronger political accountability: Consumer Protection Organization, Civil Sector Monitoring Assembly (one per province), National Ethics Committee, Committee to Promote Civil Servants by Merit System, Citizens Assembly, Election Organization Commission, Office of Ombudsman and Human Rights Protection, National Reform Steering Committee, Independent Commission to Promote National Reconciliation, and Division of Fiscal and Budgetary Discipline (to be tied to the Administrative Courts). The guardian institutions of the 1997 constitution generally failed. They were designed with elaborate, near comical, care to keep them insulated from political control. Those who staffed the new institutions initially seemed determined to make them work and enjoyed some success until 2001. However, before they could be truly tested against the nemesis of tra-

124

THAI POLITICS

ditional forms of corruption, a new style of policy corruption became paramount. Power, meanwhile, was concentrating in Thaksin’s hands. The new constitution helped to create a strong government under Thaksin’s control. Arguably, the greatest threat he posed to Thais was not that of corruption, as extensive as it was under Thaksin, but the weakening of checks on executive power. Thaksin rode roughshod over his political opponents and governed effectively in the fashion of Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, and various presidents in Latin America. The new guardian institutions were unable to protect the new constitution because Thaksin boosted his control over the elected nominally nonpartisan Senate, the keystone of the entire accountability architecture. His establishment opponents, in desperation, gradually abandoned any pretense of concern for Thais’ political rights as they tried to derail the Thaksin juggernaut and supported a military coup against his elected government in 2006, and again in 2014 (against his sister’s government). Following the 2006 coup and the return to elections at the end of 2007, Thaksin’s allies were back in power; however, not for long. The courts forced the resignations of the parliament speaker, the foreign minister, and two prime ministers; brought down two Thaksin-linked governments in 2008; and shut down three political parties as well. Overwhelmingly, the judicial rulings targeted the politicians and parties linked to Thaksin (BTI 2012: 9–11). By this time, it seemed that the courts were being used not to impose accountability but to tip the scales in the political struggle toward the entrenched elite. The 1997 constitution created a new system of Administrative Courts, including regionally based Administrative Courts of First Instance and the Supreme Administrative Court. Members of the new courts serve until retirement, staffing is administered by the courts’ Judicial Commission, salaries are protected, and once cases are assigned to judges they cannot be removed from them. The court’s independent structure means that, in some senses, Thailand could be said to have three supreme courts: the Supreme Administrative Court, the Constitutional Court, and the Supreme Court (Harding and Leyland 2011: 160). While the largest number of the new courts’ early cases involved the police, the most celebrated cases included the privatization of the Electrical Generating Authority of Thailand; the creation of the National Broadcasting Commission (Leyland 2010b: 128–130); an injunction against the development of a wide range of planned heavy industrial projects; a demand that the Yingluck government put its massive water management scheme through public hearing procedures (forty-four in total; AP News 2013); and, in 2014, a ruling that paved the way to forcing Prime Minister Yingluck from office. The most powerful of the new institutions was the Constitutional Court, the first permanent court in Thailand able to exercise powers of judi-

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

125

cial review. The court made many critical decisions, including a peculiar August 2001 decision by which it decided to leave Prime Minister Thaksin in office to enjoy the remaining three-plus years of his first term following his party’s electoral victory earlier that year. Thai law that was in effect when Thaksin served as deputy prime minister in the Chavalit Yongchaiyudh government on the eve of Thailand’s economic collapse in 1997 required officials to file asset disclosure statements on assuming and leaving office. Thaksin’s statements failed to mention about $100 million of his assets that he had put in the names of various friends and domestic workers. It would seem that he wanted to conceal some of his assets and was caught outright. By the time he was campaigning in the 2001 election, the new guardian institutions had vigorously investigated several similar cases. The National Counter Corruption Commission sent to the Constitutional Court for judgment seventeen such cases between March 2000 and October 2002. The fifteen justices voted for conviction in every case (Bunbongkarn 2006: 46), unanimously in half the cases, and with more than two dissenting votes in only two cases (the court had fifteen justices). In Thaksin’s case, however, the court acquitted. The large number of similar cases heard by the NCCC, as well as the repeated rounds of elections made necessary by the Election Commission’s findings of electoral malpractice in the first elections under the 1997 constitution, raised the question: Were the new accountability institutions holding Thai politicians to standards that were unrealistically scrupulous? Italians had confronted similar questions during their “clean hands,” or “bribesville” campaign launched in 1992 (Barber 2013). That episode eventually petered out but not before wrecking the careers of many politicians and closing down political parties in Italy. The voters then turned to Silvio Berlusconi. In the Thai context, was it really reasonable to be such sticklers for legal niceties given prevailing loose local attitudes concerning the rule of law and corruption in particular? In the Thai case, a decision against the prime minister would have required overriding voters’ preferences (the courts later grew less reluctant to frustrate voters). The prospective prime minister asked, “And who should I be more loyal to? The people? Or to the court?” (quoted in Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 4). One of the Constitutional Court judges was later reported to have said, “Who are we to judge that Thaksin was guilty? He was elected by 16 million Thais” (Dressel 2010: 677). In the end, the justices ruled eleven to four that Thaksin had been required to file an asset disclosure statement. Separately, they ruled seven to four to reject Thaksin’s claim that the assets he had registered with others had been an inadvertent error. Conveniently, there was no overlap in the two sets of dissenting votes (four each). It therefore became possible, “according to the conventions of the Court’s unusual voting system” (Hard-

126

THAI POLITICS

ing and Leyland 2011: 181), to add the four justices who supported Thaksin’s position in one ruling to those who did so in the other with the result that a majority of eight justices found in Thaksin’s favor and he stayed on in office (Klein 2003b: 70–74). Ultimately, Thaksin was brought down not by the courts but by a military coup in September 2006 (another coup brought down his lieutenants in 2014). However, the courts removed two governments installed by his supporters in 2008 (Thaksin was living abroad, having been sentenced to a two-year jail term in another court case). As the military-backed government set about writing a new constitution in 2007 before the return to elected governments, it turned to the courts in hopes of making the guardian institutions more impervious to Thaksin’s influence. Where the Senate had failed before, perhaps the courts, together with a half-appointed Senate, would do better. Many Thais, including some in the judiciary, were alarmed by what they saw as the politicization of the judiciary. The Constitutional Court, in particular, armed with new powers, was at the center of the Thai political contest after 2007. From the perspective of the charter drafters, however, they were successful. The courts and the partly unelected Senate, with a major assist from street protests, barred Thaksin from achieving his presumed goals—recovering his seized assets and returning to Thailand under a political amnesty. The 2007 constitution was in some respects, and from some perspectives, an improvement on the 1997 one. A number of citizen rights were strengthened further. The main goal of the constitution, however, was to try to prevent the rise of another figure like Thaksin able to concentrate enormous powers in his or her hands. The 2007 constitution strengthened the courts and accountability institutions’ supervisory powers and created a half-elected and half-selected Senate. The electoral system was changed in an effort to disadvantage Thaksin’s political parties. In addition, as noted above, institutions designed to ensure a degree of horizontal accountability were strengthened. The constitution created the Supreme Court Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions. This new court afforded only limited scope for appeals. The new Constitutional Court created in 2007 had the power to dissolve political parties.8 It, along with the Election Commission of Thailand, the Supreme and Administrative Courts, and the State Audit Commission, was involved in selecting half the members of the Senate. The Senate, for its part, played a central role in appointing people to the Election Commission of Thailand, the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman’s Office, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, and the National Human Rights Commission. In addition, the 2008 Internal Security Act granted the military extraordinary emergency powers, complementing an already bountiful array of oppressive legal instruments. Thailand’s “three different regimes of

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

127

exception” pushed toward “making the rule of law an exception” (Harding and Leyland 2011: 118). During the heightened political polarization that gripped Thailand after 2005, judges had several key royal audiences with King Bhumipol. The king regularly spoke to each new group of judges. These occasions and the king’s often elliptical remarks could be used to convey a more or less pointed political message. Perhaps the most famous audience that a group of judges had with the king came in the aftermath of the perplexing elections of April 2006.9 Amid constitutional paralysis, the king met with the country’s top judges and ordered them to untangle the Gordian knot, which they duly did. An ad hoc collection of judges from different courts convened, declared the elections void, new elections were scheduled, and Prime Minister Thaksin briefly withdrew from his post. Conclusion The challenges of building an effective and durable rule-of-law system in Thailand were daunting. The underlying principles rubbed against the fundamental grain of Thai social life. The gulf between Thailand’s informal and its formal legal institutions yawned wide. The Thai sense of moral obligation to those who helped them was “fundamentally antipathetic to . . . constitutionalism” (Leyland 2007: 156). Absent fundamental changes in Thai ideas about personal obligations, Thais might continue to be dependent on a good and powerful king (Wongtrangan 1990). Adding to the challenges that have confronted Thailand’s legal system this century has been the pace of political and institutional change. Through the end of the past century, elected governments were fragile and the concept of parliamentary sovereignty was far more an aspiration than a possible threat. Suddenly, with Thaksin’s election, parliament’s supremacy came to seem to some Thai elites a grave danger. He could use his money to win votes and to undermine accountability institutions, rendering them impotent. With control of parliament, he could amend the constitution at will. A jurist said in 1980 of the British political system, “Someone must be trusted. Let it be the judges” (quoted in The Economist 2010: 56). This might be seen as the choice made by the authors of Thailand’s 2007 constitution. Perhaps it would be more useful, however, to think in terms of countervailing powers. With one coalition rooting its power in parliament, a second coalition turned to other institutions, including the judiciary. The courts were used to box in Thaksin and his allies. Many observers decried the alleged undermining of the rule of law. Alarmingly, members of the Pheu Thai Party and many Red Shirts took to suggesting that they would refuse to abide by court rulings. They also indicated that they would amend the

128

THAI POLITICS

constitution to vitiate the courts and the accountability institutions (Crispin 2012). In response to one of the Pheu Thai Party’s efforts to create a fully elected Senate, the Constitutional Court blocked the initiative, voting against the bid on procedural grounds. It also, however, suggested that a fully elected Senate would undermine Thailand’s fragile system of checks and balances. This supposition was likely correct. After all, in the 2006 elections to the nonpartisan Senate, many of those elected were relatives of members of the cabinet, including Prime Minister Thaksin’s sister. A fully elected Senate hardly appeared likely to check the government effectively. It was striking, however, how far the court was prepared to take its reasoning in terms of constitutional intent. For now, Thailand is short of some of the cultural raw material likely to lend itself to strong impersonal institutions, including rule of law. It also is lacking the sort of elite political cohesion that might lend support to a gradually strengthening system of law. Partial reliance on the courts in the 2007 constitution to curb Thaksin’s powers was effective, but costly. As a result, the military government in power in 2016 seemed determined to rely less heavily on the courts in obstructing Thaksin’s ambitions. Ultimately, the 2014 military government’s first (and ultimately dropped) draft constitution resembled neither the 1997 nor the 2007 constitution. In the course of the latest round of constitution writing, some of the issues that engendered more heated debate included whether the new charter’s approval should be subject to a national referendum, the electoral system and whether the Senate would be partly or fully elected, whether prime ministers would have to be members of parliament, and whether and how the coup regime would sustain its influence after the return to elections. The failed draft accelerated the movement, clear in the 2007 charter, away from parliamentary supremacy. A wide range of measures was proposed in the latest draft constitution to curb the powers of elected leaders. The single most striking feature was inserted late in the drafting process. It proposed to create a National Committee on Reform and Reconciliation Strategy. The committee’s principal nominal responsibility would be for a five-year period to work to sustain the process of reform initiated by the coup government. The committee would include active and past legislative, military, and police leaders. It also would have positions for a past prime minister and a former Supreme Court president. Most critically, with a two-thirds vote among members of the committee, it would be empowered to take executive and legislative powers. The coup government described the measure as designed to eliminate the need in the event of future political emergencies for another military coup. It would be able to act in contexts in which formal, institutionally based power could not and in which, in the past, the king might have

RULE OF LORDS AND RULE OF LAW

129

intervened.10 The judiciary may well have welcomed the measure as a means of relieving them of some of their more political duties. This controversial measure ultimately helped doom the draft charter, but something comparable was likely to recur in the subsequent draft being composed during 2015–2016. In the prior two chapters, we examined the structure and context within which Thais engage in politics. In Chapter 6, we turn to Thai political actors—citizens, political parties, and government leaders—and the political institutions that link them. Chapter 5 focuses on one of the fuels on which citizens run—political information. Notes The title of this chapter is borrowed from Asian Human Rights Commission (2005). 1. Public confidence in the courts, as gauged by survey data, remained strong (above 70 percent) as of 2013 (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010−2014). 2. This prolonged reliance on foreign skills to staff key positions of state and legal institutions seems to be a testament to the Thais’ complacent approach to building institutions of state and law. 3. Since 2005, there have been more frequent calls to bring social sanctions to bear in the country’s political conflict and to engage in shunning of political opponents. As former prime minister Prem put it early in 2015, do not wai (standard gesture of greeting and expressing respect) dishonest politicians (TPBS 2015). 4. However, several years later, Thais not only indicated more confidence in the justice system than in other public institutions, but their assessments were more positive than those in many comparable (in terms of average incomes) countries (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010−2014). 5. Sarit’s wealth represented about 5 percent of Thailand’s then GDP. 6. The coup regime of 2014 signed on with the UK–World Bank Construction Sector Transparency Initiative, using the expansion of Suvannabhumi Airport as a pilot project (Kamnuansilpa and Draper 2015: 11). 7. Ammar Siamwalla refers to some of these programs as featuring “corruption with receipts, but without accounts.” Ammar Siamwalla, personal communication with the authors, June 3, 2014, Bangkok. 8. Article 237 of the 2007 constitution allowed the court to close down a political party if any of its executives had knowledge of election law violations committed by the party. 9. The elections had failed to fill all the seats in parliament and, legally, parliament could not meet until its seats were filled (this predicament was reprised in the February 2014 elections and meant that election boycotts by political parties might foil elections). In districts where members of parliament ran unopposed (due to the opposition boycott), candidates needed the votes of 20 percent of all registered voters in the district to secure a seat. Because, even after a second round of elections, the governing party failed to cross this threshold in a few districts, not all the seats of parliament were filled and parliament could not open for business. 10. The body might have played a role similar to that of the genrΩ, the elder statesmen who launched the Meiji Restoration in nineteenth-century Japan.

5 Politics Between the Lines

ities of their systems of public law, and the nature of their states. Where would analysts look for causes if, nonetheless, the character of democratic practice differed sharply in these two cases? One obvious place to look would be at the ways in which citizens grouped themselves (the salient political cleavages), the qualities of civil society, the nature and extent of political participation, the electoral and political party systems, the extent and character of political movements, and so on. We take these issues up in Chapter 6. This chapter looks elsewhere. Here, we examine Thais’ political awareness, their broad perceptions of the public realm and the nature of politics, and the ways in which they interpret politics and engage debates. We explore Thais’ styles of communications, in particular the ways that they fight (Chaisukkosol 2014: 17–18). Examining Thai interpretations of politics and deliberative styles makes sense given the low information content of much Thai political debate, the several respects in which Thai political rhetoric features poetry rather than prose, the poor quality of public deliberations, and the enchanted elements of many Thais’ general political worldviews. There are three other reasons for looking into how Thais use political information that relates to the political conflict that flowered in Thailand beginning in 2005. First, the conflict featured only fuzzy policy differences (procedural differences were more marked) between the opposed coalitions. Many of the critical divides were shaped by symbols and featured a clash of discourses (Chaisukkosol 2014: 11). The Thai political conflict was an information war waged over images. Second, notions of false consciousness—that one group of partisans or the other were dupes of manipulative elites—produced by the twisting of information featured prominently in political debates. Third, the political conflict allegedly was driven in subIMAGINE TWO SOCIETIES WITH LARGELY SIMILAR ECONOMIES, QUAL-

131

132

THAI POLITICS

stantial part by the fact that many Thais had only recently been awakened to the political realities around them, achieving new levels of political consciousness. Indeed, most observers would agree that many Thais’ political understandings had changed quite rapidly. Different assessments as to just how much Thais had changed fed into divergent interpretations of the conflict. The prominence of this theme of seeing things for what they are gave central places in several analyses to the metaphors of penetrating insight and of obliviousness (Gray 1991; Unger 2012; Marshall 2014). Political accountability depends on appropriately designed institutions. It also requires, particularly in republican understandings, civil society and media sufficiently robust to ensure that voters have access to enough information to do their jobs (Besley 2006: 36–37). James Madison believed in the importance of a well-informed citizenry. In support of the Kentucky legislature’s appropriation of education funding, he wrote that “a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives” (Madison 2000). John Stuart Mill suggested that “the people for whom the form of government is intended . . . must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it standing” (Mill, as quoted in Bratton and Mattes 2001: 447). For citizens to “do what is necessary,” they must understand the political conditions they confront. In Karl Marx’s view, a free press offers a “spiritual mirror in which a people contemplates itself, and self-contemplation is the first precondition of knowledge” (Sperber 2013: 87). Higher levels of functional literacy predict greater participation in associational activity. In “high-civic-literacy societies” such as those in Scandinavia, institutions contribute to and reinforce civic competence so that most “citizens have meaningful maps to guide them through the complexity of decisions that their community will face” (Milner 2002: 189). Thai citizens, however, often are not well informed about public concerns. They tend to employ crude stylized cognitive maps that serve only roughly as guides to the decisions their communities confront. Certainly, many Thai politicians are not much help. Often they address what would seem to be the country’s pressing concerns, if at all, only briefly and intermittently. Neither are the media strikingly supportive of informed reflective deliberations. In general, the media foster and sustain an outlook on politics stronger on intensity of experience and passion than on reflection (Bourdieu 1998: 2). They offer more theater, at times sanguinary, and less reasoned debate. Pierre Bourdieu worries that television had a “de facto monopoly on what goes into the heads of a significant part of the [French] population” (Bourdieu 1998: 18). Television tended to focus on “that which is most obvious, meaning individuals” (2). It aroused “the unbridled con-

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

133

structions of demagoguery . . . by catering to the most primitive drives” (52). Not only do more people in Thailand than in France rely overwhelmingly for their news on television, but the quality of reporting in Thailand is surely lower. Hence, Bourdieu’s concerns deserve our attention. Many of Thaksin Shinawatra’s critics had difficulty understanding why he received such strong electoral support. They assumed that voters with a civic sense would not be supporting Thaksin. Thaksin, after all, clearly was a bad man. Why were voters throwing in their lot with Thaksin rather than with good people? Was this simply a manifestation of popular needs for “a secular savior” promising lands of milk and honey? Were those needs so compelling “that some very unpromising material was transfigured into heroic status” (Blanning 2007: 176)? That so many voters did repeatedly support Thaksin’s parties was seen as evidence that populist policies blinded voters to Thaksin and his partners’ various political and policy sins. It also suggested to Thaksin opponents that many susceptible innocents had been dazzled, deluded, duped, and bamboozled by his effective control over the information they consumed. Such notions were not as fanciful as we might hope. In government, Thaksin could control broadcast media. Even out of government, he and his opponents were able to cater to their respective clients with highly partisan round-the-clock television news reporting from stations such as Voice TV, ASTV, and Blue Sky. These stations afforded ample opportunities for the sort of brainwashing associated with total immersion within cult-created environments. Although much less frequently, some Thais turned this brainwashing argument against the anti-Thaksin PDRC forces that began to mass late in 2013. In this version of the argument, Suthep Thaugsuban, the PDRC’s leader, manipulated his followers. In any case, many Thais did succumb to these immersion experiences. They recalled the political terrorist sketched by Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk who accounted for his motivation to kill: “I listen to Flag Radio all day long” (Pamuk 2004: 41). Some anti-Thaksin Thais believed that partisan media saturation worked in tandem with populist policies to secure Thaksin voters’ support. These critics concluded, therefore, that most Thais were not yet equipped with the skills or orientations necessary to make democratic politics yield good government. As noted in Chapter 1, doubts about the political capacities of the masses were widespread among European liberals in the nineteenth century. These liberals, knowing that they constituted minorities, feared the impact that universal male suffrage would have on the security of their property, and liberty more generally. Mill, for example, noted with some disdain that the votes of millions of French peasants had enabled Louis Napoleon to make himself emperor (cited in Fukuyama 2014: 418– 419). Comparable concerns are real enough in Thailand today. So some

134

THAI POLITICS

Thaksin opponents, despairing of defeating him at the polls, reached an Augustinian compromise: yes to democracy, but not quite yet. Nominal and no doubt quite sincere supporters of democracy saw full democracy in Thailand as at best a longer-term goal, one that must await some degree of political maturation among most Thais. Alexis de Tocqueville believed that he observed in the democratic United States early in the nineteenth century that the masses had a “faith in public opinion . . . [akin to] a species of religion” (quoted in Bramsted and Melhuish 1978: 578). If in France before 1789 the king could do no wrong, so it was in the United States with majority opinion. Mill also worried about rising conformity in a context in which the masses “now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things” (580). William Lecky worried that “the most ignorant classes” were most apt “to follow with an absolute devotion some strong leader” (1978: 619). Democracy would tend to undermine the love of liberty and offer “the spectacle of dishonest and predatory adventurers climbing by popular suffrage into positions of great power” (Bramsted and Melhuish 1978: 619). Many privileged early-nineteenth-century British observers viewed the popular violence associated with the Gordon Riots, which came in response to a bill that curbed some of the discriminatory regulation against Catholics, as evidence of “the dangers of letting the beast out of its cage” (Blanning 2007: 330). Many better-educated opponents of Thaksin entertain such concerns today, both in milder and more strident forms. In this chapter, we argue that Thai voters as a whole remain politically unsophisticated, meaning that politically they are not well informed. The notion that Thais generally are not politically sophisticated may seem to contradict observations that Thais grew increasingly well informed through involvement in political protests, elections, and exposure to political media in the context of political polarization. There may, however, be no contradiction. If many Thais were starting from a low-enough base, which seems plausible given the past nature of Thai politics, they might have grown far better informed than they were previously but still not all that well informed. It also was possible that Thais grew more interested and passionate about politics but were not necessarily all that much better informed. Or perhaps they were far more aware of the content of Thai political debates carried on by their leaders—rich in emotion, bravado, baseless accusations, and posturing—without gaining much political sophistication. There is some evidence that Thaksin’s supporters were less politically sophisticated than were his opponents (see below). This finding, if correct, would not be surprising given that, on average, these voters had less formal education. The findings do not imply that Thaksin supporters labored under false consciousness and knew not what they did in supporting him. After all, Thailand’s polarized political context offered abundant cues to voters

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

135

concerning their interests that even the most poorly informed could apply to their vote choices. Nonetheless, that voters embraced Thaksin so tenaciously despite his deep flaws encouraged reflection: Were many Thais so deeply excluded from Thai social and political life that they felt little need to demand much of their leaders beyond signals of respect and recognition, and an adequate flow of resources? Were there no other Thai leaders to whose cause less privileged Thais might have hitched their wagons? Why were other candidates and political parties not able to do more to compete with Thaksin and his political parties for the electoral support of voters in the north and northeast? Why did Thaksin’s followers allow their movement to be tied so closely to one man’s political fortunes? Our analysis in this chapter starts by exploring some of the theoretical issues raised by voters’ political ignorance, noting examples of how the concern with voters’ cognitive capacities influenced politics in various times and places around the world. We then discuss the evidence relating to Thais’ levels of political sophistication. Next, we consider possible explanations for modest Thai political information endowments. We examine the development and current nature of the mass media as well as the effects of state regulation of information. We then go on to suggest that features of common Thai outlooks and styles of discourse, beyond limited information endowments, tend to impoverish political deliberations. One of these features is the enduring grip of enchantment. Thai spirits and the reincarnated antagonists of past battles stride today’s political stage and, to some extent, may crowd out less charismatic actors and issues. Political commitments, when they clash, often are expressed and acted out with violence. Finally, we point to the implications of this analysis for an understanding of Thai politics. How Much Must Citizens Know? How much political knowledge must voters have if democracy is to be meaningful? Can it be meaningful if voters make choices based on extremely thin knowledge of political issues and conditions (Campbell and Converse 1980; Somin 1998)? The alleged ignorance of voters who are less educated or without property lay at the heart of many struggles between democrats and liberals in nineteenth-century Europe over expanding the franchise. Europe’s liberals prized legal protections for their property as well as forms of deliberative parliamentary government. Democrats emphasized full political participation. They wanted the vote. Liberal elites worried that the multitudes would not be up to the task of protecting recently realized liberties but would be willing dupes to demagogues. Further, political parties mobilizing would-be voters, and legislatures filled with work-

136

THAI POLITICS

ing-class members loyal to their parties, would undermine legislatures’ deliberative qualities. Arguments about the quality of Thai voters predate Thaksin in that many better-educated Thais long resented the pervasive roles of vote and candidate buying, particularly in rural elections. Election outcomes, alleged the critics, turned on money rather than principled policy differences (McCargo 1997: 120–121). Venal politicians without broad policy commitments regularly enjoyed electoral success. Thais voted as clients rather than as citizens. In contexts of political clientelism, as in Thailand, clients awarded patrons with votes in exchange for discrete favors rather than policy promises. Politicians could be returned to office without doing much to address broad and pressing public needs. This was true in Thailand as it was in much of Portugal and Spain in the nineteenth century (Costa Pinto and Tavares de Almeida 2000: 12). Further, politicians’ large vote-buying investments in gaining office ensured that they would need to troll for financial returns once there. Vote buying fed corruption. With Thaksin, things were different. He promised and delivered popular policies. Many voters came to believe in the potency of the ballet box. For his critics, the concern no longer was only with direct vote buying, which declined in impact in many districts, but also with an indirect populist form of it. That Thaksin’s “indirect vote buying” via popular programs might constitute democratic responsiveness, if only an immature form of it (Fukuyama 2014: 6), eluded many critics. These anxious Thais endorsed Niccolò Machiavelli’s view that “men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes” (Machiavelli, as quoted in Maravall 1999: 158). Many Thai conservatives, and many progressives, saw poor Thais as steeped in traditional outlooks and politically immature. They did not believe that poor Thai voters had undergone a shift from a traditional to a modern sensibility, that they voted as moral agents (as citizens) rather than as clients (Sennett 2003: 217). Many Red Shirts, for their part, believed that their opponents were enmeshed in feudal patterns of thought that granted greater authority and value to the concerns of some, allegedly good, citizens than to those of others. Robert Michels argues that it was in part due to the “incompetence of the masses” that his iron law of oligarchy operated (quoted in Lipset, Trow, and Coleman 1956: 405). Nikolai Bukharin, however, believed Michels’s law no longer would hold once access to information was spread more evenly (cited in Lipset, Trow, and Coleman 1956: 405). Mill held that, once workers were able to read and had access to political information and competing opinions, they quickly would clamor for the vote (cited in Bendix 2001: 100). However, Mill was a typical liberal in his unease at the prospect of extending suffrage to those not prepared to exercise their

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

137

responsibilities. Indeed, Mill believed the solution might be to give multiple votes to the educated (or propertied),1 for only they could be trusted to protect citizens’ liberties. He also believed, however, that given time those with little education could learn to vote as responsible citizens (cited in Przeworski 2003: 118). In sum, democracy long has appeared to many liberals as a potentially dangerous doctrine, particularly hazardous when manipulated by ambitious and unscrupulous leaders. Many Thai liberals saw Thaksin’s expansion of populist programs as evidence that he was buying electoral support. Thitinan Pongsudirak stood for the views of many when he argued on the eve of the 2006 coup that Thaksin did not represent “genuine democracy,” which involved “nuance” and had “to be contextualized.” Therefore, seeking to oust him by clamoring in the streets was not necessarily unacceptable (quoted in Mydans 2006). These views would come under sustained attack by Thaksin’s champions. Thaksin’s supporters rejected the suggestion that most Thai voters were so unsophisticated that they could not spot their own interests. They argued that less educated Thais, far from being dupes, no longer were ready to be taken in by traditional elites (Fullbrook 2012: 134–135). Overnight, Thais began to use the terms ammat and phrai, designations from Thailand’s sakdina (feudal-like) past to refer, respectively, to the entrenched upper reaches of society and politics who were dominant in the era before Thaksin, on the one hand, and the rest of Thai society, on the other. The apparent resonance of this vocabulary, for a time, seemed to attest that indeed some kind of fairly fundamental political awakening was afoot in Thailand. Many Thais referred to having had their “eyes enlightened” (taa sawang, or seeing the light). Extensive mass mobilization seemed to substantiate the perception that Thais were changing fast.2 Democracy threatens rule by the ignorant mob, led by demagogues who would use the support of the masses in battle against their elite counterparts. The more intense and entrenched the elite opposition, the stronger the incentives for the insurgent leader to organize a mass base (K. M. Roberts 2006). Liberals often are unable to speak a political language that appeals to newly mobilized voters. These liberals often are not good at keeping the message simple. Gregory M. Luebbert, in an analysis that later would be echoed in Anek Laothamatas’s analysis of “two Thailands,” noted cases in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Europe in which peasants and urban liberals inhabited “two social worlds.” Denmark’s National Liberals, made up of what in Thailand today could be described as “good people,” attracted academics and cosmopolitans and were derided as the “Professors’ Party” by many others. These Nationalists “assumed their right to rule on the basis of their superior education and culture, their broader intellectual horizons, and their association with the leading ideas of the times.”

138

THAI POLITICS

As a result, they were unable to communicate effectively with peasant voters (1991: 75). Luebbert further notes, “This good breeding, which the Nationalists assumed was their main qualification for power, was in reality the main barrier to their leading the people they wanted to lead. No matter how hard they tried to overcome it, they always generated mistrust and suspicion among rural inhabitants” (75). Some observers saw Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of Thailand’s Democrat Party since 2005, as suffering some of these same disabilities (e.g., Parry 2014).3 So just how well informed are most Thai voters? Thais’ responses in opinion and behavior surveys suggest a considerable interest in politics. For example, looking at World Values Survey data and comparing Thai responses with those in eleven other countries,4 Thais ranked top in their declared interest in politics: 73.6 percent of Thais avowed interest against 48.9 percent in Brazil, 43.6 percent in India, 36.1 percent in Indonesia, 34 percent in Malaysia, and 21.8 percent in Peru (World Values Survey, Wave 5, 2005−2008). Asian Barometer Survey data also suggest comparatively strong Thai interest in politics (second only to Vietnam; Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 3, 2010−2012). These findings of Thais’ strong interest in politics, however, do not necessarily indicate knowledge about politics. In fact, generally speaking, self-reported levels of interest in politics do not predict knowledge of politics (Milner 2002: 38–39). Thais’ knowledge, as measured by the numbers of respondents who had heard of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Electoral Commission was comparatively low (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2010). As already noted, it may not be puzzling if Thais are both interested in politics and know relatively little about the topic. If political speech and theater in Thailand, as argued below, largely give voice to politicians’ bravado and scope for spirits’ whims, it may indeed excite interest in voters without educating them. Thais’ Political Knowledge

We have not discovered much of the sort of comparative data we would like to have on Thais’ levels of political sophistication. Therefore, in this analysis we make use of data assessing Thais’ general levels of cognitive skills and knowledge, in addition to more directly assessing levels of political sophistication. Our discussion begins with the Thai education system and how Thais perform in international comparisons on standardized tests. The Thai government spends generously on education as measured as a share of GDP (4–5 percent) and as a share of total government spending (24 percent) (World Bank 2016). Thailand also looks fairly good in terms of comparative data on teacher-student ratios, hours of instruction, and

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

139

increases in teacher pay (Siamwalla 2012: 7). Substantial spending and long hours, however, may not be used efficiently. The NESDB reported that 60 percent of Thai teachers “underperform.” Perhaps spending on secondary education is too limited: 1.13 percent of GDP, well below the 1.86 percent average for countries at comparative economic development levels (cited in UNDP 2009: 14). The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests assess skills around the world among fifteen-year-olds in reading, math, and science. In 2009, students in sixty-five countries were tested and overall Thailand ranked fifty, on a par with Mexico and Romania, and above Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, and Tunisia. Thais’ average reading score put them almost three school years ahead of Kyrgyzstan, and about as far behind Korea, Finland, or Shanghai, or almost two years behind the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. In math and science, the numbers were not much different (PISA 2009). Thai students’ reading skills in reflection and evaluation, and integration and interpretation, were particularly weak. Perhaps this is not surprising as anecdotes and observation suggest that Thais read rather little. The National Statistical Office found in 2012 that Thai children read on average two to five books a year, against fifty to sixty by children in Singapore and Vietnam (cited in Aberin and Saenwan 2013: 11). The Office of the Basic Education Commission found that one-quarter of rural children in third grade were illiterate (cited in Aberin and Saenwan 2013: 11). According to the PISA website, students whose reading skills fall below the second level (of a possible six) on the PISA tests tended to have trouble handling basic information or interpreting it. About 43 percent of Thai students fell below that level. At the top of the scale, students who achieve reading skills at the fifth or sixth levels can evaluate arguments, derive hypotheses, and understand material that flies in the face of their expectations. Even in the topscoring locales such as Singapore and Shanghai, only about 15 percent of students achieved such skills. Only 0.3 percent of Thai students had skills at level five, (statistically) none at level six. Looking at patterns of scores within Thailand, the gap in reading scores between those Thai children from privileged backgrounds and those from disadvantaged ones was huge—the equivalent of about four years of schooling. Despite fairly high levels of government spending on education, Thais registered few gains over the past decade (PISA 2009). Thai voters’ specific political knowledge apparently was also limited. Knowledge about public affairs implies that a person is able to recognize the names of important people and institutions. A 2005–2006 survey asked Thai respondents whether they knew who or what were the following: Anand Panyarachun (twice prime minister of Thailand); Prawase Wasi

140

THAI POLITICS

(respected and prominent social critic and Magsaysay Award recipient); and the National Counter Corruption Commission (Punyaratabandhu 2007).5 Only 9.6 percent of respondents reported not recognizing any of the names, 39.4 percent recognized one name, 27.1 percent recognized two names, and 23.9 percent recognized all of them. Name recognition was positively associated with frequency of newspaper readership: 44.9 percent of those who read newspapers on a daily basis (a tiny share of the total) recognized all names, as opposed to 9.2 percent of those who never read newspapers. People who disproportionately relied on television rather than newspapers for their news knew less, were less educated, and were more rural. Levels of political sophistication among Thais are not high. How do we account for those modest levels? In the discussion below, we consider the ways in which the Thai state limits the flow of political information. First, however, we examine the nature of Thai mass media.

Structuring Political Information Flows Development of Mass Media in Thailand

When Ayutthaya king Narai’s second embassy to the court of Louis XIV toured local sites in France in the late seventeenth century, they were shown printing presses and Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic types. One Thai ambassador wondered if it were possible to make Thai letters for a printing house in Thailand (Van der Cruysse 2002: 383). Alas, that curiosity produced no results. Thailand would not have its first Thai language press for another 150 years. Long after that first press arrived, the Thai newspaper industry’s circulation remained small. A British captain with the East India Company (Smithies 1995: 124– 125) developed the first Thai printing types in 1828 and an American missionary brought the first printing press to Thailand in 1836 (Thailand Official Yearbook 1968: 451). The missionary’s press produced the first Thai language grammar for foreigners, which also was the first book printed in Thailand. Another American, Dan Reach Bradley, devised new types in 1837 that the Thai government used, together with one of his presses, in 1839 to print a proclamation banning opium and to print the Royal Gazette in 1858 (a second issue did not appear until 1876). Bradley also printed the first Thai newspaper, the Bangkok Recorder, which appeared fortnightly in both Thai and English in 1844 (Thailand Official Yearbook 1968: 451–454). By the mid-1960s there were seventeen dailies, all of them based in Bangkok. About fifty provincial papers carried a bit of local news and generally came out every ten days, coinciding with lottery results. The Bangkok papers had a combined circulation of around 700,000,6 about one

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

141

newspaper for every forty-three Thais (Thailand Official Yearbook 1968: 453–455). By comparison, in 1913 Germany’s daily newspaper circulation was 16 million, with the most successful selling about a million copies (Blom 2008: 317). Germany’s newspaper-to-population ratio then was about ten times greater than Thailand’s in the mid-1960s, by which time a large majority of Thais could read (early-twentieth-century Germans, unlike Thais in the 1960s, did not have radios).7 The total circulation for Chinese language newspapers in Thailand, serving probably less than 10 percent of the population, was about equal to that of the Thai language papers (Thailand Official Yearbook 1968: 454–459). As of 2010 there were twenty-five national newspapers, twenty of them in Thai (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2010: 6). Survey data suggest that in 2005–2006 about 2 million (around 3.5 percent) Thais relied primarily on newspapers to obtain news (Punyaratabandhu 2007). A different survey reported that, while 31 percent of Thais never read a paper and only 5 percent relied on newspapers as their first source of political news, 35 percent indicated it was their second source of political news (Asia Foundation 2011). The press in general clearly was of more than minor political importance by the 1970s. Many newspapers had overt political alliances. Former prime ministers Kukrit Pramoj, Samak Sunthornwej, and Chavalit Yongchaiyudh operated or had links to Siam Rath, the Daily Mirror, and Naew Na, respectively. Matichon, Thailand’s relatively highbrow newspaper, was founded in 1977. Sondhi Limthongkul launched Phujatkan, a business daily, in the 1980s (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 221). In the late 1980s, military officers attempted to take over Matichon (Phongpaichit and Baker 2002: 370–371). Thaksin and his allies made similar forays, not all of them successful, after he came to power in 2001. Following the May 2010 violence, the Abhisit government made media reform, at least nominally, one of the government’s central goals.8 Many government figures believed that street protesters who called for new elections in 2010 had been brainwashed by a concerted campaign of war media. Cynical media manipulation, worried many Thais, was fomenting the country’s deep divisions and violence. As Prime Minister Abhisit commented while in New York City, “I’m not sure any democracy allows broadcasts of people actually offering rewards if you go and kill the prime minister or if you go and kill other people” (Committee to Protect Journalists 2010). The prime minister was not being hyperbolic, though most of the time Red Shirt media did not reach these extremes. Not infrequently, however, it was not so far distant in tone. Public speech from the rally stages of Thaksin’s opponents seemed, on balance, more tame. It too, however, featured extensive dehumanization of the opposition, other forms of hate speech, and echoes of violence.

142

THAI POLITICS

Broadcast Media

If the press had some history of independence, the same could not be said of radio and television in Thailand. This was important because the vast majority of Thais got their political information from television, though community radio began to play an important role early in this century. Until the 1990s, all television and radio stations were operated or licensed by parts of the Thai government (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 223). In 2010, there were 524 radio stations (as well as some 8,000 community radio stations; Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2010: 6). The Thai Television Company launched the first Thai (and Asian) television station in 1955. By the late 1960s, about a dozen government departments were broadcasting (Thailand Official Yearbook 1968: 462–469). By the mid-1990s, 90 percent of rural households had televisions (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005: 222–223). Perhaps only 15 percent subscribed to cable broadcasts in 2010, fewer than those who had access to the Internet. State agencies controlled close to half of radio and a third of free-to-air television stations, many of those held by the armed forces (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2010: 6). A push to create more independent sources of television news came in part as a result of the absence of any coverage in 1992 of the demonstrations against the new Suchinda Kraprayoon government (G. Lewis 2002: 185). In 1996 iTV was launched and briefly boosted standards, particularly for investigative reporting (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 149). iTV encountered financial problems following the 1997 economic crisis, and in 2000 Thaksin’s business empire gained a controlling interest. Thailand’s experiment with a new sort of television news broadcast went on hold. Under new management, its investigative journalism diminished and a score of journalists were fired. One program producer lost a range of contracts when it tried to air a program about the Constitutional Court’s controversial ruling on Thaksin (Chapter 4). News content contracted in favor of entertainment. Once Thaksin was prime minister, radio programs also came under more careful government control (G. Lewis 2002: 179–182). The Thaksin government worked hard to block opposition in the media, using various means. The most effective of these was the manipulation of advertising budgets. The government also probed the financial records of people associated with one of the few Thai newspapers that was able to resist the government’s intimidation (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 152–154). The government pushed aside independent commentators on government-run stations. It tried to amend the Official Information Act and to control the formation of the proposed National Broadcasting Commission (2004: 149–150).

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

143

Thaksin was the first Thai political leader since Phibun Songkhram in the 1950s to aggressively exploit the potential of broadcast communications (Wyatt 2003: 242–244; Reynolds 2006: 250), and the first to make effective use of television. Until the elections of 1995, political advertising on television was barred. Thaksin’s capacity to use television to gain votes and to control his party’s message facilitated the Thai Rak Thai’s fortunes and his central control over the party (Nogsuan 2006: 131–134). As prime minister, Thaksin had a regular Saturday morning radio show. His government devoted large budgets to promoting the government’s policies and achievements. In addition to his links to iTV, one of his cabinet ministers owned Channel 3. The family of Suriya Jungrungruangkit, secretary-general of the Thai Rak Thai, bought up a 20 percent stake in Nation Multimedia. A public outcry stopped an effort to gain control of this rare remaining outpost of independent media in Thailand. With the vast majority of Thais heavily dependent on television for their political information, and most television in the hands of government agencies or ruling politicians, the Thaksin government was favorably positioned to control its message and muzzle opposition. In this context, the emergence of cable television outlets not under government control proved crucial. Sondhi established ASTV in 2003 and, following a business falling out with the prime minister, began to use it as a tool against him in 2005. Sondhi was in a powerful position as one privy to information that normally did not find its way to the public. He told tales and soon was entangled with antidefamation charges. Media criticism of Thaksin was growing, and Thaksin was losing his grip over what information and interpretations were reaching people. ASTV helped to create and sustain a street movement opposed to the prime minister. Sondhi introduced novel techniques in the political information war such as round-the-clock coverage of political protests. These techniques were later adopted by ASTV’s nemesis, the UDD with its Voice TV. The Democrat Party, out of power following elections in 2011, began to use a newly launched station, Blue Sky, as its media vehicle. Control over information had emerged in Thailand as a key front in competition among political parties and political movements. Community radio was another critical information resource deployed by Thaksin’s supporters. Community radio got its start in Thailand as a result of Article 40 of the 1997 constitution. With the help of large flows of foreign assistance that followed that year’s economic collapse, a variety of NGOs worked to train local communities in operating radio stations. Many communities received radio transmitters for this purpose. Together with other necessary investments, these stations could be established for between $2,000

144

THAI POLITICS

and $5,000 (Thongnoi 2014: 6–7). The Thaksin government tried unsuccessfully to bring community radio under the control of its Public Relations Office. Once Thaksin was out of power, community radio would become a key tool of support for his movement. Community radio stations broadcast in local dialects, adding to their appeal. The Democrat Party–led coalition government that came to power at the end of 2008 gave much attention to community radio stations as it tried to demobilize opposition and to quell speech that promoted hatred and incited violence. Community radio developed into a highly diverse movement, with some stations featuring a pronounced roughneck style of politics. The Internet and social media began to have more of an impact on Thai politics by the time of the sharp clashes between Red Shirts and the military in 2009. Former prime minister Thaksin was an enthusiastic user of a variety of media to keep in touch with his base while he was forced to stay abroad, beyond the reach of Thai law. While the Manager website was popular, it catered largely to its Yellow Shirt supporters. The Prachathai website was an unusually independent source of political information. Social media gained some notoriety for the witch hunt atmosphere generated among Yellow Shirt followers as they vilified anyone articulating views they rejected (Media Monitor 2013). By late 2013 when still another round of political protests got under way, social media probably contributed to the high turnout among younger Thais (Thais are among the world’s most intensive Facebook users; Manjoo 2015: 8). Social media’s lack of accountability prompted concerns as did the political tribalism that it encouraged. Observers began to ask if Thailand’s passionate politics might be in part technological products (Panyalimpanun 2015). Ironically, the 2006 coup government’s National Legislative Assembly (2006–2007) hoped to prevent the kinds of abuse of the media that had become common while Thaksin was in power. It passed a number of important pieces of legislation and enabled the launch of Thai Public Broadcasting Service (TPBS), a rare bright spot in Thai television journalism (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2010). It also, however, passed the Computer Crimes Act in 2007, which more than balanced the good done by the other bits of legislation. As more and more content critical of the monarchy reached the Internet, the coup government censored access to hundreds of thousands of (mostly pornographic) web pages. Successor governments— the Democrat-led coalition, the subsequent Pheu Thai government, and the coup government established in 2014—continued to do the same. Between concerns to stifle criticism of the monarchy, to limit hate speech inciting violence, and to limit the protesters’ use of the media to mobilize participation, governments deployed an array of repressive measures. These included the Computer Crimes Act and the Internal Security Act of 2007, the Emergency Decree of 2005, as well as older measures (defamation and

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

145

lèse-majesté bills) to stifle political speech. Then, in 2014, came martial law followed by a coup, affording more extensive controls. Quality of Media

Even the higher-quality newspapers in Thailand relatively seldom featured probing analyses and they frequently failed to report the news clearly. Most Thai journalists, perhaps driven by cost pressures, seemed to do little in-depth research or to provide much historical backdrop to their stories. As political polarization escalated in Thailand from 2005, newspapers tended to become increasingly and overtly partisan. The press delighted in predicting an imminent political cataclysm. They reported not so much the horse race elements of politics as its beer brawl facets. As ever more partisan coverage took to satellite and cable broadcasts, the Internet, and community radio, and as social media made deeper inroads, inevitably the competitive pressures on mainstream media to offer more of a thrill intensified. While the political neutrality of mainstream political reporting probably rose after 2010, investigative reporting or analyses devoted to exploring deeper roots of social problems in Thailand remained rare. One commentator observed that the media had grown tame, no longer disposed to confront the powerful with “awkward questions” or to insist on answers (Ungpakorn 2011a: 11). With backing from the Thai Health Foundation, Somkiat Tangkitvanich of the Thailand Development Research Institute helped to establish Media Monitor, Thailand’s first watchdog charged with tracking the performance of the mass media.9 Media Monitor found that none of the broadcast stations offered much in the way of investigative reports. They tended to open (in 2005) with the Thaksin government position on whatever issue they were reporting, deferring critical commentary until later in their programs. All stations lacked balance and depended heavily on government sources. They provided little voice to civil society. In Thailand, traditional media reflect the views of elites, whether those in government or tied to the opposition. It seems clear that the media does less than it could to boost Thais’ levels of political awareness or to encourage critical reflection. The media tend not to nudge Thai voters to go beyond reliance in making their vote choices on the simplest cognitive cues and, perhaps more often, on a variety of emotional ones. Certainly, Thai journalism tends to eschew attention to underlying structural forces in favor of individual experience and conflicts among individuals (Bourdieu 1998: 53). The newer twenty-four-hour news broadcasts have added to these problems with unbalanced reporting and an apparently addictive quality that submerges many participants within the highly partisan worldviews they retail. However, it should be emphasized that this rather dismal por-

146

THAI POLITICS

trayal represented a great leap forward relative to the era (until a few years into this century) when most Thais were captives of Thai government-run television broadcasting. Censorship

Governments everywhere long have understood the potential power afforded by control over information. It did not take long, for example, for holders of political power to fear the power of the new printing technology that helped to unleash savage religious and political conflict in Europe in the sixteenth century. The king of France at that time barred printers from assembling, forming associations, or holding banquets (Lipset, Trow, and Coleman 1956: 27). Lèse-majesté laws have been in effect in Thailand since 1908, and twice were revised. Only more recently did they begin to have dramatic and debilitating consequences. The current law’s most egregious feature allows anyone to bring lèse-majesté charges.10 This helps to account for widespread abuse and politicization of the law. The law also dispenses harsh criminal penalties, with up to fifteen years imprisonment. There is no requirement to show intent to criticize to be found guilty. The lèsemajesté law gained more attention after 2005 as a result of the Internet as well as a growing tendency to refer more explicitly and publicly to the political roles played by actors tied to the institution of the monarchy. As a result of these changes, and of political polarization, there was a sharp rise in lèse-majesté cases. Open and absurd use of the law for narrow political purposes also increased with grave results in some cases for the individuals affected as well as for the institution of monarchy and Thailand more generally. In April 2011, the UDD held a rally in Bangkok. In response to some of the speeches delivered at the rally, army leaders called for the filing of lèse-majesté complaints. One of the UDD leaders, in turn, threatened to file charges against members of the Privy Council and others (Thip-Osod 2011: 3; Nanuam 2011: 3). Such barrages of threats and counterthreats are not rare. Only those who attended the rallies are likely to know what was said to stir the excitement. The impact of the èse-majesté law is considerable. People tend to argue that a wide range of events is in some way or another linked with one facet or another of the palace. In referring to any one of these, discussions must be exceedingly circumspect. Through self-censorship, therefore, the law muffles public discussion of key issues of public policy and politics. It produces, suggests David Streckfuss, “a black hole of silence in the center of the body politic” (Streckfuss, as quoted in Marshall 2014: 6). The indiscriminate use of the law against both sober commentary as well as more

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

147

aggressive criticism brought increasing and unwelcome international attention following the 2006 coup. Defamation laws also are fairly draconian—they threaten imprisonment—and help to curb the supply of political information. They use a system of collective responsibility so that those not directly involved can be subject to penalties. Parties may be liable to defamation suits even for statements in letters or e-mails (Article 19 2009). The law places the burden of proving the truth of a statement on the party making it, even in cases where public interests are at stake. Even if a person believes a statement to be true, if it turns out to be false and results in damage, a defamation suit is possible. Advocates of reform in the law contended that it violated Articles 39 and 41 of the 1997 constitution as well as comparable statutes in the 2007 constitution (Article 19 2009: 1). Still another law that impedes political speech is that regarding contempt of court charges. Politicians wrangling with one another make frequent use of defamation and lèse-majesté laws. Thaksin brought suit against the Democrat Party and three newspapers for characterizing him as a “blood-sucking demon” (phi pob) returning to politics to haunt the country (Voice of America 2006). His government brought defamation charges against Supinya Klangnarong, secretary-general of the Campaign for Popular Media Reform, and Thai Post for claiming that Thaksin’s Shin Corporation had benefited during his tenure as prime minister. In this case, the Criminal Court in 2005 ruled against the government, suggesting that the reporters “were honestly expressing an opinion . . . for the benefit of the public, which is something that a citizen can do.” Sutichai Yoon, former editor of The Nation and a champion of the old liberal establishment, characterized the ruling as “a beautiful statement” (The Nation 2006: 31). In 2015, the US government directed attention to Thailand’s defamation law. In its Trafficking in Persons report it suggested that “fear of defamation suits or retaliation also likely discouraged journalists from reporting and law enforcement officials from pursuing trafficking cases” (Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 2015). Given the wide swath cut by the defamation and lèse-majesté laws, it is reasonable to see them as cornerstones of Thailand’s poor-quality public discussions, the media’s inattention to key public issues, the opacity of much public discussion, and general elite impunity. There is no question but that the laws’ effects are stultifying and, in the case of the lèse-majesté law, damaging to the institution it was designed to protect. Nonetheless, these laws alone do not account for the opaque qualities of Thailand’s public discourse. After scores died in political violence in 2010, there were few indications that Thais would learn what happened or why, much less that those responsible would be held accountable. There was, in short, no satisfactory public accounting. Why? Was the military concerned to conceal the

148

THAI POLITICS

extent to which it was riven by divisions? Thais headed for the polls in 2011 without any real understanding of these shocking events from the prior year. In this case, it was not obvious that the lack of a public accounting had anything to do with the lèse-majesté or defamation laws. In any case, intimidation often was successful in cowing the press, and public discussion in general. After surviving a dramatic assassination attempt in 2009, Sondhi, in an artful display of indirection that danced around any direct charges, seemed to finger General Anupong Paochinda, army chief of staff, among others, as being behind the assault. In reply, the general proved equally adept at covering his bases: “I will exercise my legal right against whoever tries to implicate me. Sondhi will be held responsible for what he says, as will the media that publishes articles reporting what he did not say” (The Nation 2009). Draconian media controls do not arouse widespread opposition in Thailand. Thais are not great champions of freedom of expression. Survey data from 2005 to 2006 found that Thais endorsed government controls over the press.11 Forty-two percent agreed or agreed strongly that the government should control the press and only 27 percent totally disagreed (Punyaratabandhu 2007). A National Institute of Development Administration national poll in March 2012 found that over three-fifths of respondents felt that the level of media freedom in the country was adequate and nearly one-quarter saw it as excessive (Bangkok Post 2012a: 2). After the 2014 coup, the military imposed extensive controls on media. Most of the mainstream media remained relatively free to criticize the military government, but community radio and partisan news outlets came under tight regulation. The military government seemed unconcerned that it might be losing capacities to monitor sentiment in society or foreclosing the potential for political reconciliation. Deliberations Deliberations involve public discussions that afford all affected parties equal opportunities to participate. All participants should be regarded as if, and should be in fact reasonably well, or at least reasonably equally, informed (Gray notes that these conditions often do not obtain in Thai contexts [1991: 44–48]). Discussions should be rational and civil (Shapiro et al. 1991). Deliberations enable the “public reason” that is “characteristic of a democratic people” (Rawls 2005: 212, 224). If higher-quality deliberations (those that are more inclusive and consequential) are associated with higher-quality democracies (Dryzek 2008), this indicator does not reflect well on Thailand’s version of democracy. Thai deliberations suffer from a number of causes. Most Thais have inadequate access to quality information, status tends to trump arguments,

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

149

and the state regulates information flows aggressively. Many political groups and individuals are intolerant, not disposed to give a hearing to opposing arguments, and prone to try to intimidate opponents. Often, “opinionated opinion” is pervasive (Sunstein 2013). Most individuals, however, shy away from open or sharp disagreements on political issues in face-to-face contexts.12 While explaining Pheu Thai’s decision not to have its nominal leader Yingluck Shinawatra participate in a televised debate with the sitting prime minister prior to elections, the deputy party leader asked: “How can we put in place reconciliation in this country if we let people argue or quarrel in front of the public?” (Bangkok Post 2011: 3). Thais, of course, are not alone in bemoaning the quality of their public political discourse. In his State of the Union speech in 2016, President Barack Obama expressed concern that “democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise; or when even basic facts are contested” (Bangkok Post 2016c: 1). In characterizing political deliberations in Italy, Diego Gambetta suggests the minority who followed public affairs tended to be bullying, opinionated, and aggressive. It was not easy to distinguish arguments based on pride from those based on reason. Tough bargaining coincided with inspirational rhetoric and together these drove “serious discussion on principles out of public life.” He laments that television fit this style of deliberations as politicians could be “entertaining, make exalted statements, avoid subtle distinctions, and squabble with one another theatrically” (Gambetta 1998: 35, 40). A description of styles of public speech in Hungary notes frequent use of declarative speech, rhetorical flamboyance and hyperbole, monologues with little inclination to dialogue or compromise, and tendencies to be more expressive than thoughtful (Lukacs 1988: 109–110). These descriptions of public political speech in Italy and Hungary fit much of the political speech in Thailand rather well. We might add that Thai public speech often tends to have the didactic qualities we expect when a superior shares wisdom with an inferior (Chaisukkosol 2014: 15). Further, it can seem that feelings of loyalty and of “idol worship and personality cult” contribute to “us against them” intransigence (Rithdee 2016: 9). Christine Gray’s analysis of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand suggests Thailand was ill-suited to inclusive deliberations. The traditional Buddhist ontology emphasized moral truths that tend to be concealed at the visible surface. The “opacity principle” (Gray 1991: 48) dictated that only the Buddhist virtuoso was able to penetrate these illusive surfaces to “hidden moral causes” (45). These deeper truths were not legible to those of inauspicious birth. Exemplary silences of the wise combine with the coerced silences of the rest “to inhibit awareness of change, to keep threatening shifts in the socio-economic order at the margins of intelligibility” (44). Gray suggests that silences and ambiguities contributed to the effectiveness of Theravada’s official language. This language was based

150

THAI POLITICS

most fundamentally on sacred images and, by comparison, devalued ordinary speech (45–46). Gray’s analysis points to the primacy of at least some visual images over speech, suggesting to us that the impact of television in Thailand could be particularly powerful. The mass media everywhere now occupy the center of the political stage, often elbowing aside political parties and other institutions of civil and political society. The mass media is implicated in the manufacture of the “political spectacles” of our time (Waisbord 2006: 279). The increasingly central role of electronic media and communications and the tendency for audiences to sort themselves by their partisan passions may further retard deliberative political discussions in Thailand. Parliaments can serve as deliberative bodies (Burke 1982; Elster 1999). In Thailand, however, parliamentary debates typically are of low quality. Their debates generally do not seem to resonate outside of their chambers, particularly in the context of the polarization of Thai politics. In that context, Thailand experienced a great deal of street politics and relatively little helpful debate in parliament. When street opposition against Thaksin began to grow in 2005, opposition leader Abhisit appealed to the prime minister to allow a censure motion as a means of bringing the political debate back into parliament. The opposition, short of 25 percent of the seats in parliament, could not compel the move. Thaksin instead sought a new electoral mandate and dissolved parliament. The Democrats and other opposition parties boycotted the election and a coup eventually followed. Since that time, street politics established a more central place in Thailand. Threats to unleash new rounds of street politics now were used to nudge decisions in parliament. Street politics in Thailand tend to become effective (forcing changes in governments) only when prolonged, disruptive, and, in particular, bloody. In response to huge PDRC turnouts on the streets late in 2013, Prime Minister Yingluck’s government withdrew plans to amend the constitution and to push through an amnesty bill. The more prominent role of the street relative to parliament as an arena for political contest had previously been brought home to Thais in 2010 when opposition leader Chalerm Yubamrung put off a no-confidence motion that he had planned to launch against the government in parliament. The government’s mistakes were too grievous to be addressed in the House, he suggested (The Nation 2010b). He opted for the delay to avoid distracting attention from what he described as the more critical street demonstrations then ongoing that also aimed at bringing down the government. Of course, it also mattered that Thaksin, presumably with his eye on long-term political strategy, had called from abroad to order the motion be put off (Bangkok Post 2010a: 3). In 2012, the Democrat Party disrupted parliament while its allies on the street blocked access to legislators, all in efforts to prevent amendments to

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

151

the 2007 constitution. In 2013, the Democrats, long having kept aloof from street politics, took partial ownership of their own street rally. The following year, they again boycotted elections to lend support to the street-based opposition movement. Many studies of Thais’ political culture conclude that Thais are not comfortable hearing political views they oppose. One Thai analyst urged changes in child-rearing practices so that Thais would be better equipped to manage political debates. A group of political scientists at Chulalongkorn University in the 1970s found among both Thais oriented to democracy as well as those supporting authoritarian rule “widespread antagonism to opposed viewpoints,” limited rationality, and heavy reliance on superstition and fate (Connors 2007: 72). Other studies have pointed to Thai difficulties in making political compromises (80). Anek Laothamatas argues that it was necessary to foster among rural poor voters civility and a willingness to listen, learn, and share (cited in Connors 2007: 202). The Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand (TRCT) opined late in 2011 that Thailand needed to foster “a culture of compromise and tolerance of different opinions” (TRCT 2011). If Thai political discussions tend not to be deliberative, they are at least in one sense inclusive. They frequently extend beyond the profane realm to encompass elements of the otherworldly. Appeals to spirits and other actors that inhabit Thailand’s enchanted political spaces, however, tend to inhibit the strengthening of political accountability or of deliberative capacities. Enchantment

Thai politics are infused with spirits and other forms of enchantment. Public discourse and difficult-to-apprehend private understandings are informed by a sense that “occult” actors play more than negligible parts in political life.13 Unobservable actors intervene regularly in Thais’ humdrum lives, including in politics. Difficult-to-substantiate beliefs relating to karmic burdens, astrology, and spirit propitiation shape Thai politics. Thais can try to cajole spirits to intercede on their behalf. Interventions by spirits are not directly discernible to most people and cannot be unambiguously attributed to specific agents but may nonetheless occur frequently. It is worth underlining the point that this description also captures reasonably well much “disenchanted” political life in Thailand; that is, the average Thai cannot easily see what Thai political leaders are doing or readily assign responsibility for particular policy outcomes. This reality was abundantly clear in the weeks preceding the 2014 coup as Thailand drifted toward ever sharper conflict and more violence, and Thais bandied about talk of possible civil war.14 Many groups launched initiatives aimed at mediating between the antagonists. Yet even among more attentive Thais,

152

THAI POLITICS

relatively few would have had a full sense as to who the key players were or what topics talks would have to address. Enchantment is pervasive in Thailand. It is widespread throughout society. Former prime minister Prem Tinsulanonda suggested in a speech in April 2012 that Thailand’s guardian angel, Phra Sayam Devadhiraj, exists and “will protect the good, curse the bad and doom those who commit treason. I believe that” (Ruangdit 2012: 4). In hopes of direct assistance, leading politicians regularly seek out renowned seers or astrologers to probe their futures and remove obstacles to their ambitions. The epic struggle between Thaksin’s forces and those of his opponents were waged through media, in courtrooms, on the streets, and at the polls, but also through powerful monks and various occult adepts (Nanuam 2009: 51–65). Soon after General Prayuth Chan-ocha took power in a coup in 2014, a prominent fortune-teller let it be known that the general one day would be Thailand’s prime minister. Further, in a former life Prayut had been King Naresuan’s most trusted soldier in late-sixteenth-century Ayutthaya (Nanuam 2014: 4). When one of former prime minister Thaksin’s astrologers warned him, based in part on the position of the planet Mercury, of the sharp downturn in his political fortunes that began in 2005, this information gained wide distribution. A popular understanding of the great political struggle between Thaksin and his opponents traces it back to one of Thaksin’s former lives as a great square-faced Burmese king who destroyed Ayutthaya. For some Yellow Shirts, this history accounted for Thaksin’s apparent determination to wreak havoc on Thailand centuries later (Nanuam 2009: 51). An alternative entangling of agency in the mundane and enchanted realms that was tough to disentangle concerned Thaksin’s links to the origins of the Chakkri dynasty over 200 years earlier. The first of the Chakkri kings assumed the throne after he and other generals had King Taksin murdered. Some Thais contend that present-day Thaksin is the reincarnation of one of King Taksin’s faithful retainers (Nanuam 2009). In some respects, Thais have long-term views of politics and accountability. As demonstrations against his government became more frequent and vociferous in 2006, Thaksin considered busing in large numbers of his rural supporters to Bangkok to remind the opposition of the masses of committed supporters he commanded. However, top lieutenants counseled a less provocative course. Instead, Thaksin went to the northeast of Thailand and, with Newin Chidchob, the grandson of a mahout and a reputed wizard able to control elephants, rode the neck of an elephant and walked under its belly. These measures drew on Cambodian magic, regarded by many Thais as particularly potent, to ward off bad luck (Nanuam 2009: 63). Meanwhile, still in the northeast, Thaksin’s opponents took up the challenge. One opposition senator asked women protesters to pass pictures of Thaksin between their legs as a means of cursing him (The Nation 2006).

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

153

Back in Bangkok, the Caravan of the Poor performed a ritual on the campus of Chulalongkorn University to curse the dean of the Faculty of Political Science and other Thaksin critics (Bangkok Post 2006). As these examples suggest, casting curses and deploying other occult weapons are vibrant parts of Thai political combat and communications. The sphere of enchantment, with its charged symbols and emotions, easily spills over into violence. Katherine Ann Bowie characterizes the 1970s in Thailand as featuring an “amalgam of magic and mayhem” (1997: 19). In 2006 while Thaksin was still prime minister, the enchanted and profane political worlds collided when an apparently mentally disturbed man attacked the celebrated and venerable Brahma shrine by the old Erawan Hotel in Bangkok with a hammer, destroying it (Poo 2006; Keyes 2006).15 Two street sweepers on the scene promptly beat and killed the assassin in Jack Ruby fashion (and apparently were never prosecuted). Sondhi, Thaksin’s nemesis, chose to blame the desecration on Thaksin. One monk warned, again when Thaksin was prime minister, of a highly inauspicious alignment of planets, reproducing the disastrous configuration of the time of the Burmese sack of Ayutthaya in 1767. Prophecy also plays an important role in Thai politics. In 1827, a seer allegedly foresaw the Chakkri dynasty collapsing after 150 years. Another prophecy saw the current dynasty lasting through only nine monarchs. Given that King Bhumipol is the ninth of his line, this vision certainly excited interest and anxiety. It was even possible, in some circumstances, to engage in a sort of “two-level games,”16 moving between the secular and sacred realms. King Prasat Thong’s (a late-seventeenth-century king in Ayutthaya) daughter died in 1649 and, inauspiciously, her remains were not entirely consumed in her cremation. The king indicated that poisoning or magic was involved and ordered the execution of near 3,000 mandarins and princes. This stroke enabled him to remove “a good number of potential rivals at one fell swoop” (Van der Cruysse 2002: 75). Some politicians today keep an eye out for opportunities to use otherworldly forces with comparable effectiveness. What effects might political enchantment have on Thais’ awareness and perceptions of political issues? Given finite resources of money and time, the significant investment in trying to influence, or predict, the actions of otherworldly actors suggests fewer resources available to examine closely the voting record of members of parliament or the political platforms of different political parties. Thais who consume such analysis of social forces may not necessarily believe all of it but tend to feel, consistent with Blaise Pascal’s wager,17 it is unwise to disregard it (mai cheua, yaa lobluu). Many newspapers around the world carry daily columns on astrology. Khaosod, however, every day devoted three pages to stories on charismatic monks and amulets (Mulder 1998: 185). Also, of course, and more important, to

154

THAI POLITICS

the extent that Thailand’s political fates are in the hands of relatively inaccessible and clearly unaccountable forces, such as spirits, there is little that any but the most practiced specialists can do to shape events. If the games of big men are remote from the life experience of most Thais, and if most Thais cannot expect to perceive the motives that lie behind their acts, this is no less true of the spirits’ caprices. If so many owe so much to such inaccessible forces, the incentives for exercising citizen rights and responsibilities, including those of engaging in sober political deliberations, surely diminish. Violence

Political discussion in Thailand seems to readily degenerate into violence when supporters of more than one group occupy the same physical space. With 200 police officers standing by, the leaders of the Democrat Party found themselves unable to speak at a rally in Chiang Mai in 2006 because they were disrupted by Thai Rak Thai backers (The Nation Online 2006). These problems of political intimidation became more acute after the Democrat Party–led coalition came to power at the end of 2008. As the coalition contemplated in 2010 setting an early date for elections, its leaders worried whether their candidates would be able to campaign in the heartland of the Pheu Thai Party, in the north and northeast. In considering whether to boycott elections in 2014, the Democrat Party suggested that its inability to campaign safely in parts of the country discouraged its participation. It is not clear that this argument was entirely sincere. It is true, however, that the car in which the Democrat Party leader, then prime minister Abhisit, traveled in 2009 was severely damaged and his life seemingly endangered (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2009). In the context of an intense information war running from March to May 2010 and fears that violence was going to escalate further, a group of Thais took the initiative to screen the film Hotel Rwanda as a warning of the potential consequences of hate speech and injunctions to kill. In Rwanda, it was the state radio station Milles Collines that issued injunctions to hate and kill. It would have been possible, however, for Thais to refer to their own history, rather than Rwanda’s, in warning of the possible dangers of political abuse of mass media. In the lead-up to the mayhem of October 6, 1976, Thai society polarized on the political left and right. In the days immediately prior to October 6, the army’s Tank Corps Radio was used to rally rightist groups near the campus of Thammasat University to “deal with . . . [and] kill” students before they descended on and lynched, raped, and burned students alive (Ungpakorn 2003b: 200). This incident was unprecedented in modern Thailand for its “violence, savagery, barbarism, and mob participation” (Tejjapira 2003: 246, fn. 3).

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

155

The media reflects an apparent Thai taste for sanguinary spectacle. It gave considerable play to the UDD’s splashing of buckets of blood on parliament and the prime minister’s front gate in 2010. The protesters used a Brahmin priest to reinforce the rituals’ reverberations. UDD protesters displayed and sold grisly images on posters and CDs (Streckfuss 2011: 275). The press also on several occasions speculated that the political impasses of 2008, 2010, and 2013–2014 would not reach their denouements until people were killed. Some demonstrators in each of these periods seemed intent on provoking security forces, hoping to instigate violence. Indeed, it is generally understood that only street protests that provoke bloodshed are likely to be successful. Only when blood flows, as in 1973 or 1992, will the military or police intervene (Marshall 2014: 160–161, 176). The failure of the Democrat Party government to resign following extensive bloodshed in 2010 caused considerable consternation. The months-long standoff ended with scores of people killed and extensive real estate destroyed by fire, primarily in Bangkok. It may have been in hopes of such an outcome that Thaksin vetoed an agreement reached between government and protesters that would have ended the protests and resulted in early elections. Thaksin may have wanted to be sure the protests did not end until the government was thoroughly discredited and forced to resign. In 2014, these roles were reversed, with Thaksin’s allies in government and seeking to minimize violence. Again, parts of the street opposition were courting violence in a game of chicken with security forces. Violence served the PDRC if it discredited the government or if it boosted the likelihood of a coup. However, in 2014 there were none of the black-clad figures firing on the military in hopes, eventually successful in 2010, of provoking extensive violence. As Red Shirt rallies got rolling at several sites in Bangkok in March 2010, participants engaged in coffin-burning and cursing ceremonies against the government and the military (Rojanaphruk 2010a: 4). Over the coming weeks, there were several incidents in which reporters attempting to cover the rallies were intimidated or roughed up (Bangprapa and Sattaburuth 2010: 3). In 2013, the PDRC showed up at government-owned broadcast stations to demand more positive coverage and that the PDRC be allowed to broadcast a statement (Bangkok Post 2013a). These incidents echoed distantly the tactics used by the Lapua Movement in Finland in their interwar reign of terror against communists. In Finland, the authorities often were passive, the media and politicians understanding, as the Lapuans gave orders to governors, engaged in kidnappings, marched on Helsinki, and got the state radio broadcaster to allow them to make an address (Capoccia 2005: 155–159). An editorial in The Nation argued that the Thai public has a high tolerance for hate media (The Nation 2010a: 12A). One scholar tracking Facebook discussions found many messages “provoking people to hate each

156

THAI POLITICS

other” (Rakaseri 2010: 2A). A column in The Nation suggested that Thais were seeing something new as emotion and hatred grew pervasive in new partisan media. These media not only were criticizing the government and using disinformation to do so, but they were issuing calls to kill the prime minister (Chongkittavorn 2010: 13A). It was in this context that ten media associations came together to call for more professionalism in journalism (The Nation 2010b: 15A). The TRCT cited the use of media “as a tool for broadcasting ideology” as one of the five causes underlying Thailand’s conflict and violence (TRCT 2011). The stages of Red Shirt rallies featured disturbingly violent rhetoric and incitement. Jatuporn Prompan, a member of parliament and a Red Shirt leader, called out from the stage that “there will be blood on the street if the government does not call off the dispersal operations. Our patience is running out. We will take more serious measures to retaliate. The dark sky will turn red, red like blood” (quoted in Human Rights Watch 2011). An actor turned activist called on his audience in Chiang Mai to bring gasoline tanks to burn down Bangkok, and parts of Bangkok were duly torched. Another of the key Red Shirt leaders, subsequently a deputy minister in the next government, was speaking from the UDD stage when he bellowed: “Send in your army divisions . . . and kill the people, there will be blood everywhere . . . the nation will rise up. Bring it on! Come on! Come on!” (Committee to Protect Journalists 2010). A foreign observer commented, “There is more than a nascent fascism lurking in the hearts of the hardliners.” He described the Red Shirts’ main Bangkok show as a “rock concert experience” carried off with technical flair, and drew the inevitable comparison with Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (Cunningham 2010: 9). Even before much of this agitation for violence had become familiar, a Bangkok University Poll found, when it asked respondents whether it would be possible for the authorities to stop the Red Shirt rally from becoming violent, that 61 percent did not believe it would be (Rojanaphruk 2010a: 4). These Thais embraced Shakespeare’s assumption that “so foul a sky clears not without a storm” (Shakespeare 2006: Act 4, Scene 2). Incitements to violence appeared in print as well, though usually somewhat disguised. Voice of Thaksin’s mid-February issue came out on the eve of the Supreme Court justices’ 2010 decision on the disposal of Thaksin’s assets. The glossy publication carried the justices’ home addresses and phone numbers. By coincidence, another story in the same issue concerned the history of political assassinations around the world (Committee to Protect Journalists 2010). The effort at intimidation apparently failed in this instance. Almost two years later, similar sanguinary impulses were still readily found. Thaksin’s opponents responded hysterically when one university-

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

157

based group called openly for reform of the lèse-majesté law. Online commentary was ugly, with people calling for members of the group to be thrown from helicopters, burned alive, or beheaded and their heads mounted on stakes at the entrance of Thammasat University (Chachavalpongpun 2011). After a couple of punks ambushed the group’s leader and beat him up, much online commentary was laudatory. One newspaper story reported these comments: “They shouldn’t have punched him, they should have shot him in the mouth”; “I hate violence, but I extremely like this”; “Don’t call them villains, the two attackers are good citizens. Their good deed will be remembered forever” (Samabuddhi 2012: 1). Stefan Zweig wrote of the “unsuspicious generation” in early-twentieth-century Europe for whom propaganda had not yet “worn itself thin.” As a result, the “Hymn of Hate” was a smash hit in German classrooms, mass media, and on lecture stages on the eve of the Great War (Zweig 1943: 232–235). Are Thai audiences perhaps simply not yet acclimated to propaganda and invocations to hate? Conclusion Where political information is scarce, political analysis becomes more challenging. Political systems vary, even within regime types, in their legibility. We should be concerned not only with the fashion in which states “see” (Scott 1998), but also with how clearly citizens see the state and its political institutions. This concern for legibility extends beyond issues of transparency to encourage attention to the types of cognitive and emotional cues that citizens seek and use in assessing, using, and protecting themselves from the state. Thai traditional institutions and practices seem not to generate the sort of information-rich context that struck Japanese visitor Soho Tokutomi in Europe in the late nineteenth century. As Mishra characterizes it, Soho noted in particular the “information-rich public cultures of enquiry and debate” (Mishra 2012: 40). Certain kinds of information constitute collective goods (Treisman 2007: 165–167) and where its supply is scarce, resource-poor citizens, lacking the means to ferret it out on their own, are apt to suffer. Deeply embedded factors, at least partly independent of formal institutional features, systematically orient the ways that Thais handle information and work to diminish its supply. One scholar argues that “Thailand is still a society where the capacity of the political system to transmit and circulate information is limited . . . the ability of the people to gather, perceive and digest knowledge is low.” As a result, she suggests, political images and symbols tend to be particularly potent while the arguments critical to deliberations are overlooked (Nogsuan 2006: 134).

158

THAI POLITICS

Whatever the norm, polarization has exacerbated problems. Particularly in contexts of complexity and opacity, such as those found in Thailand amid the political conflict, people are apt to filter information to suit their preconceptions (Sewell 2005: 260). Certainly this appeared to be the case in Thailand’s “post-fact society” (Rojanaphruk and Hanthamrongwit 2010: 162). As in most sufficiently heated and polarized debates anywhere (by the early 1930s, German political debates often had degenerated into “shouting matches”; Berghahn 1982: 120), the winner in these contests is whoever can be the loudest, most insistent, and tenacious. The Nation columnist Chang Noi offered an apposite title for one column: “If I shout enough, I won’t hear you” (Chang Noi 2010b: 12A). High-ranking Thai political figures often are ready to offer bald lies. The Thai public, on the whole, seems tolerant of these lies. The UDD made repeated use of a doctored audiotape that purported to capture Prime Minister Abhisit in 2009 ordering troops to crack down on Red Shirts rioting in Bangkok. As Abhisit remarked, “If I was a villager and made to listen to that tape, I would have come to Bangkok myself” (quoted in Rojanaphruk 2010b: 1B). It seems at times as if Thais have some of the qualities of postmodernists everywhere: they are reluctant to pass judgment hastily, if at all, concerning the relative status of competing truth claims. Such propensities may have deep roots. Jacques de Bourges, a French priest, found Ayutthaya unsatisfying ground for his seventeenth-century work winning souls for the church. In a sympathetic picture of the Thais, he speculated that his difficulties rested on the fact that Thais, “despairing of finding truth . . . do not concern themselves with seeking it” (Bourges 1995: 31). Thais’ political attitudes and behaviors seem to have changed quite sharply in a short period of time. Even after the turn of this century, most rural Thais were thought to be fairly apathetic about politics and not particularly strong champions of democracy. Today, many observers depict the (shrinking) rural reaches of Thailand as heavily populated by committed and principled democrats. Just how much have Thais changed? It is impossible to supply a satisfying answer to this question. If we accept, however, that a significant amount of attitudinal change has occurred rapidly in Thailand, what might have caused it? The standard explanations include greater geographic mobility as more Thais were exposed to worlds beyond their villages, more formal education, and experience with democracy (particularly mobilization by Thaksin’s parties) as well as the growing importance, in the context of political decentralization, of elections at various levels (e.g., Phongpaichit and Baker 2012: 215–221) and exposure to television. Television greatly increased rural Thais’ exposure to the world outside the village. Television made villagers an accessible audience for Thaksin and his party. As we noted, Thais do not read a

POLITICS BETWEEN THE LINES

159

great deal and depend heavily on television for news. As a result, television might well have had a particularly significant impact. In his study of the nationalization of politics (processes through which national debates and cleavages displaced local ones as they have been doing in Thailand since Thaksin arrived on the scene) in European countries, Daniele Caramani puts great emphasis on the effects of the media revolution. This was, he argues, as critical as the Industrial Revolution and national revolutions in nationalizing political attitudes and patterns of competition (Caramani 2004: 211). In Thailand too, perhaps, the mass media (despite its low quality) has been decisive in reshaping the contours of political competition and conflict. Notes

1. Multiple (plural) voting, albeit on a tiny scale, did not disappear from the United Kingdom until 1948 (Bartolini 2007). 2. Many observers continued to debate the extent to which the Thais who came out on the street in such large numbers were self-mobilizing. Were they, instead, bought? If they received daily allowances or free meals, did this suggest their participation largely was mercenary? 3. Hence, the Democrat Party’s attempted makeover early in 2015 of their leader, presenting Abhisit as a crooner of luk thung (folk songs). 4. See Chapter 3 for details on the composition of this group of countries. 5. National Survey of Attitudes on Good Governance 2005–2006 (Punyaratabandhu 2007). 6. Thai circulation data are generally unreliable, tending to overstate figures. Readership, however, is higher than circulation because newspapers are read and passed along. 7. In 1880, Hungary had twenty-two dailies, five of them in German (Lendvai 2003: 328). By 1900, Budapest alone had twenty-two dailies (Lukacs 1988: 153). 8. This move required a deal of chutzpah given the government’s own miserable record on media regulation (see discusson of censorship below). 9. This and the following paragraph draw on various reports produced by Media Monitor. 10. In this respect, the laws are similar to those of ancient Athens where all citizens shared rights to level charges against those perceived as impugning their collective identity (Elster 1999). 11. This survey was carried out in 2005–2006 by Suchitra Punyaratabandhu throughout Thailand except Bangkok and the provinces of the far south. 12. About three in five Thais felt that community harmony suffers if too many groups are organized. Some 74 percent felt that too many different ways of thinking produce a chaotic society (Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 3, 2010−2012). 13. Yes, the occult features in politics elsewhere too. During the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the United States, his wife regularly consulted an astrologer in making up the president’s schedule. More recently, polls have made clear that many Americans believe in possession by demons and, in 2013, that President Barack Obama was the antichrist (The Economist 2014: 8; Egan 2014: A29).

160

THAI POLITICS

14. There were frequent sober predictions that another coup would result in civil war. This prediction, thankfully, proved mistaken. There has been relatively little analysis as to why this much predicted outcome did not come to pass. 15. This was the location of a later terrorist bombing in August 2015. 16. This term usually refers to games played interactively at the domestic and international levels of politics (Putnam 1988). 17. Seventeenth-century French philosopher who argued that, given that we cannot be sure God does not exist and that if he does the consequences of disbelief might be grave, it is more rational to act as if we believe than otherwise.

6 Political Participation: Civil Society and Political Parties

the central elements of a modern political system. These include a state able to assert authority over a territory and a population and to sustain a single institutional and normative framework—rule of law—that regulates the behavior of individuals and institutions, including the uses of state power. Typically, markets and states condition access to political information, which in turn shapes what citizens know and how they deliberate their policy preferences and competing visions for the polity. The challenge for democracy is to make the institutions of the state and the legal normative framework serve as instruments of the popular will. In this chapter, we are concerned with the sinews that link citizens and groups, with their particular understandings of public concerns and their diverse preferences, to the authoritative powers of the state. The subject matter is highly complex. As noted in Chapter 1, Thailand confronts a particular structural moment involving the political task of mass inclusion. The political system needs to find means of including the majority of Thais while convincing all Thais to buy into norms and institutions. This task was accomplished in the United States during the presidency of Andrew Jackson (Chapter 7). Mass inclusion in India came a couple of decades after independence. It had transformative and, in some respects, negative impacts on Indian politics. As political inclusion unfolds in Thailand, it will be a more or less transformative process, likely to feature procedural and substantive changes that many better-positioned Thais see as negative. The specific manner in which inclusion unfolds in Thailand may prove consequential, representing a critical juncture that in important ways might shape much of what will follow in Thai politics.1 While Thaksin Shinawatra helped to hasten the process of inclusion, he has not been able to secure a new order as opposition political forces have used coups, courts, and conIN THE THREE PRECEDING CHAPTERS, WE HAVE DISCUSSED MANY OF

161

162

THAI POLITICS

stitutions to sideline his political movement. The process of political inclusion can be shepherded by labor unions, political parties, civil society, the state itself, or indeed in substantial part by a charismatic leader. The specific instruments employed tend to shape the subsequent prospects for liberal democratic, social democratic, authoritarian populist, or other sorts of regimes. Steven Levitsky identified four distinct Latin American patterns of “incorporation”: via the state, or through radical populist, labor populist, or electoral mobilization parties (Levitsky 2001: 37). Thaksin exemplified the electoral mobilization type. Political participation “seems to be the most obvious component of any conception of democracy” (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992: 44). Yet participation in elections alone does not produce quality liberal democracy. Various authoritarian political regimes, starting with Napoleon’s (Buruma 2013), have mobilized high levels of political participation of various types. In Napoleon’s case, a series of plebiscites carried him and France toward dictatorship (Blanning 2007: 347). Many democracies around the world today feature regular electoral participation while falling well short of being quality liberal democracies. While political participation has intrinsic value, much of its importance rests with its capacity to compel accountability of leaders. Vigorous citizen participation that goes beyond voting to include a strong civil society and independent mass media can help to assure that elections make politicians accountable to citizens (Dunn 1999: 334). Political participation can be defined as activity aimed at shaping government decisionmaking (Huntington and Nelson 1976: 3). In this chapter, however, we address a broader set of concerns encompassing issues of recognition that can be largely symbolic. Recognition does not require accountability, at least not in any direct sense. Citizenship in a modern state is “the most broadly negotiable claim to personal significance” (Geertz 1994: 30). Citizens in some democracies, however, have few opportunities for political participation or other expressions of membership in a political community. Their political systems may be dominated by narrow corrupt elites unresponsive to most political demands, including demands for symbolic recognition. A complex conjuncture of forces works to enmesh political participation within a democratic political system in ways conducive to quality democracy. For example, effective political participation in representative democracies that yields accountability, representation, and responsiveness generally is dependent on the existence of a system of political parties that structure political competition. These strong parties should have deep roots in civil society. Where the political party system is deeply institutionalized, democracy is more likely to be of higher quality. For a civil society to be supportive of political parties and a political party system that in turn sustains democratic politics, that civil society needs itself to be internally democratic and perhaps cannot be too plural or polarized. Citizens also need

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

163

access to information (Chapter 5) to vote and act in other ways that hold candidates and parties accountable. Throughout these complex processes, institutions mediate effects in important ways. News markets structure access to political information. Electoral systems interact with political parties to structure the impact of given distributions of preferences on election outcomes. Generally speaking, however, institutional effects are not determining but instead facilitating. The effects they have depend on complex conjunctures of citizen identities and patterns of political participation, the rules of thumb they employ in making vote choices, the structure of cleavages in society, the nature of the political party system, and so on. A great number of factors must come together in a favorable conjuncture to produce a quality liberal democracy (with all the flaws we find in any real-world democracy). Typically, political participation is embedded within political parties, civil society, and political or social movements. Accordingly, in this chapter we look in detail at these phenomena. Mass media and local government also are important elements of political participation. We discussed mass media in Chapter 5. Due to space limitations, we do not examine local government systematically here despite its growing importance in Thailand.2 This chapter, then, is organized as follows. We begin with background conditions in Thailand, describing low levels of political participation into the 1970s, after which major changes emerged. We carry the Thai story forward by looking first at civil society, then at political parties, and finally at the Thaksin phenomenon, including Thailand’s new mass political movements.

Political Participation in Thailand Thai Attitudes Toward Political Participation

Judged by their responses to survey questions, most Thais believe they should have rights to participate politically.3 A clear majority rejected the notion that public decisions should be left to those who know best. In a national survey conducted in 2005–2006, when asked whether politics should be left to politicians, and whether ordinary people should keep out of politics, 82.7 percent answered negatively (Punyaratabandhu 2007). When asked whether they thought poor farmers ought to eschew protest activities, 87.0 percent dissented. Two-thirds of respondents, however, said that making a living was more important than following politics. Thais’ levels of trust in NGOs, and in particular of political parties, was low when compared to levels of trust in government officials or the military, the principal bases of authoritarian governments in Thailand. This finding continued to hold in 2013 (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014).

164

THAI POLITICS

The 2005–2006 survey found that 87.9 percent of respondents claimed they vote regularly (the high turnout in national elections, in 2011, was about 75 percent) (Punyaratabandhu 2007). When asked about attendance at political gatherings, 60.7 percent of respondents said they had never attended such events and 17.7 percent said they attend gatherings on a regular basis. When asked about frequency of political discussions with friends, 21.3 percent of respondents said they discuss politics very frequently while 26.4 percent said they never discuss politics. Data from 2013 make clear that Thais’ interest in politics remains strong and, not surprising, that attendance at political protests has grown. Almost one in four Thais reported having attended at least three demonstrations (putting Thais near levels in Egypt around the time of the Arab Spring; World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010−2014). A somewhat different picture emerged from a Thai Health Foundation survey contracted soon after the April 2009 demonstrations in Bangkok. Among the findings were that about three-fourths of respondents reported that they followed political news (Chapter 5) and four in five placed themselves in the top half of Thais in terms of their interest in politics. In addition, around one in seven reported they had participated in demonstrations, the vast majority of those with either the PAD or the UDD (cited in Chang Noi 2010a: 12A). These data do not tell a simple story but suggest a reasonably participatory Thai public, a portrayal inconsistent with past portraits. Perhaps the data were in part misleading. Perhaps older descriptions with their emphasis on political clientelism and apathy were amiss. It seems likely, however, that in large part the data were capturing shifting Thai attitudes and behaviors. Indeed, at least some survey data support the popular notion that Thais’ political attitudes were altering fast. For example, when asked to pick national aims from four choices, Thais opting for “economic growth” continued to make up a plurality, but a shrinking one as more Thais were inclined in 2013 as compared to 2008 to select other options such as having a say in social life (World Values Survey, Wave 5, 2005–2008; World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). Thais’ responses to survey questions suggest that by 2013 they were strong supporters of democracy, with fewer than 8 percent describing it as bad. They understood democracy to be about aid to the unemployed, income redistribution, and obedience to rulers, but large numbers also endorsed the notion that democracy concerned civil rights and, in particular, choosing leaders (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). Fishing in Deep Waters

Widespread political participation emerged slowly in Thailand, long after the nominal infrastructure of representation—an elected legislature and political parties—were first created. Early political parties were weakly

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

165

institutionalized. Civil society was rather thin and not internally democratic. Hierarchy was pronounced and most Thais looked to patrons, rather than to formal political institutions, for assistance (Haines 2005: 53–55). Significant mass mobilization came late to Thailand and, when it came, it was episodic. Relatively brief and, viewed comparatively, unsystematic periods of state-backed or tolerated violence sufficed to quell what mobilization did emerge. Over the years, miscellaneous thugs killed scores of leaders of local groups or wider farmers’ associations seeking reforms, or to block specific infrastructure, logging, or mining projects. Low levels of political participation are of fundamental importance to an understanding of Thailand’s economy and politics. The 1932 revolution was a tiny elite affair. In part for that reason, it was never rooted in enduring institutional features that would structure political life thereafter. As a result, it is possible to see the regime change in 1932 less as a watershed than “merely the opening skirmish in an ongoing conflict” (Harding and Leyland 2011: 252). The general picture of political passivity has clearly changed. Despite continuing instances of violence against mobilized groups, Thais are participating politically today at levels far higher than three decades, or even a decade, earlier. Expanding political participation is a prerequisite for the establishment of a fuller and more stable liberal democracy in Thailand, in the longer term. In the short run, however, the sudden expansion in levels of political participation in Thailand, often in the form of street demonstrations, also holds risks. These risks include violence as well as enhanced difficulties in creating effective political parties. Thailand’s social context with its limited corporatist features appeared closer to that of seventeenth-century Russia (Blanning 2007: 239–240) than to most other European contexts of that time. Thai villages generally were less corporatist than those in, for example, Japan or Vietnam. Thais typically did not have counterparts to Chinese village or clan associations. Until fairly late in the twentieth century, village society remained central to the social experiences of most Thais. The Thai context featured a relatively disorganized and noninclusive civil society, weakly institutionalized political parties and political party system, and enormous disparities in wealth and life experiences among different groups of Thais. Those with less often looked to those with more for help in personalized patronage relationships. Widespread Thai attitudes and behaviors did not spur the institutional apparatus underpinning Thai democracy to perform terribly well. The record of Thai public policy suggests that political parties were far from reaching their potential in making democracy work to benefit most Thais. Only briefly in the 1970s, and again after Thaksin came to power in 2001, were electoral contests clearly linked to policies serving broad social welfare concerns. In towns and cities, Thais did not have strong associational propensities. In a society marked by sharp status inequalities, those associations that

166

THAI POLITICS

were formed tended to be dependent on specific individuals’ leadership and personalized, often clientelistic, ties with members of the group. One observer argues that Thais were apt to form groups only when affected by external hardship and that these groups tended to be evanescent. As a result, “forming an effective civil society in the short term is not an easy task” (Vatanasapt 2003). Media images from recent years of Thais in huge numbers demonstrating in Bangkok and elsewhere seem to belie this description. Clearly, Thais have become more politically engaged. Sustained and large-scale mobilization, however, depends heavily on particular leaders and requires massive funding. Traditional Thai society had no institutions that enabled local-level political participation except as expressions of solidarity. Relations between the royal court and regions were, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, mediated through complex hierarchies of personalized quasi-vassal relationships. For the vast majority of Thais, the state was distant, obscure, threatening, and sacred. It was a manifestation of the king’s powers and the king was a link to a sacred realm. This order was adumbrated at local temples and festivals as well as by the court itself at the center. More prosaically, the state, personified by local lords and their agents, was a constant threat, making demands for unrecompensed labor for war, public works, mining, and plantation projects. The average Thai had no rights beyond those afforded by custom and the most reliable defense available from the state’s predations was to secure protection from a sufficiently powerful lord or spirit or, failing that, exit. Well into the twentieth century, Thailand retained stretches of unsettled lands largely beyond the reach of the state, making exit feasible for some. Some Thais also were able in the past to switch the patrons to whom they owed service. With most peasants working their own land, extreme deprivation of the type that helped to fuel rural political movements (e.g., in Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) was relatively rare. The most obvious reason that Thais had comparatively little experience of mass mobilization until the last third of the twentieth century is that Thailand was not colonized. As a result, its society was subject to fewer sharp ruptures than would have been the case had it been colonized. No colonialism meant less thoroughgoing transformation of the economy and society. More important, traditional elites suffered little loss of legitimacy and had no incentives to mobilize popular support in a sustained campaign against colonial rule.4 The comparatively limited degree to which Thailand’s economy was integrated with the global economy, the extensive unexploited land frontier, and the enormous population of newly arriving Chinese from the late nineteenth century all helped to buffer the impact of the world economy on Siam. The majority of the new sorts of jobs created in Siam’s changing

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

167

economy were taken by the Chinese who worked as coolies, tin miners, and managers of state enterprises. Most Thais were able to continue to live and work in ways that were surprisingly unchanged and not all that far removed from a locally organized subsistence economy. Under these conditions, aloofness from political currents in Bangkok was the norm. A folk maxim captures a certain degree of fatalism: “How can we fish in deep waters when our arm is only so long?” (Blanchard 1957: 120). Thailand had little in the way of particularly robust social cleavages that might have provided traction for efforts to stimulate political mobilization of group against group. Ethnic or religious differences were not particularly salient and Thais’ general embrace of hierarchy, tolerance, and individuality in any case might have made mobilization on such bases difficult. Regional identities might have served as bases for political mobilization, but repression and the dominance of vertical clientelistic patterns of social organization impeded such a development, at least until quite recently. Further, until the middle of the twentieth century, village communities retained their integrity, income gaps were not huge, and there was considerable scope for social mobility. Many poor rural young men rose socially by becoming monks or joining the army. In addition, although the dominant political ideology was highly conservative, when necessary the state could be flexible as it demonstrated in the early 1980s by issuing amnesties to the dwindling bands of communist insurgents. The weakness of corporate or class-based social organization ensured that, when it emerged, political mobilization tended to be against the center rather than between competing social groups. Historical, ecological, and social conditions helped to nurture a Thai outlook that was fairly individualistic, though varying by region. Better able to get by on their own than many peasants elsewhere, Thais were in a position to choose to cultivate their freedom of action. In the central plains, Thais had limited commitments to community. Where activities required extensive organization and cooperation, they tended not to occur or only with difficulty (Phillips 1965: 17). Many Thais prized disengagement from others’ problems and focused their energies on managing pleasant external images that helped to sustain friction-free social intercourse. Thais tended to be wary of a public sphere marked by naked power and considerable lawlessness, violence, and corruption (Mulder 1985: 65–79). Such views might well have weakened any urge to participate in politics, or indeed any forms of association beyond the family or the local temple. In relative terms, Thailand also was only modestly affected by World War II. Both the impacts of Japan’s military presence and of its subsequent defeat were less profound in Thailand than in other large Southeast Asian countries. Thailand, after all, was already politically independent and was able during the war to align first with the Axis powers and then the Allied

168

THAI POLITICS

ones. Following the war, most elite turnover was only temporary and, in any case, limited to only the top political leadership. Thailand’s geographical expansion during the war (citizens in parts of what would later become independent Cambodia and Laos voted in Thailand’s first democratic elections in 1946), and subsequent contraction, had limited political effects. In general, the war buffeted personalities but not institutions or patterns of rule. It did, however, disrupt European businesses in Thailand, reducing competition for the local Chinese. The Chinese

The most important social force that might have unbalanced Thailand’s stubbornly conservative society was the Chinese. It was indeed the Chinese who posed the first threats to the monarchical order. It also was the Chinese who spearheaded structural changes in the economy and, eventually, rapid economic growth (Skinner 1957; Sng and Bisalputra 2015: 324–354). Their influence, however, cut both ways, underpinning stability as well as threatening the old order. Directly and indirectly the Chinese supplied most state revenue and foreign exchange, thereby helping to sustain the old order. More profoundly, the fact that the burgeoning business sector was staffed by foreigners meant that the political power of the modern sector was less than would have been the case if Thais had stood at the commanding heights of the rapidly growing (from the 1960s) economy. The Chinese were the greatest threat to Thai royals early in the twentieth century, other than the West. On the one hand, at an individual level, large numbers of Chinese assimilated rapidly at elite levels of Thai society (Skinner 1958; Eoseewong 2006: 76–79). On the other hand, there were many Chinese who were not blending in so rapidly. Even among those who were doing so, their numbers were so large that in the aggregate they likely contributed to social changes in Thailand that could threaten the political elite. While difficult to confirm, it seems possible that the number of Chinese associated with the court and Bangkok from its beginnings helps to explain some of its more bourgeois features relative to court and society in Ayutthaya (Eoseewong 2006). The critical role of trade throughout the Bangkok era worked in the same direction. The potential power of the Chinese was hard to miss when a general strike among the Chinese paralyzed the city of Bangkok for several days in 1910. The Chinese were protesting against being subject to national treatment in taxation. That is, they were being subject to the same capitation taxes that the state levied against the Thais. Even without the disruptive activities of a general strike, there had long been some upwardly mobile Thais who resented Chinese trade associations’ perceived sharp practices, the occasional violence linked to secret societies, and, more generally, the

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

169

speed with which the Chinese were able to garner wealth and status. Thai poet Sunthorn Phu wrote the following verse early in the nineteenth century: At Bang Luang on the small canal where so many Chinese sell pigs, Their [Thai] wives are so young, fair, pretty, and rich it makes me feel shy and small. Thai men like me who asked for their hand would be blocked as if by iron bars But if you have money like these Chinese, the bars just melt. (quoted in Eoseewong 2006: 170)

By the early twentieth century, even less upwardly mobile Thais would note, and perhaps resent, the disruption that the Chinese were able to inflict through strikes in the modern economic sectors that they dominated. Most people living in Bangkok who were not part of the court or administrative structure were Chinese. The Chinese were the first to organize labor in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was presumably less privileged Thais who fled to the forests when gangs of disgruntled Chinese sugar workers in the eastern province of Chachoengsao fomented violence. After the military suppressed the unrest, Thais who came out of the forests and happened upon groups of Chinese slaughtered them wholesale and dumped their bodies into canals (Eoseewong 2006: 79). A possible example of a more indirect impact of the Chinese on prevailing values arose with the coup plot against Rama VI in 1912. This was the first serious threat to the crown from below, coming from within the expanding apparatus of the state. The new king (he assumed the throne in 1910) had aroused unhappiness in several quarters fairly rapidly, not least in the military. A considerable group of junior officers plotted a coup to bring absolute monarchy to an end. Some evidence suggests that, among these officers, those of recent Chinese origins figured prominently (Wyatt 2003: 213). If true, this would be consistent with Chinese political roles more generally. The Chinese were key to the emergence of an urban public opinion, civil society, and, later, communist insurgencies and leadership positions in party politics. Broadly speaking, “rational restlessness” (Mann 1993: 502)—whether due to ambition, acute discontent, anomie, or sedition—was more pervasive among Chinese than Thais. This difference perhaps helps to explain why it was the Chinese who drove social and political change in Thailand. In sum, most Thais had little awareness of the political struggles waged among powerful actors at the political center and faced relatively limited exactions by the state, so the incentives for political mobilization were weak.5 In the lives of many Thais, the span of society for most purposes did not extend beyond the local community. Widespread fear and uncertainty were redressed not through horizontal solidarities or reliance on the state’s

170

THAI POLITICS

application of law so much as vertical ties of dependence as well as what security might be obtained by propitiating spirits. As a result, it was not necessary for these Thais to imagine a new abstract community beyond the bounds of regular social interchange. Instead, the envisioning of a new national community in the early twentieth century was very much a stateled project articulated in the slogan “nation, religion, king” (Wyatt 2003: 211–217). Having introduced background conditions for political participation in Thailand, we now examine its development, looking first at civil society and, subsequently, at political parties. Initial Stirrings of Civil Society We use the term civil society to refer to a new social realm, a public sphere, within which individuals and groups interact to shape public opinion and politics. Civil society groups generally are not primordially based (families, tribes, clans). Members of civil society engage in voluntary exchange and, in most conceptions, operate independently of the state. Typically, civil society is seen as constituting a public sphere made up of relatively anonymous individuals in nonhierarchical relations (Blanning 2007: xxv, 486). The anonymous and nonhierarchical elements of the definition of a public sphere are problematic in the Thai case. Nonetheless, by the late twentieth century, increasing geographic and social mobility in Thai society encouraged more anonymous social exchange and increasingly abstract conceptions of power and of the state. We might trace the origins of Thailand’s civil society to the early twentieth century when an educated middle class began to emerge along with the growth of the printing industry (Barme 2002). Most members of this civil society were employed by the state.6 The rapid expansion of newspapers and magazines presented them with a new and independent space for analysis and commentary on contemporary affairs. Coffee shops and movie theaters encouraged commingling with other Thais beyond the immediate family and neighborhood. King Vajiravudh (1910–1926) tried to inculcate a sense of nationalism and, at least among elites, shared participation in a national community. In creating the paramilitary Wild Tiger Corps, the king attempted to foster a loyal following as well as, perhaps, to stimulate participatory nationalism. The king also was involved in establishing the Boy Scouts. Earlier, royal women took the lead in creating the Thai Red Cross in 1885 (Ponsapich and Kataleeradabhan 1997: 29). With the end of absolute monarchy, Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram carried on efforts to mobilize nationalism. He did this in part through his

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

171

irredentist rhetoric and policies and his advocacy of a Thai economy for Thais (rather than the Chinese). Anxieties aroused by Chinese nationalism may have prompted Phibun to emphasize state identities over national ones or constitutionalism (Samudavanija 2002: 69–70). Later in his career, when he was facing strong political challenges from active military and police officers, Phibun went so far as to call for participation in democratic politics. His wife established the Women’s Cultural Club in 1943, revived in 1956 as the National Women’s Council with provincial chapters presided over by governors’ wives (Ponsapich and Kataleeradabhan 1997: 30). By the 1950s small numbers of Thais, in a general context featuring limited associational activity, were exploiting opportunities afforded by the brief opening of political space to call for political democracy (Ockey 2002: 107–124). With the absolutist state gone, and the military’s despotism fluctuating, this was an era that afforded chances to try to redefine the boundaries between the state and society. Crooked elections in 1957 and intensifying elite competition helped set off a brief period of press criticism and student demonstrations. Another bout of popular mobilization was prompted by the International Court of Justice’s 1962 decision that went against Thailand in its dispute with Cambodia over an ancient Khmer temple that straddled their shared border. Again students protested in Bangkok and other cities (Prizzia 1985: 43–45). These protests were rooted in nationalist concerns that did not threaten political elites. They nonetheless may have helped to create space for later and more autonomous forms of organization and dissent. For all the buffers that in the past had dampened the impact of the global economy on Thai society, changes were mounting fast by the 1960s. The Thai economy was by that time launched on a high-growth trajectory that would last with almost no letup until 1997. Beginning in the mid1980s, unemployment and underemployment fell and wages rose more rapidly. Population growth, the spread of agricultural settlements, and deforestation closed off the land frontier. Entanglement in markets led to more debt and landlessness in the central plains and beyond. Thais increasingly were moving to and fro between Bangkok and their villages. Growing numbers of Thais were finding employment outside Thailand altogether. Education levels rose along with affluence and geographic mobility. Televisions were becoming ubiquitous. Traditional social structures gradually weakened. By the 1980s, less resilient rural communities no longer could serve as well as they once did as buffers against unsettling forces driving changes. Long after the end of the absolute monarchy, politics and administration in Thailand remained overwhelmingly Bangkok centric. At least for a time, the limited links between an overwhelmingly rural population and the small political elite underpinned the country’s social stability (Morrell and

172

THAI POLITICS

Samudavanija 1981: 24). The state expanded primary education. Not until the communist insurgencies gradually grew from the 1950s, however, did governments give more sustained focus to rural problems and invest significant resources in rural services. This greater attention to rural Thailand was boosted by massive US economic assistance, including funding for the paved roads that would significantly reduce the isolation of many parts of rural Thailand. State spending in rural areas and rapid economic development quickly transformed much of the Thai countryside in ways consistent with the expectations of modernization theories. By the 1960s, tensions between demands for political participation and traditional conceptions of legitimacy were reported to be growing more pronounced (Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 5–6). Substantial numbers of newly urban and educated Thais were absorbed within the state’s agencies. Uniforms and rigid hierarchies may have insulated these Thais from some of the socioeconomic changes reshaping the country, giving them “a place in the world” (Sennett 2003: 164). This means of absorbing new social forces had its limits, however. State employment was unable to keep pace with the expansion in the numbers of university graduates. By the early 1980s, macroeconomic imbalances had created strong pressures to curb rapid expansion of the state. With the explosion of the private sector that started in the middle of the decade, it triggered most employment growth. The regime that Sarit Thanarat put in place in 1957 thrived until 1973. By that time students were again mobilizing. The population of university and vocational students had swelled enormously, as would the scale and impact of their mobilization. Postsecondary student numbers rose from about 18,000 in 1961 to some 700,000 in 1990 (over two-thirds of these in vocational colleges; Phongpaichit and Baker 2002: 368–370). Students organized and became more radical in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Their opportunities to influence politics were augmented by divisions among political-military elites. In the wake of the collapsed militarybacked regime, as Thais set about writing a new democratic constitution in late 1973, a Public Participation Subcommittee of the National Assembly conducted public hearings on the document, distributed information, and broadcast public meetings on radio and television (Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 99–100). Long-marginalized Thai social groups seized the new context of political openness in search of “permanent enfranchisement” (Prizzia 1985: 1). The mid-1970s were years of weak coalition governments, instability, and rising political polarization. Students helped to organize groups of farmers and workers. Rightist groups then organized, in turn, and retaliated violently, killing leftist leaders. Parliament became a more significant center of power and drew to it business interests that recognized promising profit

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

173

opportunities. These business figures assumed more prominent roles in political parties and in government. Nonetheless, a fragile coalition under Social Action Party leader Kukrit Pramoj was able to demonstrate the potential for parliament to cater effectively to the needs of rural Thais. While the military was still in power, students in the early 1970s organized, mostly in Bangkok, a campaign against Japanese goods. Then they turned their attention to broader political reforms in Thailand, eventually bringing down the military government in 1973. They went on to organize other sectors of society. They were the first broad group other than the Communist Party of Thailand and perhaps the Buddhist sangha to work assiduously on behalf of the rural poor. Student activists, however, generally were not disciplined and were prone to overplaying their hand. Within student groups, the most radical often assumed dominant positions (Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 153–161). Thailand rapidly became sharply polarized politically, particularly after communists came to power throughout former French Indochina in 1975. With the monarchy in Laos driven into internal exile, where the royals eventually died, Thai conservatives grew decidedly alarmed, ratcheting up political tensions. Rightist forces in Thailand used intimidation and a ruthless campaign of assassination to crush the Farmers’ Federation of Thailand. The federation had been established to monitor implementation of a new land reform law. The federation claimed 100,000 farm families as members in Chiang Mai province alone (Girling 1981: 204; Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 225). The principal popular rightist groups, with sponsorship from figures in the bureaucracy and military, were the Red Gaurs, Village Scouts, and Nawaphon. The Red Gaurs attracted vocational students (often from families less privileged than those of university students), the unemployed, former military figures, and “hired vigilantes.”7 The Village Scouts drew from the middle classes as well as small farmers and small rural business figures. The Village Scouts bypassed the state in creating patron-client networks extending from Thai villages and towns up to “the traditional royal core of the Thai polity” (Young and Pitsuwan 1978). Nawaphon was small, consisting largely of monks, intellectuals, and government officials (Prizzia 1985: 92–93; Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 237; Bowie 1997: 105–106; Ungpakorn 2003b: 15). Rightist mobilization induced an “amalgam of magic and mayhem” that was remarkable for its scale, intensity, and the precedent it set. Thailand’s political elite had never before felt so threatened as to open the Pandora’s box of popular mobilization. In this period they did, mobilizing one (rightist) part of the population to fend off threats they saw coming from another. In a span of a few years, well over 10 percent of the adult population subjected themselves to the five-day initiation rituals of the Village Scouts (Bowie 1997: 1–8, 19). Rightist mobilization climaxed in 1976 in

174

THAI POLITICS

hideous bloodletting by police, the military, and these new groups against students. Thailand’s democratic interlude came to an end. The changes that came to Thailand in the 1970s were shocking. Many Thais saw incipient chaos lurking beneath the surface of rapidly shifting events and mobilized groups. Particularly at a time when traditional outlooks were pronounced, many Thais tended to see these newly mobilized social forces as chaotic and unable to provide any sort of voice encompassing the concerns of “the people” (Gilley 2014: 45).8 The king was a key stabilizing factor, seen by most students as helping to end the period of military rule and the launch of democratic politics. With politics sharply polarized, conservatives leaned more heavily on the monarchy. Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman famously claimed, The fundamental cause of our political instability in the past lies in the sudden transplantation of alien institutions onto our soil without proper regard to the circumstances which prevail in our homeland, the nature and characteristics of our own people, in a word the genius of our race, with the result that their functioning has been haphazard and ever chaotic. If we look at our national history, we can see very well that this country works better and prospers under an authority, not a tyrannical authority, but a unifying authority around which all elements of the nation can rally. (quoted in Wyatt 2003: 270)

Some Thais, however, retained memories of the monarchy’s ties to rightist groups during the 1970s. Whatever their views on the institution more generally, these Thais strongly opposed even indirect political roles for it. The end of democratic politics in 1976 marked the onset of a new conservative political order that continued to enable rapid economic growth and saw rising social mobilization, but largely petty politics. The politically attuned elite widened substantially and were subsumed under a broadening palace umbrella. The decades after the tumultuous 1970s saw growing numbers of policy advocacy groups and locally based associations trying to promote rural welfare and protect traditional livelihoods. These newly mobilized groups often engaged the state but generally were aloof from political parties. Many individuals involved with these groups saw themselves as inheritors of a Thai progressive tradition. Generally speaking, Thai political parties failed to follow through on the Social Action Party’s innovation of seeking rural votes by offering policies catering to their needs. In England John Wilkes, a member of parliament and journalist, used the newly emerged public sphere in the eighteenth century to advance his career and build pressures for political reform. He discovered “that there was support to be mustered in the provinces” (quoted in Blanning 2007: 327–328). Perhaps northeastern Thai politicians, before some of them were shot, were beginning to make a

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

175

comparable discovery in the 1950s. There was, however, a curious failure among Thai politicians to follow up on the Social Action Party precedent over the 1980s and 1990s. Strengthening Civil Society In 1969 the rector of Thammasat University, Puey Ungpakorn, established the Thailand Reconstruction Movement (TRM). The TRM dispatched teams of students to rural areas to assist government agencies in a variety of development projects and paved the way for similar activities by other groups. When the bloody coup in 1976 ended the democratic period of the mid-1970s, many students fled to the jungles to join communist insurgents. Eventually, political amnesty brought many of these former students back to Bangkok and other urban centers, and many of these activists became associated with an expanding circle of groups organized in the 1980s to pursue social and economic goals and to empower the Thai poor. Studies of Thailand’s civil society often trace its roots back to this movement by urban progressives to serve the rural poor (Girling 1996). As in so much of the non-Western world, civil society tended in the minds of many observers to be closely associated, at least in its early stages, with largely foreignfunded NGOs (Jumbala and Mitprasat 1997; Shigetomi 2002). Over the decades many different groups of Thais claimed to speak on behalf of “the people,” particularly the rural poor who their would-be representatives often perceived to be, as a result of weak political organization, mute (Klausner 2015: 72–77). Thai communists, of course, had seen themselves as the peasants’ vanguard. NGOs tended to make a similar assumption. Former student activists got a boost from foreign-financed development programs. From 1979, international NGOs grew more active in Thailand. Initially, these groups worked primarily in areas along the Cambodian border, some of the country’s poorest communities, with refugees who spilled across the border following the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia beginning at the end of 1978. Observing the conditions of poverty in the Thai communities adjacent to the refugee camps, these foreign NGOs also developed projects addressing local Thai needs (Missingham 2003: 28–29). The great poverty of the areas around the refugee camps made Thai officials anxious about how locals viewed large numbers of Cambodian refugees benefiting from a variety of international programs (Yodmani 2010). A growing middle class, urban political activism, and rural resistance to urban-based development gathered steam in the late 1980s and into the 1990s (Girling 1981: 43–46; Hewison 2002: 145; Poungsomlee 1999). These trends were reinforced by the military’s failure in 1992 to reentrench

176

THAI POLITICS

its rule in the face of stiff “middle class” resistance (Englehart 2003, 253– 279). More new actors emerged after 1992, including civic groups pressing for political reform. Among these were the Campaign for Popular Democracy, the Federation for Democracy, the Protection of Civil Rights and Freedom Group, and the Institute for Political Development (Banpasirichote 2004: 245). These groups, together with rural networks and urban intellectuals, enabled broad participation of diverse social groups in the crafting of the 1997 constitution (Chantornwong 2002). The new constitution promised far stronger checks on state powers and rights for popular participation in state policymaking. It also opened the way for more administrative and political decentralization (Setabutr 2006: 20). Meanwhile, rural protests against large infrastructure and mining projects became a regular feature of Thai politics in the 1980s (Bureekul 2000). Public protests forced the abandonment in the 1980s of the planned Nam Choan Dam in a wildlife sanctuary in Kanchanaburi. In general, protests against large projects created much heat, but few victories for the protesters, and major headaches for state agencies attempting to implement plans. A Public Hearing Law in 1996 required the appointment of Public Hearing Committees for major projects. Public hearing mechanisms generally failed to further deliberation or to resolve conflicts (Unger and Siroros 2011). Typically, project opponents saw hearing procedures as mere window dressing and were skeptical of any supposed studies of projects’ environmental and health impacts (e.g., Wipatayayothin 2011: 3). Rural-based resistance to Thailand’s expanding urban-based and industrializing economy increased. Millions of Thais earned their livelihoods in national forests in which private individuals or corporations gained, for example, logging concessions that disrupted the largely subsistence economic activities of forest settlers. Traditional fishing communities were disrupted by environmental degradation and new fishing technologies. These dynamics gave rise to social movements concerned with local livelihood issues and framed in environmental terms. These movements often protested against projects sponsored by powerful interests. Some of the leaders of these movements were killed (Phatharathananunth 2002: 129). While in 1978 only 48 protests were recorded in Thailand, a “new public politics” generated over 1,000 in 1994 (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 18). Meanwhile, chronic political instability induced by the party-hopping antics of often venal politicians and widespread political corruption gave birth to a sustained movement for political reform following the 1991 coup and 1992 demonstrations against military dominance of politics (Bunbongkarn 2006: 41). The resulting 1997 constitution aimed to boost political participation to strengthen vertical accountability and to facilitate direct forms of participation in policymaking. Would-be reformers saw parliament as so inimical to the goals of political reform that, in the process of drafting the

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

177

new charter, members of parliament were barred from any deliberations on it (Ruland et al. 2005: 43). The new constitution contained many articles aimed at boosting public participation in politics and policymaking. Article 76 exhorted the state to support participation in shaping public policies and to be accountable to the public. Article 79 called for public participation in environmental management, and Article 59 guaranteed individual rights to participate with the state and community in managing natural resources and the environment (Bureekul 2000; Unger and Siroros 2011).9 The constitution also enabled citizens, backed by petitions with 50,000 signatures, to place bills before parliament. Relatively few of these many efforts, however, resulted in legislation, despite lowering the threshold of signatures required in the 2007 constitution to 10,000. When the country’s 1997 currency crisis ballooned into a full-fledged and disastrous economic collapse, Thai civil society and interest in its development received a major boost. Many Thais were concerned that villages, long the urban labor force’s great buffer during hard times, would no longer be able to absorb the urban Thais who were suddenly jobless and looking to return to their villages. To help ease the social consequences of these dire conditions, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Japanese government, and others provided large aid flows both to the Thai government and directly to local communities and development NGOs (Archavanitkul et al. 1999). The collapse of the national economy and of hopes for a rapidly rising economic tide, and the despair among many progressives of being able to make parliament accountable or responsive, gave a major fillip to social and political “localism” and other radical alternatives to the state’s development strategies (Hewison 2002: 147–148). By the end of the past century, the scope of local and politically active groups had expanded enormously. Nonetheless, civil society remained rather weak and developed few links to political parties. It probably did contribute to the strengthening of participatory values. Engendering a robust and civic society able to hold representatives accountable continued to confront obstacles. Among these barriers was the persistence of a variety of traditional attitudes. In such a context with a weak civil society and feeble rule of law, money politics tended to be particularly persuasive (Winters 2013: 12). Following extensive political violence in 2010, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva promoted efforts to reform institutions and reconcile polarized groups of Thais. This effort was led by Anand Panyarachun and Prawase Wasi, two long-established luminaries of Thailand’s civil society. This initiative resulted in extensive discussions, considerable research, and reports that failed to gain a great deal of attention, though their efforts may have informed reform proposals that emerged after the

178

THAI POLITICS

2014 coup. At the time, however, in 2011, Thailand was moving on to new elections and a new government that would initiate new studies. More dramatically, street politics would again gain in intensity. Comparative survey data indicate that Thais are not active joiners of voluntary groups. They also suggest they have fairly low levels of generalized trust (Asia Foundation 2011).10 Nonetheless, radical disjunctures in life experiences leading to far more mobility and increased experience with elections boosted formerly passive Thais’ levels of political engagement (Chaisukkosol 2014: 4–5). The growth of community radio in Thailand in this century stimulated further organization. Many Thais created groups designed to defend their traditional livelihoods. For the most part, these groups were locally based but, in some cases, coordination across them was extensive and sustained. Most of these groups, however, even locally based ones, were not internally democratic and typically were heavily dependent on the leadership exercised by one or a few figures. The fractiousness and fragility of civil society organizations posed real difficulties. Thais involved in these groups tended to be anxious about merging their efforts with other entities, to worry about fomenting divisiveness, and to be concerned about capture by outside groups. Many groups, for example, had negative experiences when they worked closely with the Thaksin government or with the PAD movement that opposed it (Manorom 2014). New political movements emerged in Thailand starting with the PAD in 2005. It eventually aimed to drive Thaksin from power. The PAD was followed by the UDD that supported Thaksin, and the PDRC and some smaller groups that opposed him. The PAD, UDD, and PDRC were able to mobilize huge numbers of Thais in sustained street demonstrations. These were expensive propositions and each of them was highly dependent on its respective leadership. Each featured a round-the-clock televised political news vehicle to support its work. The UDD relied heavily on community radio as well. To some degree, particularly in the case of the Red Shirts, these movements were supported by networks of grassroots groups (Fullbrook 2012: 134–137; Thabchumpon and McCargo 2011: 1009–1014). The PAD was active until the 2006 coup removed Thaksin from power. It became active again in 2008 after Thaksin briefly returned to Thailand. It struggled against the “system of parliamentary dictatorship by evil capitalism” (Nelson 2010: 122). It pushed for not only representation but a participatory sort of democracy led by good people. The group’s principal leader later described politicians as “hellish animals born to destroy the nation” and parliament as “a criminal association where the felons meet to exchange stolen goods” (quoted in Samabuddhi 2011: 9). The PAD claimed to be strongly supportive of the monarchy and also championed a number of environmental issues. Its supporters hoped to give “citizens more access

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

179

to the political process.” It toyed with various semicorporatist electoral schemes, emphasizing representation by occupational groups (an idea considered during the drafting of the 1997 constitution and again following the 2014 coup) and the creation of a third legislative chamber. It was not very successful in achieving its goal of institutionalizing a social movement with local chapters or in fostering citizens able to hold governments accountable (Nelson 2010: 125–143). The UDD movement gained prominence from 2009. In many respects, this was a novel development in Thailand. The Red Shirt groups often were village based and made up in substantial part of Thais of modest education and incomes. Particularly in the north, former members of the Communist Party of Thailand played active roles in grassroots organizing for the UDD. Other groups within the UDD were more focused on supporting Thaksin, or other political goals, and some individuals used the UDD as a personal political vehicle (Vanijaka 2013: 11). This movement quickly proved adept at improving levels of coordination and organization, establishing Red Shirt villages and making extensive use of community radio to inform activists and coordinate activities. A major debate emerged concerning the degree to which the movement was bottom-up or top (Thaksin)-down in character (Crispin 2012: 109). Red Shirt organization took off after 2009, providing critical infrastructure for the large and sustained protests of 2010. Thereafter, the grassroots organizational push subsided somewhat, apparently a victim of Thaksin’s loss of interest and patronage. Indeed, at one point when Thaksin apparently believed he was close to achieving his goals and therefore did not want to antagonize his most powerful opponents, he distanced himself from the group. Thereafter, once he recognized that his opponents remained entrenched in their determination to oppose him, he moved to rekindle his support with the Red Shirts. The UDD was able to mobilize quickly after a Thai court early in 2010 seized a substantial share ($1.4 billion) of Thaksin’s assets, charging they were ill gained (Crispin 2012: 108). This timing lent plausibility to arguments that the UDD was a movement devoted to the cause of one man. The argument was complicated, however, to the extent that many Red Shirts came to believe that Thaksin’s cause was their own, that his fortunes were linked to theirs and, in addition, to the survival of a democratic regime that enabled Thaksin to address their concerns. For many Red Shirts, Thaksin was their knight on a white horse, their caesar, their vehicle for the realization of the goals of social recognition and economic gain. Even as tensions emerged after the 2011 elections between the UDD, on the one hand, and the Pheu Thai and Thaksin, on the other, it was unclear how or whether the Red Shirts would survive without Thaksin at the helm. Some reports in the lead-up to the 2011 elections suggest that the

180

THAI POLITICS

UDD was critical to the Pheu Thai’s electoral hopes, partly because of the influence of its community radio networks (Ruangdit 2011b: 3). In any case, the UDD offered a new model for linking dispersed citizens to the dramas unfolding on the national political stage. In advance of the 2011 elections, members of the PAD were rehearsing some of the arguments that would gain greater prominence when articulated by the PDRC early in 2014: urging a no vote in the 2011 elections, hoping for a failed election, and emphasizing the need to write a new constitution under an appointed government (Ruangdit 2011a: 3). The latest political movement, the PDRC, blossomed forth unexpectedly at the end of 2013. It staged huge rallies late that year and into the next. One nonrepresentative sample indicated that PDRC supporters tended to have high incomes and their main goal was ending the Thaksin regime (Asia Foundation 2014). As with the other movements, it manifested worryingly illiberal and violent tendencies. It also was militantly inflexible in its political demands. It showed, however, that, under the right conditions, Thais could mobilize in vast numbers overnight to defend their conception of a just political order. Should Civil Society Engage Political Society? If they are to perform well, political representatives need to know something of what voters want and need, and how strongly they want it (Przeworski, Stokes, and Manin 1999: 9–10). Given the loose organization of Thai civil (and political) society, Thai voters may not offer clear signals concerning their interests. They may lack adequate information by which to assess the performance of their representatives. Partly as a result, many anti-Thaksin Thais came to see in elections the “the mummery of voting” that James Mill criticized in arguing against the secret ballot and in favor of public discussion that would encourage sensitivity to the public interest (quoted in Ackerman and Fishkin 2003: 7). As with many European conservatives and liberals in the past, these Thais reacted against emerging mass society and its often demagogic leaders by dismissing electoral democracy altogether. Thailand’s parliament grew less important after Thaksin took power. It had never been known for quality deliberations, but there were important debates at times. With his huge majority in parliament, however, Thaksin relied more on executive decrees and attended parliamentary sessions infrequently. Thaksin’s rule took on many of the qualities of Latin America’s delegative presidencies in which citizens and the legislative branch lacked means to hold executives accountable between elections. Such democracies were largely plebiscitary in nature. Many relatively politically sophisticated and even progressive Thais despaired of entrenching accountability or the rule of law in Thailand’s

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

181

democracy any time soon. Political participation often went no further than voting and the toting up of election tallies to determine which politicians would assume seats in parliament. As a result, and as with earlier European adherents of various forms of associationalism, many Thais came to view active voluntary associations as promising alternatives to either top-down bureaucratic management of community affairs (Hirst 1994: 3–6) or representative democracy. Such inclinations prompted one scholar to conclude that calls for civic participation in Thailand encourage the “erosion of existing [political] institutions rather than participation” (Shigetomi 2002: 138). Civil societies around the world vary in the extent to which they assume oppositional roles vis-à-vis the state or political parties. Poland’s civil society, for example, exhibited the “politics of antipolitics” (Linz and Stepan 1996: 269). In other contexts, however, civil society is more apt to engage with political parties as well as the state. In still others, civil society is inclined simply to stay aloof from the state. This last orientation was prominent among Thai civil society groups. Many Thai progressives saw political parties, the state, or both as obstacles to the achievement of democracy as they understood it. Despite gradual political liberalization during the 1980s and the rising optimism about Thailand’s democratic prospects that continued to grow at least until 2001, many civil society activists were not drawn to participate directly or even indirectly in Thai electoral politics. Initially, through the 1980s, their interlocutors tended to be state officials rather than politicians or political parties. A number of factors help to account for the divide between most civil society groups and political parties. In some cases, civil society groups prized their autonomy and feared being swamped by the superior resources that political parties commanded. Many social activists in Thailand viewed political parties as being partisan, understandably enough, while the identities of activists in civil society tended to stress service to public interests. In the world of NGOs, there was a widespread perception that “being partisan means being bought” (Simpkins 2003: 281). Politicians’ venality and, in some cases, their limited education or sophistication made them unattractive partners for some activists. Many Thai politicians probably opted for their careers in substantial part for pecuniary reasons. For such reasons, many NGOs were predisposed to prefer contact with good people working as scholars or government officials to that with politicians. Thailand had a substantial localist community culture movement. Those who were part of this movement typically wanted to retain elements of Thais’ or villagers’ heritage and to call on their specific portfolios of skills in managing life’s challenges. In this regard, they echoed the conservative outlook of Thailand’s modernizing elites since the late nineteenth century. They generally were not attracted to Thailand’s deal brokering and

182

THAI POLITICS

commercially adept politicians. Still another factor impeding cooperation with Thai politicians was the fact that, for the most part, those politicians did not truck in policy. Generally, Thai political parties, at least until 2001, were akin to the old political machines of US urban politics, tending to be neutral toward policy content and interested rather in how policies could be executed to benefit narrow clienteles (Wolfinger 1978: 62–63). When Thaksin came to power, he threw many Thai progressives off balance. They had grown accustomed to viewing themselves as the champions of Thailand’s poor and marginalized. They were longtime supporters of democracy against military usurpations and crooked politicians. Thaksin was able to embrace global commerce, assert a brash style of corporate leadership, win the support of Thailand’s rural poor with popular policies, and, increasingly over time, pose as a committed democrat. In response, Thais began to hear from Thaksin’s foes a great deal of pooh-poohing of the significance of mere electoral democracy not sustained by political rights, rule of law, and leadership legitimacy. The concern to move from an emphasis on elections to a fuller liberal democracy (“participatory representative government”) was evident among many of those social forces that lobbied successfully for the 1997 constitution (Klein 2003a: 115). As noted above, such a concern also was found in the PAD.11 Many Thais in the NGO world sought to buffer rural communities from the state’s overweening influence, the storms of global capitalism, and the wiles of Thai politicians. Thaksin, however, was intent on bypassing these avowed champions of the poor. His powerful centralized government used programs such as Village Development Funds (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005) to get around civil society organizations, rather than working with them. His government had no taste for groups that attempted to interpose themselves between the prime minister and voters. Under his party’s rule, the prime minister suggested, secondary associations no longer were necessary because his party now represented the concerns of voters (Connors 2007: 250). Political Parties in Thailand Judged even by the generally low standards of political parties in weakly institutionalized democracies, Thailand’s parties have been feeble and have performed poorly. As with Japan’s party politics in the decades after World War II, it was not always clear in the past that analysts should be directing their attention at political parties rather than at the factions that comprised them. Generally, political parties advocated no policies, had limited or meaningless membership, represented no specific social groups other than perhaps regions, and established few linkages with voters. A sense for par-

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

183

ties’ inclusive, generic, and nationalist appeals is evident in their names such as Thais Love Thailand, For Thais, Thai National Development, and Thai Nation. Many of these would-be catchall parties caught relatively few. Lacking strong parties to structure vote choices, each election was “a new and random event . . . the market is wide open, and voters are still available to all comers” (Sawasdee 2006: 178). This once apt characterization no longer applied after Thaksin arrived on the scene. Before the 1970s, political parties were of little significance. Politicians stitched them together for electoral purposes, and they generally did not cohere and were not sustained. Periods of electoral competition not interrupted by military coups and military governments were brief. Parties and parliament, however, became more important with the collapse of military dominance in 1973. The higher stakes up for grabs through elections from the 1970s resulted in a steady rise of candidate and vote buying and money politics as well as political violence (B. Anderson 1990). The Social Action Party coalition government led by Kukrit that came to power in 1975 worked to expand political society’s reach to enfold rural voters. It sustained land and tenancy reform programs launched during the prior interim Sanya Dharmasakti government, created agricultural price supports, and stipulated mandatory bank lending to rural areas. It also launched the Tambon Development Fund that distributed loans to each of the country’s more than 5,000 tambon councils (Girling 1981: 203–204). The fund’s genesis lay in the work of two bankers, Paul Sithi-Amnuai and Boonchu Rojanasathien, who were active in the party. Boonchu suggests that the inspiration behind the policy was less economic than political. Its aim was to mobilize and politicize farmers by giving them a stake in politics and inducing their participation (Rojanasathien 1987). The Social Action Party attempted to implement an impressive range of reforms, but most of these were stymied by defections from the party and coalition that forced new elections in 1976. The popular Tambon Development Funds, however, may have helped the party to more than double its seats, particularly at the expense of left parties, in the 1976 elections. A military coup brought this democratic episode to an end later that year (Morrell and Samudavanija 1981: 131). The Kukrit-led government was a striking exception in the general course of Thai electoral politics. More typically, most Thais voted without expectation of any impact on politics in faraway Bangkok. By and large, voters in rural Thailand were mobilized on clientelistic bases. At best, their representatives might bring development projects to their districts. While many voters in Bangkok and southern Thailand engaged in party voting to some degree by the 1980s, in most of the country voters supported local politicians who had cultivated local ties and dispensed largesse liberally. If those candidates shifted from one party to another, they could take their

184

THAI POLITICS

voters with them. Vote choices were nudged by advice proffered by respected local leaders, gifts of money, or by the fact that one politician but not another had made it to their village to attend a wedding, funeral, or festival. To win votes, politicians needed to establish their bona fides as locals and as able providers. These conditions approximated those in the southeastern United States during the era of one-party (Democrat) rule there that lasted into the 1970s (Key 1949: 248). Sustained economic development, including in the provinces, and parliament’s control over valuable resources resulted by the 1980s in a new class of business political figures not based in Bangkok that was becoming increasingly influential (Ockey 2004; Robertson 1996). Based on networks of brokers of rural votes, these politicians often served local voters as patrons and offered higher-ranking politicians electoral support. Their businesses included a variety of simple processing industries (e.g., saw or rice milling) as well as illegal gambling, smuggling, and prostitution, but were concentrated most heavily in construction. By the time of the 2005 elections, business figures made up between one-half and two-thirds of the executive committees of Thailand’s main political parties (Nogsuan 2006: 113). A 2009 survey indicated that access to candidates was the most important consideration for voters in choosing them. Another source from the rural north suggested voters looked for candidates with whom they could be comfortable, who were at ease in speaking the northern dialect, and who showed commitment to their village (cited in Walker 2012: 197). By 2001, Thais also could vote for political parties as well as individual candidates. In their party-list voting, they gave more emphasis to past policy performance and less to links to their members of parliament (Asia Foundation 2009: 12). Increasing party voting may have helped Thaksin secure a loyal voter base that delivered a series of electoral victories. His party’s share of the party-list vote, however, at times fell short of its control over the constituency elections. Only the Democrat Party in Thailand survived for a long time (seventy years) and showed a recurring willingness to assume the role of a responsible opposition. It had a more collective leadership than other Thai parties, often a source of considerable internal tensions. It also was the only Thai political party that made relatively large and sustained efforts to create party branches, albeit the effort was not particularly successful outside its southern base (Sirivunnabood 2009; Askew 2006). This comparatively robust commitment to parliamentary government came from a party with royalist roots that consistently opposed Thaksin. After 2005, its democratic credentials grew increasingly suspect in the eyes of many. The party boycotted two elections in 2006 and 2014 that Thaksin’s parties were certain to win. In both cases, the boycotts helped pave the way for subsequent military coups.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

185

Though episodic, electoral politics became an increasingly important force driving political participation in Thailand from the 1970s. Elected politicians such as Banharn Silapa-archa grew increasingly powerful and emerged as important intermediaries between the state and their constituents. Over decades, Banharn and his political machine brought benefits to his central Thai supporters (Nishizaki 2011). Banharn served as prime minister in the mid-1990s at which time he observed, more in hope than in conviction, that “Bangkok is not Thailand” (Unger 1998: 39).12 He was not able to give practical effect to this insistence. Instead, the established pattern continued: rural voters, with their numbers, chose governments; Bangkok’s media, elites, and disdain for politicians’ corruption disposed of them. Creating more balance between these groups of citizens was a task that would remain for Thaksin. Before the 1997 constitution, Thai law precluded associations from making contributions to politicians or political parties. While individual business figures could make donations, organizations such as the Federation of Thai Industries could not. One cause of the parties’ dependence on key leaders and of their limited institutionalization was these narrow bases of political party financing (Nogsuan 2006: 117–118). Political parties were not allowed to use television advertising until the mid-1990s (Sawasdee 2006). In recent years, Thai politics have become more regionalized. The larger political parties have fairly clear regional bases. The Democrat Party was firmly entrenched in the south and in Bangkok; the Pheu Thai Party had its stronghold in the northeast, north, and around Bangkok’s northern fringe; Bumjaithai had its base in the lower northeast; and Chart Thai was a party of the central region. The northeast had almost one-third of Thailand’s population while the south was the least populated region. Bangkok accounted for just over 10 percent of Thai registered voters. In the 2011 elections, Pheu Thai had solid support in the upper north and northeast, and the Democrats had a solid south. The electoral math was firmly in Pheu Thai’s favor. For all their weaknesses, even before Thaksin came along, Thai parties certainly performed many of parties’ core functions. Parties (or factions) nominated candidates, mobilized the electorate, and, increasingly over time, organized governance. Certainly some efforts to create new parties were unsuccessful, even when they had substantial funding and some big names. The Thai Rak Thai was a striking exception. At least until Thaksin, however, it was less clear that political parties performed other key roles such as issue structuring, societal representation, interest aggregation, and social integration. Thaksin’s mobilizing and polarizing effects, and the introduction of partial proportional representation voting since 2001 has tended to nationalize Thai elections. Local political issues and personalities

186

THAI POLITICS

became less dominant and national-level competition for control of government more salient. In the 2011 elections, for example, operatives connected to the Bumjaithai Party expected that given their strong local roots, as well as their control of the Ministry of Interior portfolio, they would fare well in Loei province. A worker with Pheu Thai in the province, however, also was optimistic: “The whole popularity of Pheu Thai in this province is the popularity of Thaksin Shinawatra in particular” (Ngamkham 2011: 4). The Pheu Thai swept the province’s four seats. After 2005, the centrality of political parties declined somewhat as political polarization deepened and new political movements assumed greatly increased importance. The UDD constituted a critical new institution of political inclusion. Parliamentary deliberations in many political systems around the world declined in importance with the rise of massbased political parties. In Thailand, fractured media markets and street politics were tending to sideline the centrality of political parties. Abhisit, leader of the opposition Democrat Party, briefly undermined his leadership in 2014 when he broke ranks with the PDRC’s hard line against elections and sought to initiate talks across the political divide. Thaksin’s Impact For the first time in several decades, the Thai economy stopped growing in 1997. In fact, it collapsed along with the Thai currency, and many businesses disappeared. The economic disaster changed the calculus of many business leaders in Thailand. With the crisis in part self-inflicted, the leaders of business empires saw clearly enough that their fortunes not only might be boosted by but could also be threatened by government policies. Governments no longer could be viewed simply as sources of rents and an occasional nuisance. Government policy needed to be monitored and controlled more directly (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005: 36), as banks had always done. Government could threaten by incompetence and corruption, evident in the faction leaders who stubbornly resisted closing down failing financial institutions in the lead-up to the crisis. The more sober Democrat Party–led coalition that took power in 1997 also proved dangerous when it approved draconian measures backed by the International Monetary Fund that devastated many businesses (Unger 1998: 105–106). Thaksin appealed to these business concerns. His own governmentgranted telecommunications concession, the basis of his enormous fortune, was once imperiled when the reformist Anand government in the early 1990s considered revoking the deal (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 47). In making the decision to devote massive resources to try to win political power, Thaksin was in a sense shifting a part of his business operations upstream.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

187

Thaksin had made a previous foray into politics, but his great impact came when he formed a new political party, the Thai Rak Thai, in 1998 and came to power in elections early in 2001. Thaksin represented a novel force in Thai politics. His political success was a product of a conjuncture of factors. These included the economic blow of 1997 and the new constitution that year. As important perhaps were slowly building changes—in education, awareness, sophistication, and resentment—in Thai society that in the short term might elude detection. These changes may have reached some tipping point, at which time their importance could no longer be ignored. The 1997 economic meltdown may have helped to do the tipping. Television was among the important forces that gradually were transforming Thai society. Thais were more educated, mobile, affluent, familiar with elections, and less tied to traditional communities. Thaksin rode these changes to unprecedented levels of electorally based political power in Thailand and complemented them with a brand of ruthless and insatiable hunger for power that was relatively unfamiliar in the Thai context (Race 2014). Thaksin created an enormous and loyal mass following by making promises to voters of substantive benefits and delivering on those promises. No other Thai political leaders had ever shown themselves comparably accountable to voters. In the election campaign of 2001 and once in office, Thaksin made extensive and effective use of the mass media (Chapter 5). Thaksin’s impact on Thai politics, however, did not stop there. His polarizing style of rule eventually alienated much of the Thai political and social elite. Many of these elites had backed him initially. Fairly quickly, however, many of them, whether progressives or establishment conservatives, grew disillusioned. A mass movement emerged, the PAD, that aimed to force Thaksin from power. It achieved its goal when a military coup tossed Thaksin from power in 2006. Established patterns in Thai politics dictated that, at that point (if not earlier), Thaksin should have taken his winnings and departed the political scene. In fact, in response to a judicial intervention earlier in 2006, he briefly seemed ready to do just that. However, Thaksin remained doggedly determined to regain power after the coup (and, presumably, to get back the part of his wealth seized by the Thai state in 2010). He invested heavily in sustaining his electoral support as well as the organizational means of turning out large numbers onto the streets and keeping them there for long periods, in particular in April and May 2010. Many of Thaksin’s opponents dismissed as Thaksin’s paid stooges the Red Shirts of the UDD who persistently came out on the streets or at the polls to support him (Chapter 5), as well as their leaders (Crispin 2012: 114–116). These dismissals of Thaksin’s power base brought to mind Trotsky’s observation that the privileged always dismiss the “revolution that overthrew them” as a mere “mutiny, a riot, a revolt of the rabble” (Trotsky 1959: 100).

188

THAI POLITICS

The Thai Rak Thai Party that swept the 2001 elections was a party of a new type and commanded resources on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Its principal backers were not (as in the past pattern) a group of modestly wealthy business leaders but were key figures in large national corporations. Thaksin himself was fabulously rich (Nogsuan 2006: 109–110). Financing of most political parties still depended on businesses and continued to leave party stability at the whim of the fortunes and inclinations of a relatively small number of key individuals. Several of these were severely weakened by the economic collapse in 1997, paving the way for Thai Rak Thai’s unprecedented political dominance. It was able to accumulate this degree of power because of the effects of the 1997 constitution, the 1997 economic crisis, the loss of access to local development funds by members of parliament (since 1999), and the party’s skillful use of mass media (Sawasdee 2006; Ockey 2002). Observers of Thai politics often note parallels between Thaksin and Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, another tycoon turned politician with a fortune based in telecommunications. These parallels extend to the two politicians’ respective political parties. Forza Italia in Italy had few activists, no tradition, and operated in a politically passive society. It made effective use of incumbency and a “continuous presence on television” (Morlino 2001: 132). Once in power, Thai Rak Thai did that as well. Despite a great deal of talk about establishing decades of rule under his Thai Rak Thai Party, Thaksin took few steps to institutionalize the party along the lines of the United Malay Nationalist Organization in Malaysia or People’s Action Party in Singapore. While Thai Rak Thai did develop nominal membership of many millions, party memberships in Thailand were not meaningful. It was not unusual for parties to draw fewer votes than they had members in particular districts (Sirivunnabood 2009).13 Internally, the Thai Rak Thai remained Thaksin’s personal tool long after he was driven from power and from Thailand, and after its two subsequent name and personnel changes. Many Red Shirts hoped to have a voice in nominating Pheu Thai Party candidates in 2011 and later elections. Thaksin brushed these calls aside. His minister of interior, the prominent Chalerm Yubamrung, made no bones about Pheu Thai needing to use Thaksin’s name in the elections: “Why should the party be afraid of being known as Thaksin’s nominee?” (quoted in Hengkietisak 2011: 10).14 It was clear that, by 2011, Thaksin had decided he could trust only his family (he had previously made a career politician, not part of his family, the premier). Indeed, Thaksin required party members to sign resignation letters in advance of the 2011 elections. If Yingluck Shinawatra, his sister, did not end up being made the prime minister, Thaksin could accept the letters. He was at the time concerned that there might be a move within the party to make Mingkwan Saengsuwan, a sea-

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

189

soned political veteran, the new party leader (Srivalo 2011). His party’s appalling, but apparently effective and honest, slogan in 2011 was “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Acts.” Lest that message leave any doubts, Thaksin stressed that the party leader, his sister, was his “clone” (Parry 2014). By 2015, perhaps more Pheu Thai leaders were feeling that they could not do with Thaksin, but neither could they do without him. They might have had an easier time with the military government if the party had a leader who was not from Thaksin’s family. Suggesting as much to Thaksin, however, might have meant they would find themselves out of the party (Bangkok Post 2015a: 8). The PAD was not entirely wrong in arguing that, in Thailand’s democracy, a select circle made most of the key decisions. The 2001 election was Thailand’s first to include proportional representation elements, in which voters selected party lists as well as individual representatives for their district. Previously, individual politicians or groups within factions shopped around for convenient parties (Nogsuan 2006: 120). Before changes in party laws constrained party hopping, to some extent the outcome of elections could be predicted based on which candidates had defected to which parties. These patterns revealed which party was prepared to pay the cost of hiring proven winners as their candidates (121). Before the 1995 elections, for example, the Chart Thai Party recruited twenty-three politicians from other parties and these proved instrumental in the party’s plurality of six in the elections. The party then lost forty-seven members of parliament, most of whom went to the New Aspiration Party which, as a result, was able to form a new government in 1996 (122–123). In the run-up to the 2001 elections, the Thai Rak Thai lured well over 100 incumbent members of parliament and was able to win an unprecedented victory in the elections (Nogsuan 2006: 121–123). Generally, in the past, the electoral fortunes of candidates who changed parties had been as favorable as those of incumbents who stuck with the same party. These politicians usually did not suffer for their switches, though there were some indications over time that the costs of party hopping were rising (123–128). In 2001, only those candidates who went to the Thai Rak Thai enjoyed high levels of success. Party switching to other parties was no longer a safe strategy. This suggests that, from its maiden electoral foray, the Thai Rak Thai was boosting party (Thaksin) voting. Conclusion Stable and effective government under a limited participation regime does not guarantee political system success once the circle of participants expands, though strong political institutions certainly boost the odds of

190

THAI POLITICS

achieving mass incorporation in a relatively seamless way. In the earlier democracies, incorporation occurred through expansion of the franchise. In some later cases in which universal franchise coexisted with ongoing de facto political exclusion, incorporation involved changes in the nature of the institutional linkages between citizens and the state. For example, linkages may move beyond clientelist ties to mass politics mediated by a stronger political party system. Samuel P. Huntington, based on mid-twentieth-century observations, saw modernization widening the gap between city and countryside in developing countries with profound political effects. Political party cleavages tended to reflect that gap (Huntington 1968: 435–445).15 Rural voters were conservative and parties that were successful in mobilizing rural support would put forward a new coalition opposing a governing, postcolonial, “urban-based, middle- and upper-class, modernizing elite” (72–78). This pattern was evident, for example, in India and, earlier, in the Middle East (B. Lewis 2004: 285–286). The opposition coalition often would use populist appeals, antagonize the established modernizing elite, and provoke coups. Eventually, however, the countryside was successfully incorporated (Huntington 1968: 460). With that development might emerge a stronger embrace of democratic and participatory values. These changes, however, might also bring, as in the Indian case, a weakened commitment to liberal or modernization values (Kaviraj 2001). In Thailand, coming years will see ongoing tension between commitments to elements of liberalism, on the one hand, and emphasis on participation and democracy, on the other. The deeply conservative orientations so well represented by the 2014 coup regime will continue to be tied to the liberal coalition.16 Barrington Moore views the countryside pessimistically. In his comparative study of modernization and democratic processes, he concludes that the best means of achieving democracy was to eliminate the “peasant question” (1966: 422). The persistence of the peasantry in France, he suggests, helped to account for its instability over the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Problems of rural poverty and social exclusion remained far more widespread in central and, in particular, Eastern Europe than they were in France. Therefore, Moore argues, “getting rid of agriculture as a major social activity is one prerequisite for successful democracy” (429). Generally speaking, European countries got rid of agriculture comparatively early. Their manufacturing enterprises were highly labor intensive and absorbed vast numbers of workers. By contrast, in many low- and middle-income countries today, including in Southeast Asia, a lot of people still derive much of their income from agriculture. The share of those in Thailand who responded with agriculture as their “main employment” was about 70 percent in the 1980s, but today is closer to 40 percent (UNDP 2009: 10). The share of Thailand’s labor force primarily engaged in agricul-

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

191

ture was shrinking fast. Meanwhile, Thailand already is far into its demographic transition. As noted in Chapter 7, these changes are likely to reduce Thailand’s social dualism. Thailand’s peasant question will decline in importance. Nonetheless, Thailand has a large informal sector that may not shrink a great deal over the next couple of decades. The result could be that Thailand’s political economy will retain more elements akin to those of Greece than those of much of the rest of Europe. Francis Fukuyama characterizes the Greek case as featuring social change driven by rural poverty (rather than by employment in export industries); politics shaped by clans, regions, and only weak social classes; rural habits and outlooks coming to characterize urban settings; and widespread clientelism and the search for personal security dominating over party competition on the basis of programmatic policy differences (Fukuyama 2014: 99–102, 205, 530–531). Certainly if Thailand’s informal sector remains large, it is likely that political populism will retain great electoral appeal. Is populism problematic? More is at stake than a mere question of income transfers. Indeed, rather than emphasizing social rights, populists tend to offer contingent benefits. In politics, populists are prone to be plebiscitary. Their appeals generally are not complex and tend to conceal important trade-offs among goals. They often feature a single-issue approach to politics (Baggini 2015: 10). Further, if the case of the Pheu Thai and its UDD backers does not provide adequate evidence, France’s populist National Front, the United Kingdom’s Independence Party, and the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party in the United States remind us that populists are not always liberal or progressive. Certainly, it was clear in the 2011 elections that Thailand was operating in a new, populist, political context. Both of the major parties were offering “short-term goodies” instead of fundamental reforms relating to decentralization, education, water management, or income transfers (Hengkietisak 2011: 10).17 The Bumjaithai Party offered the slogan “Populism leads to a happy society” (Chantanusornsiri 2011: 9). There were some differences among the parties. The Democrats gave more emphasis to measures such as expanding education opportunities and including informal sector pensioners in the social security system while the Pheu Thai gave more emphasis to subsidies for first-time car buyers and a guaranteed (high) floor price for rice. Populist and social welfare policy commitments were rapidly shifting the nature of Thailand’s budgetary politics. With the Democrats in power at the start of 2011, the budget included heavy commitments for health care for the uninsured (over $3 billion), expansion of free education to the age of fifteen years old (well over $2.5 billion), a new pension program (about $1 billion), and crop price insurance (near $2 billion) (Chantanusornsiri 2011: 9). The last figure would explode under the following government.

192

THAI POLITICS

If the suddenly populist cast of Thai politics occasions some reasonable concerns, it also can be argued that democracy is working. The Pheu Thai’s populist policies made it an election winner and, as a result, other parties have tried to recast their electoral appeals to compete. They have failed to be successful, and critics often accuse them of failing to even try to learn from Pheu Thai’s example. Were the Democrats and other parties simply doing populist appeals wrong? Was populism less important than the sense that the Pheu Thai and Thaksin were able to convey of respect for less educated rural voters? Or were Pheu Thai voters sticking with the party not entirely for instrumental but also for expressive reasons? The last possibility posed serious concerns for Thaksin’s electoral opponents, suggesting that prizing voters away from Thaksin would be no easy task. One view before the the 2011 elections was that the outcome would be less about policy differences and more about identity voting. The party had been sufficiently successful in securing many voters’ commitments, according to this view, that it no longer needed to be overly concerned about using policy appeals to secure votes. Nonetheless, the party pulled out the stops in its election platform making populist appeals. Given enough time, “democracy in a low-income setting typically gives rise to an enormous outpouring of political activity” (Kohli 1990: 30). In India, democracy had to be sustained for more than two decades before such an upwelling of popular political participation flowered. Until the 1970s, political parties made few appeals to agricultural interests (Varshney 1998: 193). Eventually, however, India’s educated and cosmopolitan political elite would be superseded by one less educated and more provincial. As the Times of India puts it, a “new specter of peasant power is likely to haunt India in coming years” (quoted in Varshney 1998: 192). Democracy was dispersing power to traditional and communal elites and encouraging policies that favored agriculture over industry and urban interests (Huntington 1968: 445–446). Eventually, in a context of a dual society, democracy reached the masses and the effects on democracy were not in every way positive (Kaviraj 2001: 311–312). Autocracy was pronounced within some political parties, and religious intolerance gained a stronger foothold in India’s politics. Struggling for “democratic rights” and entitlements, India’s new “political society” often violated legal and other norms (Chatterjee 2001: 176). Similar changes are afoot today in Thailand. Former prime minister Thaksin was a key agent in smashing an elite consensus that had cohered for decades. In some respects, that consensus served Thailand well. A new consensus, however, is now needed. As in India, not all the changes associated with a new political dispensation will be positive. It will take a couple of decades for Thailand’s new democratic politics to acquire greater levels of tolerance and capacities for deliberations. Deeply ingrained “habits of

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

193

the heart” (Bellah et al. 2007) are likely to impede the emergence soon of anything closely approximating what Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba referred to as a “civic culture” (1963: 1–6). In a generation, perhaps much less, it will be easier to assess the meanings and impact of the political conflict that gathered in force starting in 2005. It seems likely that future analysts will be able to conclude that longmarginalized poorer and less educated Thais began to assert their political identities and preferences more insistently. It seems less likely, however, that it will be possible to trace a clear line of descent between the Red Shirts and the movements and organizations that will follow. Absent Thaksin, his political party and political movement are likely to fracture and weaken. Further, the exaggerations of many analysts concerning the alleged implacability of elite opposition to mass aspirations will recede. Politics will continue to be shaped, however, in new ways by mass inclusion, exhibiting more pronounced features of illiberalism and populism. In Chapter 7, we speculate further on Thailand’s possible political futures. Notes 1. We often associate critical junctures with new institutional configurations. Particularly in the Thai case, however, a critical juncture may be rooted more in changed norms and understandings, and in greater levels of enforcement of existing laws, than in changes in formal institutions. A single leader embodying key facets of new social and political realities might legitimate a new Thai political order with enduring effects. As a Scot argued some three centuries ago, “If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation” (quoted in Blanning 2007: 314). A related point was made much more recently: “We are what we imagine, as much as what we do” (Doniger 2010: 24). 2. For more analysis on Thai local government and decentralization, see Mahakanjana (2014); Mahakanjana and Unger (2013); Mahakanjana (2012); Mahakanjana and Wongpridee (2011); Chardchawarn (2009); Mahakanjana (2009); and Nagai, Funantsu, and Kagoya (2008). 3. Data from these two paragraphs draw on Suchitra Punyaratabandhu’s national survey between 2005 and 2006. This survey did not include respondents from either Bangkok or the far south (Punyaratabandhu 2007). 4. Northeastern revolts opposed internal colonization as the Thai state established more direct control over outlying regions (Wyatt 2003: 199). 5. We stress the word “relatively.” Until the mid-nineteenth century, most Thais continued to confront obligatory labor service for long periods. A regressive tax on rice exports was in place until the mid-twentieth century. 6. Chinese civil society was partly separate from and partly overlapping Thai civil society. It generally consisted of language- or descent-based groups, though at the peak pan-Chinese business organizations emerged over time (Skinner 1958). 7. Some former members of the Red Gaurs attended political meetings in late 2012. They were still intent on “protecting” the monarchy (Bangkok Post 2012b: 3–5).

194

THAI POLITICS

8. Almost 60 percent of respondents agreed that organizing many groups tended to undermine social harmony; nearly 74 percent concurred that pluralism in political thought could engender a chaotic society (Asian Barometer Survey, Wave 3, 2010−2012). 9. The 2007 constitution had comparable articles. 10. Thais were more apt than many other respondents to agree that “most people” can be trusted, but were comparatively less trusting of those they were meeting for the first time (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010−2014). 11. By 2013 the conflict was, as one scholar put it, between ethics-based politics with little concern for democracy and democracy-based politics with little concern for ethics (Chaisukkosol 2014: 13–14). 12. In similar fashion, Adnan Menderes, Turkish prime minister in 1960, remarked: “Who cares what the intellectuals in Istanbul think, we have the peasants on our side” (quoted in Waldner 1999: 61). As it turned out, those intellectuals’ attitudes eased the way for successive military coups. 13. The state helped to fund political parties. The formula it used to allocate funds, providing incentives to parties to sink roots in civil society, rewarded parties that had large memberships or large numbers of party branch offices. Parties therefore had strong incentives to generate large memberships, however nominal the affiliations. 14. Other Pheu Thai figures apparently had misgivings and gave, the following month, hints that they might file a defamation suit against Chirmsak Pinthong, a regular critic, for suggesting that Yingluck was a Thaksin proxy. 15. In many cases, particularly in middle-income countries, the divide between rural and urban is not stark. In Thailand, regular migration and multiple occupations have made the rural population more urban, and the reverse. While 40 percent of Thais are farmers, they derive only a third of their income from agriculture (Chaisukkosol 2014: 4). 16. Such a coalition, in the future, may not include the military. As Thailand’s most corporate political actor, it would be relatively easy for the military to shift its current alignment. 17. As a result, one Pheu Thai figure complained that the Democrat Party, in government, was using populism to boost its popularity in anticipation of elections (Bangkok Post 2010b: 3).

7 Thailand’s Elusive Democracy

ful, rule-bound, and accountable state. It was notably more successful in creating an effective state than in subjecting it to law or making power holders accountable to law or voters. The Thai economy was extraordinarily successful. Thailand moved from being among the world’s poorer countries to an upper-middle-income one in half a century. This generally positive political and economic record seems to have resulted in substantial part from a number of apparently favorable conditions. Eight of these conditions are identified below. Worryingly, most of them now are weakening or have already substantially disappeared. Having introduced this concluding chapter by noting the evanescence of many of the factors that helped to produce Thailand’s past impressive results, we turn the discussion around and ask again, given past favorable circumstances, why was Thailand not more successful in entrenching a liberal democratic regime? We examine arguments often adduced to account for Thailand’s political limitations: too many coups, weak political institutions (Samudavanija 2002: 107), and limited levels of (or the wrong kinds of) education and political attitudes and values. We then look to the future. We try to suggest what will be the longerterm impact of Thailand’s current political mobilization, polarization, and experience with military government. We draw parallels between former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and former US president Andrew Jackson. Will the political changes associated with, and partly engendered by, Thaksin be as enduring as those produced by Jackson? We close this chapter and the book by considering the plausibility of different political regime types taking hold in Thailand over the next couple of decades. We discuss five different regimes: a monarchy-centered, electorally based arrangement along the lines of Thailand’s recent political THAILAND HAS HAD ONLY MODEST SUCCESS IN BUILDING A POWER-

195

196

THAI POLITICS

regimes (with all their internal tensions); liberal democracy; social democracy; bureaucratic authoritarian; and authoritarian populist. We argue that monarchy-centered or authoritarian populist regimes are the most likely results. Either regime likely would be fragile and unstable. Finally, we conclude the book by briefly reviewing parallels between the political roles and challenges that confronted King Dom Pedro II in Brazil in the nineteenth century and King Bhumipol Adulyadej in Thailand throughout the second half of the past century and into this one. Favorable Conditions Eight conditions (or factors) helped to account for Thailand’s striking economic successes as well as its more pedestrian political performance. Two of these were factors we have noted repeatedly throughout this book: low levels of political participation1 and, through most of the second half of the twentieth century, a broad and stable elite consensus on power-sharing arrangements and public policies. These two conditions have largely disappeared. Two other factors were deeply rooted historically and comprised two elements of the familiar ideological troika underpinning Thai conservative politics: religion and monarchy. These conditions also have been undergoing fundamental and likely irreversible changes. The fifth condition refers to the last leg of the ideological troika: a strong national identity. The regional identity (Lao, Lanna) bases of Thailand’s current political conflict suggest grounds for concern on that score as well. Comparative income and asset equality, the sixth condition, prevailed in Thailand in the middle of the twentieth century, but was subsequently left far behind. Thailand grew very unequal in terms of assets and incomes. Only two of the eight conditions are more likely to endure. In Thailand, unlike in many neopatrimonial polities, politics is not the only game in town. Thailand’s market-based economic success has meant that many ambitious Thais have pursued their various goals through channels other than contests for influence over the state. As a result, economic policy has not always been hostage to narrow political-economic interests. This point should not be overstated. Rent seeking was pervasive in Thailand. Many middle-class Thais remained tied to the state. Further, Thailand’s economy never regained its past dynamism following its 1997 collapse. Political instability subsequently undermined the economy, and sluggish performance fed back into political difficulties, bedeviling the 2014 coup leadership’s hopes of building a strong foundation of political support. The final once positive condition was the absence, or so most observers believed, of social exclusion based on impermeable (caste, ethnicity) social boundaries (Montesano 2014: 7–8; Parry 2014). It is possible that class-rooted social

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

197

exclusion might intensify in the decades ahead, though there are grounds for hoping that it will not (see below). We now elaborate on these eight conditions, beginning with the last two. A buoyant economy can positively affect politics in several ways. It can boost revenues that can be used to achieve policy goals and buy off destabilizing opposition, for example. It tends to give to the regime that presides over the economy a substantial degree of legitimacy and may tend to muffle other demands (although it also can generate social instability and may hasten the strengthening of demands for political voice). Above some income threshold, democracy may tend to stabilize. A critically important result of strong market-based economic growth is that it dilutes tendencies to view politics as a winner-take-all contest. As large business groups emerged in Thailand, they often played political roles, but in many cases only reluctantly. Typically, business figures in the 1950s were ethnic Chinese who as a result were particularly vulnerable to predation by political (generally military or police) leaders. Commercial bankers and other top business leaders often found it advisable to put leading military and police figures on their boards of directors. It was only in the 1970s that a fairly large number of prominent business leaders were emboldened to adopt direct political roles by running for office or bankrolling political factions or parties. Many of these business politicians probably sought political influence to benefit their business activities. The critical point for this discussion is that in Thailand (in some sectors) powerful friends in government were less essential to business success than was the case in many other countries. Property protections were strong enough, political regulation of the economy limited enough, and economic growth robust enough for some Thai tycoons to emerge with only limited investments in fostering political influence. That some Thai individuals and families were able to achieve great wealth and social stature without large investments in politics helped to reduce the intensity of political competition and, thereby, enhanced political flexibility. This condition could change, however, despite Thailand’s decades-long record of limiting the damage that politically linked interests could wreak on the economy. A number of scholars note the apparent increase in Thailand of “policy corruption” in which the state’s regulatory and legislative powers were used to privilege narrow economic interests (e.g., Siamwalla 2011). Some populist policy appeals—for example, the Yingluck Shinawatra government’s (2011–2014) scheme for boosting rice prices—afforded ample opportunities to garner rents. Rising levels of popular mobilization in a context of sharp income inequalities could give rise to more economic nationalism and regulation of the economy to benefit more or less narrow groups. To date, efforts to curb corruption have not been effective, at least not on a sustained basis.2 Less buoyant economic growth provides incen-

198

THAI POLITICS

tives that cut both ways, for more corruption and for more vigilance in curbing it. High wealth inequality, meanwhile, may tend to perpetuate social exclusion, though we consider below some factors that are pushing in the opposite direction. The economic, social, educational, and cultural gaps between different groups of Thais yawn wide. Many Thais receive poor educations while children of the affluent often are educated in good, English-language programs. There are few and only mild precedents for boosting the state’s tax intake to use for redistributive purposes, though these likely will rise in coming years. The initial inability of General Prayuth Chan-ocha’s coup government to push through even a watered-down asset (land and business) tax was dismaying (the government was intent on trying again) (Chantanusornsiri 2015: 27). The enormous gulf in levels of education achievements as well as diverse attitudinal endowments may point to the perpetuation and entrenchment of these gaps to sustain social exclusion. Low levels of political mobilization and a sustained elite consensus on broad political and policy goals are two ingredients of Thailand’s past success that disappeared. We have focused in this book primarily on the first of these changes. It also is important to note, however, that while the old elite consensus concerning appropriate political arrangements has crumbled, in policy terms elite consensus for the most part survives and is sustained to a degree by wider social support. Most Thais seem to want and expect to entrench some sort of a democracy and to sustain a more or less marketrooted economy. There are few major differences in policy preferences among important and powerful elements of the elite or, so it seems, even beyond it. The haves may have resisted corruption more energetically than the relative have-nots, but the latter did not advocate policy-driven allocation of investment. Both the better educated as well as the more marginalized tended to support redistributive policy measures, at least in the abstract, though not the taxes to finance them. Thailand’s sharp political conflict emerged despite the limited nature of policy conflicts (World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014). If policy conflicts were in fact muted, why was the overall battle so intense? First, because of procedural disputes, one side favored majority rule on a delegative model, at least contingently; the other side opposed it. In addition, there were stark differences in terms of contending loyalties to alternative personalized networks, one claiming loyalty to the palace and another to Thaksin. To some extent, the two groups’ loyalties extended to different principals. Both groupings were to some degree also rooted in principles. The Thaksin coalition was associated with no-nonsense modernization, attending to the serious business of wealth creation and, perhaps more contingently, playing politics by electoral rules. The palace-supporting group’s principles included disinterested public service, clean govern-

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

199

ment, and, in particular, loyalty to the legacy and person of the king and the traditional Thai institutions that he symbolized. The two disappearing conditions—low levels of political mobilization and sustained elite consensus—were linked to one another. Division among elites often encourages one group or another to try to strengthen its position by bidding for support from new groups not previously part of the game. Such a dynamic may expand the electoral franchise or otherwise widen the circle of political participants. Thaksin probably first took up popular concerns largely for instrumental purposes—to win elections. Certainly, he gave those concerns far more prominence after he had gained power and recognized that he could use a strong electoral base to fend off the establishment elite. Whatever the motives that might drive the dynamic, if sustained, populist policies have the potential to boost state spending and incur rising fiscal imbalances without serving the longer-term goals of income and wealth redistribution, or of economic growth. Given the context of great inequalities and the weakness of the political party system, it is likely that populist policies will retain their appeal. The older and in many respects liberal economic model was associated with low levels of political mobilization that demanded little of elites in the way of taxation and, therefore, was less prone to fostering divisions within the elite. In any case, the design of policies aimed at redressing inequality in Thailand in coming years will be important. Limited political mobilization and participation served Thailand in a number of ways (the costs are ignored here, but discussed in the previous chapter). It contributed to political stability. It enabled an economic strategy, based on exports by poor farmers and industrial workers, that delivered rapid and sustained economic growth. Weak political institutions fare better, at least in the short term, if they are not overtaxed (Huntington 1968). This would suggest that low levels of political mobilization might enable those institutions to become stronger before they are forced to do the heavy lifting of enabling accommodation among critical competing groups in society. We have here another debate between the schools of prepare the conditions first and create the conditions through practice. Samuel P. Huntington argues that, if too much political participation emerged before strong political institutions that could channel demands had been consolidated, the result (given the system’s inability to meet newly raised expectations) was apt to be social frustration and political decay (Huntington 1968). In contrast, Gregory M. Luebbert insists that it is not possible to build strong political institutions before the advent of mass participation. Strong political institutions, he argues, emerge only through exercise in doing the difficult work of reconciling divergent interests. Those institutions that are crafted in advance of the masses’ participation will not be exercised adequately and, therefore, will not be strong enough

200

THAI POLITICS

to survive the arrival of the masses (Luebbert 1991: 314). In Thailand, certainly, with mass participation a recent phenomenon, strong political institutions have yet to emerge. Whether or not mass demands for voice, having emerged, will produce the necessary supply of flexible and effective political institutions remains to be seen. We expect the institutional supply to respond to burgeoning demand only gradually. In any case, while a degree of broad elite consensus and low levels of political mobilization can help us to understand how Thailand succeeded in the past, it is likely that those factors also were impediments to the emergence of a deeply rooted liberal democracy. The passing of those conditions, then, may open up opportunities for building Thailand’s democratic regime, even though they in no way guarantee that outcome. Less hopefully, it is possible that rising political mobilization may endanger Thailand’s long-sustained economic success as well as condemn the country to chronic instability. While it seemed unnecessarily alarmist during Thaksin’s first government to suggest that populist policies in Thailand posed serious threats to its economic performance, the grounds for worry increased over time. The government of Yingluck, beginning in 2011, for example, committed itself to an inefficient rice pledging scheme that boosted incomes going to rice farmers (among others) at extravagant costs to taxpayers. Total estimated losses reached $15 billion, or over 4 percent of GDP. Perhaps more than half of this amount was not reaching poor farmers (Wongsamuth and Tephaval 2013: B1). The Thai government remained in reasonably sound short-term fiscal health and the economy was not heavily burdened by avoidable regulations. Nonetheless, intensified political competition in a relatively short time produced significantly more risky fiscal behavior on the part of politicians. Expanding social welfare commitments, populist measures, and an aging population were quickly creating a new fiscal context. It would be recklessly optimistic, therefore, to assume that Thailand’s new politics would not damage elements of the economic framework that sustained growth in the past. The diverse Thai economy had many strengths, including a wide reservoir of entrepreneurial and managerial skills, extensive foreign capital, and a good neighborhood (East Asia). Weaknesses in human capital and political institutions, however, suggested that Thailand remained vulnerable and would struggle to rise to join the ranks of highincome countries. Three final conditions that contributed to Thailand’s past successes were more or less firmly established historically but also were undergoing fundamental and rapid change. As we discussed in Chapter 3, religion and monarchy long were the bedrock of Thai states. But for various reasons, both weakened. A widespread sense of belonging to a single national com-

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

201

munity seemed to have emerged more recently, largely during the middle third of the twentieth century. Articulation of Lao and Lanna identities in the northeast and north, respectively, in the context of Thailand’s regionally based political conflict, encouraged reconsideration of the optimism many observers once felt on this score (Montesano 2014: 7–8). The monarchy became a less central factor in Thai social and political life for several reasons. Thais were far more educated, urban, and autonomous than they had been in the past. Despite the lèse-majesté law, criticisms of the monarchy grew in frequency. Palace-linked actors were not willing to intervene to settle the political conflict of 2013–2014, in part presumably because they could not be certain of doing so successfully. A couple of additional factors may have worked to weaken the institution’s centrality in Thailand. Increasing social and political disenchantment in Thailand inevitably would leech away over time some of the passionate intensity of past identification with the monarchy. To the extent that commitments to the institution were more instrumental, the monarchy had more competitors able to promise a degree of psychic or material security. That King Bhumipol became far less active than in earlier decades may have encouraged some Thais to discount the institution’s centrality. The problem of succession, meanwhile, has bedeviled and obsessed Thais for decades. No attractive successor was available. Most important, however, the king’s charisma was so great, so entrenched in decades of good works on behalf of his subjects, and Thai society had changed so fundamentally in the course of his reign, that no figure could possibly reproduce a fraction of that charisma and influence. While Thailand had no long-term resident king for a time in the 1930s and through the 1940s, King Bhumipol rehabilitated the institution thereafter. In the middle of the twentieth century, it again began to be closely linked with effective stable political domination. Political stability emerged again in the 1980s as a “moving equilibrium” (Overholt 1988) of forces under King Bhumipol, supported by a broad elite consensus on the political order and direction of change. Arguably, the consensus emerged in the 1960s and even the sharp political polarization of the 1970s did not overturn it. Certainly, over the 1980s and 1990s, elites consolidated the consensus. The weakening of the king’s dominion in the early twenty-first century coincided with the rise of sharp political conflicts. Niccolò Machiavelli emphasized the importance in the founding of a republic or kingdom of having a single rule of “virtue” (Pitkin 1987). Pridi Phanomyong, one of the 1932 coup leaders, worried that Thailand’s intended revolution might amount to no more than a coup, that the country could simply shift from being ruled by one king to being ruled by many (some form of oligarchy) (Young and Pitsuwan 1978). As Thailand’s political conflict unfolded this century, the tensions could be seen as being

202

THAI POLITICS

rooted in the people having not one or many kings but having two distinct and competing networks of power (McCargo 2005). The scale of resources devoted in Thailand to extolling the king’s virtues and his subjects’ devotion could seem extravagant and the message heavy-handed (Parry 2014). The palace public relations unit employed some 600 staff (Streckfuss 2011: 105). It is important to recognize, however, that these efforts aimed (at least in part) at achieving symbolic political incorporation. Through the sheer majesty of the monarch, or so it was hoped, all Thais were able to become members of a single political community. In a sense, figures around the palace were harking back to the state’s roots, attempting again to effect ritual incorporation of the realm. The theater state was being employed to foster the monarchy’s (and the state’s) charismatic authority. As was true of his predecessors, strikingly in the case of King Vajiravudh, King Bhumipol’s reign saw efforts to use pomp as a device for ordering the behavior of his subjects. After a considerable lull, royal ceremony and spectacle grew increasingly ubiquitous from the 1980s. Royal pomp often celebrated notions of the monarchy as an agent of economic development, or as a focal point for Thai nationalism. These conceptions were quite distinct from traditional notions of security and community afforded by the monarch’s sheltering umbrella and sheer majesty. They nonetheless showed considerable continuity with traditional notions of the bases of political orders. The great respect Thais felt for the monarch and the monarchy encouraged some degree of disjuncture between Thailand’s real and formal constitutions (Chapter 4). The monarchy’s potency had several political effects. It set bounds to political competition. Politicians generally eschewed making many sorts of symbolic appeals to voters. The symbolic realm was the king’s own. The king’s oversight also meant that generally the consequences of losing out in political competition were mitigated. The monarchy afforded a sort of neutral enforcement that could offer some reassurance that losers in political competition might recoup (so to speak) and return to contest for power again in the future. The monarchy may even have facilitated disinterested service to broad national interests. Not all Thais seem to have strong commitments to the general good. They were eager, however, to serve the king, who was perceived to be an embodiment of those interests (Yoshihara 1994). In some cases, Thais served the king by serving broad public interests. The monarchy also offered many Thais national pride since they could feel a sense of membership in a community presided over by this wellregarded father figure. Given these many critical roles that the monarchy was able to play, it was of more than minor importance to note that its potency was in decline and that one of its key traditional props—religion— also had changed fundamentally.

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

203

The more visible manifestations of the apparent weakening of Buddhism in Thailand was breathtakingly rapid. Two generations ago most young Thai men, generally before marriage, entered the monkhood as novices for about three months. Today, particularly among the better educated and urban, but more generally as well, the practice is in decline. More young men now enter the monkhood for only a couple of weeks and, it seems, more forgo the experience altogether. This shift signals changes in the forms of Buddhist practice and substantial weakening of Buddhism’s hold on most Thais, particularly its more traditionally rooted claims on Thailand’s Buddhists. Thais are embracing individualistic and materialistic (as evidenced by the popularity of monks with monikers such as Reverend Father Money and Reverend Father Multiply) forms of practice at the expense of more collective ones (Jackson 2010: 44). Buddhism as a source of social cement has declined. In addition, spirits no longer are as available as they once were to regulate behavior and moderate conflicts (see Chapter 4). Alarmingly, in 2016 Buddhism’s sclerotic Sangha Supreme Council confronted sharp polarization closely linked to Thailand’s encompassing political conflict as it tried to identify a new Supreme Patriarch to replace the one who died in 2013 (Bangkok Post 2016a: 1). The emergence of vibrant civil societies, particularly in rural areas, in nineteenth-century northern Europe often was linked to religious institutions. In some cases, this was a defensive reaction to the centralizing power of secular state authorities. In parts of the Muslim world today, Islamic movements provide a variety of welfare services to newly urbanized communities. Robert Hefner (2000) offers a picture of a thriving Islam-based civil society in Indonesia. In Thailand, while Buddhism was adapting in interesting ways to social changes and while some of the newer Buddhist movements were politically active, in general Buddhism’s impacts on Thai education, civil society mobilization, and politics were limited. Thai kings worked to reform Buddhism from the middle of the nineteenth century to make it an effective ally in their efforts to reform Thai state and society. Therefore, while individual monks emerged in periods of political polarization and adopted overt political positions, in general Buddhism in Thailand was a conservative social force that underpinned monarchy and village society. In recent decades, however, new forms of middleclass Buddhism emerged and, in some cases, these were associated with intensive associational activities of a new type. At the same time, older animist folk religions were thriving as state regulation relented from the 1980s. While these newer or revived religious practices accorded the monarchy an august role, they did not offer it as privileged a sacred space as did official Buddhism (Jackson 2010: 43–44; Walker 2012: 19).

204

THAI POLITICS

In the late 1980s, some Thais saw Buddhism as having the potential to catalyze Thai civil society, with the expectation that traditional Buddhist practices might support the development of stronger communities and sustain local traditions of mutual support. Some new Buddhist movements removed themselves from the control of the state-sanctioned clergy. Often led by charismatic monks, movements worked to restructure relations among poor villagers, the state, and the national and global capitalist economies (Kitahara 1996: 81–93). New Buddhist practices also emerged in urban areas where individualistic forms of religious practice were undermining traditional village-based and state-sanctioned Buddhism. Scholars often portray the Thammakai movement as a rationalist response to traditional state-sponsored Buddhism (McCargo 2012: 639). The movement was depicted as representing middle-class consumer values and conflicting with state-sponsored ideologies. With rapid changes in the wider social context, these Buddhist movements enabled individuals to develop identities appropriate to their altered situations (Taylor 2004: 85–86; Poungsomlee 1999). The Thammakai sect grew increasingly controversial in the course of Thailand’s deepening political conflict, given widespread perceptions that Thaksin was closely linked to the movement’s leadership (McCargo 2012: 639) as well as growing awareness of some of its more mercantile practices. Overall, however, Buddhism played a far less central role in the lives of Thais than it did in the past. The newer and more individualistic forms of Buddhism could not offer the same sort of broad and diffuse social integration associated with Buddhism in the past. Given that Thailand’s monarchy also will play a circumscribed role in the future, these fundamental changes raise awkward questions for Thailand’s society and politics. In this book we have argued the need for key political and social institutions to find expression in local idioms, in a Thai vernacular. Once the conceptual and symbolic space going to Buddhism and monarchy is reduced significantly, it is unclear how to begin to talk about a specifically Thai cultural idiom. Will “liberty, equality, fraternity” do? What Are the Root Causes of Thais’ Democracy Problem? The discussion above noted a number of factors that might encourage hopes for Thai success in entrenching a quality democracy. For example, nation building seemed, particularly until the past decade, to have been effective in Thailand. State capacity was comparatively robust. In addition, there was considerable equity in the distribution of material assets in the mid-twentieth century at the start of Thailand’s long economic boom. This shared poverty might have been associated with a relatively equitable pattern of subse-

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

205

quent economic growth. Such a result would have been more likely if education had been pushed earlier and harder, state services had been made more effective, and cultural change had been embraced with more vigor. Thais also had few rigid social identities of caste or ethnicity barring the emergence of social citizenship in a modern state. What, then, have been the factors impeding greater progress in entrenching a liberal democratic regime? Here we note three overlapping arguments commonly made by Thais to account for democracy’s failure to take firm hold: too many coups, weak institutions, and a people culturally and educationally ill equipped for the responsibilities that democracy entails. Thai policymakers and would-be reformers focused much energy on the latter two factors (institutional design and civic education) in their efforts to strengthen their democracy. As for the too many coups argument, it is a popular one and it is hard to argue but that the military’s frequent overthrows of democratic regimes made it difficult for politicians or Thais in general to grow accustomed to operating under a democratic regime (Samudavanija 2002: 130, 177–178). This explanation, however, while clearly important, often leaves some questions unasked. Why, for example, were so many citizens as well as most elites often so ready to accept coups? Why did elected leaders, with their incessant squabbling and their venality, make it so easy for the military to intervene? Why did public-spiritedness seem to be in such short supply among Thailand’s political leaders? Why was the military, despite its antidemocratic record, regularly one of Thailand’s more respected public institutions? The frequency of coups seemed to be at least as much symptomatic of deeper Thai orientations as it was the cause of democratic weaknesses. After 2006, among many intellectuals, particularly outside Thailand, the monarchy increasingly became part of the too many coups argument. In its strongest forms, this argument referred to military backing for a broad elite palace-led network that was either opposed to or at least not strongly supportive of democracy (Handley 2006). The argument in extreme form suggests that conservative Thai elites embraced and hoped to sustain social dualism and the hierarchy that underpinned so many traditional Thai values. One observer, for example, suggests that, while elites could stomach the expansion of the middle class, they were “alarmed by the increasing incomes and assertiveness of the poor” (Marshall 2014: 151). Many analyses conclude that Thailand’s hidebound elites, in some instances defined to include the monarchy, were the key impediments retarding the emergence of flourishing democracy in Thailand (Charoensin-o-larn 2012). Other analyses of the impact of the monarchy on Thai politics simply register concern for the political system’s continuing dependence on the monarchy’s refereeing role (Samudavanija 2002: 127, 130, 208–209; Bunbongkarn 2012: 238–239). In this book, we also have articulated concerns about the

206

THAI POLITICS

ways in which the monarchy’s very potency helped to embed broadly enchanted conceptions of political life and to dilute any sustained modernization drive. We have argued that weak institutions lie at the roots of Thailand’s democracy problem. These institutions are weak in part because the pull of personalism is so powerful in Thailand as to obstruct the building of impersonal institutions. In many specific instances, Thailand lacks the complement of appropriate informal institutions necessary to make formal ones operate well. Thailand is particularly in need of a stronger system of rule of law and a more deeply institutionalized political party system. It is possible to make a different kind of institutional argument, suggesting that certain institutions such as the military, the palace, or the state (Samudavanija 2002) were so strong that they tended to retard democratic development. This sort of argument overlaps with the too many coups one and also was popular. It was not, however, entirely satisfying. The military and the palace were relatively weak at times in the past. Such moments could have provided openings for strong civil and political societies to assert themselves. The military and the palace were able to regain their powers due to opportunities created by weak performance on the part of democratic regimes and, in the case of the palace, by a great vacuum that many Thais seem to have wanted to see filled. Of course, a military more strongly committed to its professional roles might have resisted the ample opportunities that Thai politicians made available for the military to intervene. Could the king have assumed a role more similar to that of the Spanish king Juan Carlos, who intervened only at the most critical moments to shift the course of events—a couple of key interventions in the course of a long reign? It is worth noting that after Juan Carlos did intervene, Spanish political leaders and institutions arguably performed more consistently in support of democracy than did those in Thailand. The Thai palace intervened on behalf of democratic forces more than once, but those interventions were not sufficient to set democratic politics running in a sustained fashion. What of the argument that too many Thai citizens lack what it takes to sustain democratic institutions? In this book, we reflect some sympathy with this decidedly politically incorrect stance. As noted in earlier chapters, such suspicions once were common among the privileged in European polities concerning their social inferiors. Many nineteenth-century European liberals such as Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto were distinctly wary of democracy (Banti 2000: 43–44; Bermeo and Nord 2000: xxviii). Liberals in Thailand may have had a particularly tough time committing themselves to democracy given their beliefs in their capacities to differentiate good and bad leaders. Where the ethical dimension of politics appears adequately compelling, it becomes more difficult to embrace procedural solutions to political competition.

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

207

Mass inclusion may mean that governments of the great and the good no longer are feasible in democratic settings. In his speech on leaving the public stage after eight years as president of the United States, George Washington warned his compatriots of the dangers of political faction. His own government was an assembly of men “esteemed and honored by their neighbors” (Shefter 1994: 64). As political parties nonetheless entrenched themselves in the United States, the Federalists “never were able to successfully practice the art of popular politics” (64) and were overwhelmed by the Jacksonians. Subsequently, liberals and Mugwumps fared little better in their desire to see political competition over principles rather than spoils, or to overturn a system in which politicians entrenched themselves in power through “organized bribery” (73). Similar electoral impotence met the efforts of the National Liberals in Denmark who “assumed their right to rule” based on their education and erudition (Luebbert 1991: 75). Rule by the many generally comes as a shock when introduced into contexts of social dualism of the type found in Thailand. When a mass political movement—the Chartists—first appeared in England in the early nineteenth century, it produced great fear, in part because the Chartists’ demonstrations at times were violent (Moore 1966). Charles Lamb, the English writer, saw little good in the movement. His disdain for the newly mobilized anticipated some later elite Thais’ dismissals of Thaksin’s rural supporters as “buffaloes”: It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate on their condition. Formerly they jogged on with as little reflection as horses. . . . Now the biped carries a box of phosphorous in his leather breeches . . . what a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system. . . . Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretended to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a March of Science. But who shall beat the drums for its retreat?” (quoted in Johnson 1991: 999)

Some Thai elites were slow to acknowledge in the context of Thailand’s great political struggle their inability to “ring the bells backward.” We now return to Thaksin’s impact on Thai politics. We add to arguments that we made earlier in the book by introducing a brief comparison with former US president Jackson. Thaksin’s Impact on Thai Politics Observers of recent Thai politics drew comparisons between Thaksin and a variety of prominent leaders around the world. Some of these comparisons were prompted by broadly similar structural contexts—the need to address

208

THAI POLITICS

problems of mass exclusion—that have arisen time and again in many different settings. Or they reflected loosely shared frameworks of political struggle between rich or secular minorities and poor or devout majorities in places such as Egypt, Turkey, and Venezuela. Among past Thai leaders, Thaksin has been compared most frequently with Phibun Songkhram, a military strong man and an ardent nationalist and modernizer who saw the monarchy, at least to some degree, as an obstacle to Thailand’s economic and social advance. For a time, after he had gained Thai control over parts of Cambodian and Lao territory that once had been Thai, Phibun was a great hero. He also was the dominant figure in Thai politics for a couple of decades. Unlike Thaksin, Phibun strode the Thai political stage during a long period when the monarchy was a largely irrelevant political force. Thaksin also has been compared with a variety of political strong men outside Thailand such as Juan Peron, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (McCargo and Zarakol 2012), and, most frequently, Silvio Berlusconi (Bowornwathana 2007). In the mid-twentieth century, Juan Peron of Argentina fomented divisions between democrats and liberals that closely paralleled Thailand’s current conflict in several respects. Guillermo O’Donnell describes Argentina’s “impossible game” (discussed in Linz and Stepan 1996: 196) during the first decade of Juan Peron’s exile from Argentina, from 1955 to 1966. The “iron law of Argentine politics” was that in free elections the Peronists always won, and in government they did not respect minority rights (199). Peron’s supporters backed their man, impervious to his flaws: “Even if a thief we want Peron” (Maravall 2003: 271). For this reason and due to Peronist flirting with the paramilitary Monteneros, many middle-class Argentines judged the Peronists unacceptable. The political parties supported by the middle classes, however, could not win elections and, when they found themselves in power, could not govern in the face of the power of the Peronist unions. Argentines confronted a long-term “double crisis” (Linz and Stepan 1996: 197): effective exclusion of Peronists sapped democratic legitimacy while also undermining regime effectiveness. Amid stalemates, the anti-Peronist forces supported military interventions that reset politics for a new round of the game—new elections. Under these circumstances, Argentines were far from being universally committed to democracy. Peron was, after all, “an extraordinary pole of attraction and repulsion in Argentine politics . . . able to create and sustain a semi-fascist, populist-nationalist rhetoric” (199). Under his leadership, the Argentine “working class became the hyperpoliticized political base of a single, controversial individual” (Fukuyama 2014: 282). Thaksin, of course, was a similarly polarizing figure. His political party vehicles won every election starting in 2001. Either the military (2006, 2014) or the courts (twice in 2008, again in 2014) ruled his governments

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

209

beyond the pale. As in Argentina, liberals in Thailand were unable to win elections. Thaksin’s brutal neglect of minority rights and rule of law, his corruption, the perceived threat he posed to pluralism, to say nothing of his alleged conflict with the monarchy, led many supporters of democracy to embrace military or judicial interventions as the only means of overcoming his solid electoral base. Former Italian prime minister Berlusconi offers a further parallel. Like Thaksin, Berlusconi was a wealthy businessman with a base in telecommunications, a taste for political clientelism (Fukuyama 2014: 121), and an apparently generous view of his indispensability to his country. As with Thaksin, Berlusconi created his own electoral vehicle, Forza Italia; made effective use of mass media; and long dominated electoral politics despite recurring brushes with the law and general disfavor among the great and the good in Italy. Here, however, we sketch still another, and less familiar, comparison between Thaksin and former US president Jackson.3 This comparison is appropriate because Jackson was both a creature of, and a cause of, a shift in US politics from an elite-dominated to a more mass affair. Thaksin represents a partially comparable force in the Thai context. Jackson presided over and engendered mass inclusion in US politics, a process Thaksin accelerated in Thailand. Is Thaksin’s longer-term impact on Thai politics going to be as great as Jackson’s was in the United States? There are a number of parallels between the careers of President Jackson and Prime Minister Thaksin. For example, the Jackson administration trumpeted the paying off of the US national debt in a manner foreshadowing Thaksin’s theatrical celebration (leading a parade while holding the Thai flag atop a sturdy flagpole) of Thailand’s early repayment of debts to the International Monetary Fund. Both men were accused fancifully of harboring monarchical ambitions: one in a republican context (some of his political opponents fretted about a coming “elective monarchy” and referred to Jackson as “King Andrew the First”), the other in the context of a constitutional monarchy (Meacham 2009: 230). Two other broad similarities—in the two men’s political careers and the comparable results they engendered—are worth considering. Both Jackson and Thaksin introduced a number of important political innovations and were successful in their efforts to bypass traditional political brokers. As a result of their successes, and perhaps also due to their characters, they fomented sharply polarized politics and leaned on mass support to do battle with entrenched elites (Meacham 2009: 120–121, 277). Jackson, and this confronts us with a profound difference between the two leaders, seems to have been animated in substantial part by deeply held political beliefs. One of these was a sort of Maoist notion that his duty was to restore revolutionary virtues to Washington, D.C., where an entrenched

210

THAI POLITICS

elite was using federal powers to serve narrow interests and undermine the intentions of the Founding Fathers. Jackson wanted to harness the popular will through elections and to bypass the elite in doing so (Meacham 2009: 46). He came to be suspicious of all intermediaries who obstructed his access to the people. Given the technologies of the time, however, he depended heavily on such intermediaries. Prime Minister Thaksin also tried to bypass traditional political brokers to establish direct relations with Thai voters. He was more successful in this goal than Jackson had been because he was able to use television and electronic media. While Thaksin depended heavily on members of parliament and vote brokers, his extensive resources enabled him to own them for the most part. He wanted to transcend traditional party leaders’ dependence on faction leaders and did so. Over time, Thaksin relied ever more on direct addresses to his supporters. In power, he argued that NGOs claiming to represent the interests of the poor were no longer necessary since his party now represented those interests (Connors 2007: 250). While Jackson would not have been happy to be so described, both he and Thaksin were political centralizers. Both Thaksin and Jackson also were associated with important innovations in political practices (in Jackson’s case, some of these established global precedents). In the 1828 election campaign, Jackson’s supporters made considerable use of a newspaper established for the purpose and introduced the first campaign song (Meacham 2009: 57). It was the first campaign to issue a call to “throw the rascals out.” Jackson’s handlers gave considerable effort to framing their candidate’s image by emphasizing his height, courtly carriage, and military heroism. The arrival of “the mob” at the White House during the inauguration horrified much of the country’s elite. In the 1832 election, the Jackson forces introduced the first nominating convention and candidate support groups (“Hickory Clubs”) (62, 218–219). Echoing (however remotely in temporal terms) Jackson’s inauguration, Thaksin lunched during his first day in office as prime minister with members of the Assembly of the Poor (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005: 1). He frequently claimed, dubiously, that he was creating, in Thai Rak Thai, a real mass membership−based political party, a first in Thailand. Thaksin made extensive and pioneering uses of broadcast media in his campaign, and eventually added various Internet tools after his election. He also used polling and marketing data extensively. His most impressive innovation was to make concrete promises in his election campaigns and to deliver on them. As a result of their innovations and their intent to bypass traditional brokers, among other factors, both Jackson and Thaksin polarized politics in their respective countries. Among those other factors, perhaps, was a sort of overweening confidence and a love of battle. Jackson remarked that “I

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

211

was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me” (Meacham 2009: vii). Thaksin described his managerial style (in business) as of “the Genghis Khan type” (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005: 109). His style in politics was much the same. One politician, a contemporary of Jackson’s, remarked of him that “his administration is absolutely odious, and yet there is an adherence to the man” (Meacham 2009: 178). A senator noted in 1830 the increasing Jackson-engendered stridency and partisanship in his chamber. Respectful deliberations suffered. John Quincy Adams, the former president, noted that Jackson could not be opposed in the Senate. Thaksin also engendered over time increasing unease among many Thai political elites. Parliament lost its former importance as decisions increasingly were made by Thaksin and his circle of advisers. With large parliamentary majorities, Thaksin was not obliged to engage in wheeling and dealing for votes (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004: 195–196). Neither did he have to defend his preferred policies in parliament or even bother attending. While over time many Thais developed passionate feelings of antipathy toward Thaksin, he typically was seen as loyal by his lieutenants and he was adored by many voters. After 2003 and, in particular, after the 2006 Senate elections, Thaksin could be opposed in neither chamber of parliament. Both Jackson and Thaksin excited strong opposition in part because they were viewed as being threats to liberty and as willing to abuse power. One US senator complained in that chamber that the Founding Fathers’ intent to check executive power was being thrown overboard (Meacham 2009: 120–121). Another complained of the “total change of the pure republican character of Government” and of “the concentration of all power in the hands of one man.” Henry Clay commented, after Jackson’s victory, that “the dark cloud . . . has become more dense, more menacing, more alarming. Whether we shall ever see the light, and law, and liberty again is very questionable” (220). Clay later reported having heard a rumor that Jackson had told Napoleon’s brother that Jackson had made Napoleon his model. John C. Calhoun remarked after the Senate censure of Jackson: “Infatuated man! Blinded by ambition—intoxicated by flattery and vanity! Who, that is the least acquainted with the human heart; who, that is conversant with the page of history, does not see, under all this, the workings of a dark, lawless, and insatiable ambition?” (288) Thaksin too had the effect of encouraging observers to try to understand the inner man in efforts to account for what seemed needlessly provocative political moves and a certain amoral nihilism. Political commentators ascribed highly personal motives behind some of Thaksin’s most high-profile public policies, including his war on drugs. Among many Thais who did not love Thaksin, there were suspicions about the goals that drove him in politics and the costs for Thailand that he was prepared to incur to regain and hold on to power.

212

THAI POLITICS

Perhaps the most important difference between the two leaders concerned the nature of their legacies. Jackson created a new sort of broadly dispersed organization—a political party—that sank deep roots in society and was sustained over time and widely reproduced around the world. Jackson was, however unknowingly, blazing a trail for modern political democracy. Thaksin’s legacy also will endure. He crystallized fundamental political and social changes in Thailand. He concretized a newly emerging way of seeing politics but did not entrench any new institutions. His political parties will not endure. Neither, fortunately, will the intense political polarization he fomented. As great as were his political achievements, Jackson essentially confronted only the one great challenge of political inclusion. Thailand, today, faces the tasks associated with a triple transition: mass inclusion, more closely aligning formal and informal institutions, and creating and entrenching a more sustainable model of governance, chiefly by curbing corruption and lawlessness among politicians and state officials. Future Scenarios for Thailand Thailand has moved rapidly from a poor to an upper-middle-income country status, enjoying social and policy stability along much of the way. It has been less impressive in its political performance. Its past successes and shortcomings resulted in significant part from its highly limited levels of political participation. Future political gains, and in some respects economic ones as well, will depend on Thailand successfully adapting its political and social institutions to mass demands for political inclusion and rising levels of political participation. Mass political inclusion will be a central theme of Thailand’s politics over the coming generation. Just how that process unfolds will be important. The process might play out in distinct ways, and those differences could have a great impact on Thailand’s political evolution. The two other elements of the triple transition that Thailand needs to continue to build its economy and improve its politics should be mentioned here. Critically important will be the degree of progress that Thais make in aligning formal and informal institutions and the achievement of sustainable (less corrupt) forms of government that might enable Thailand to become a high-income country. Thailand may be at a critical juncture, a time during which the choices Thais make will have disproportionate impact on the country’s future political course. Those choices include elements of institutional design that were deliberated after the 2014 coup. They also include, potentially, emerging norms, understandings, and dominant political personalities able to shape the contours of Thai political pos-

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

213

sibilities. We sketch several theoretically feasible paths below: liberal democracy, social democracy, authoritarian populist, bureaucratic authoritarian, and “network monarchy” (McCargo 2005), or the continuation, in modified forms, of existing political bargains and institutions. We do not consider the probabilities of different future regime types to attempt prediction. Rather, the exercise is a means of gathering together many of the arguments advanced throughout this book. Before proceeding further, however, we make two points. First, Thailand’s economic conditions in 2016 were not robust. The economy confronted short-term challenges, many arising from weak economic conditions abroad. Partly due to these circumstances, the military leadership of the coup government struggled to sustain its political support, or at least acquiescence on the part of many Thais. Politically, the government was rather isolated. It enjoyed close, cooperative relations with no political party, and many Thai intellectuals who might have lent their support, at least temporarily in the past, were less inclined to do so. One factor explaining intellectuals’ comparative aloofness and a major disadvantage with which the coup leaders had to contend was that the ailing King Bhumipol was in no position to afford the government much in the way of political cover. Thailand also faced longer-term difficulties. In particular, there were shortages of skills and hastening demographic shifts. Economic performance, weaknesses in education, and demographic changes will condition future economic, social, and political development, including the size of the country’s informal sector. The importance of the informal sector, in turn, will influence the extent to which populist politics in Thailand proves durable. Second, in some respects we are sanguine about Thailand’s political prospects, despite the deep divisions that afflict the country today. We are not entirely convinced that the divisions are all that entrenched, though symbols and images have served to generate abundant political heat. Orhan Pamuk wrote of Turkey that its contemporary political turbulence reflected uncertainty on the part of “society as a whole” as to whether it wants to return to its Ottoman past or move forward to a European future (quoted in Gardels 2015: 9). In Thailand, it is possible to argue that the Red Shirts favor looking ahead and the Yellow Shirts incline to the past. In any case, we argue that for the most part, Thai political divisions are not about longterm political goals for Thailand. As we argued in Chapter 1, we are not aware of any evidence that large numbers of Thais entertain distinctly conflicting political goals. Rather, the differences are about which paths offer the most promising prospects for reaching those goals. They also are about which political actors different Thais choose to back. As a result, removing one actor, such as Thaksin, from the equation could have major effects on Thailand’s political dynamics. It therefore seems likely to us that Thais will

214

THAI POLITICS

eventually put together a political coalition that satisfies the major groups active in Thai politics today. We expect Thais to achieve their much-discussed political reconciliation. This may not entail any formal proceedings or any truth commissions. It may simply emerge with the passing of time as Thais accommodate themselves to new political conditions. While we believe political reconciliation in Thailand will take place, we do not think that Thais have what it takes to be able to do fuller versions of democracy any time soon. Political institutions are too weak, civil society groups too brittle and dependent on particular leaders, broadly held values too authoritarian and intolerant, and discursive practices too obstructive of political deliberations. Accordingly, we do not expect Thailand to entrench a fuller liberal democracy soon. Thai society is likely to remain too hierarchical and the rule of law too weak to make that possible. With the country’s elites divided, a procedural formula, such as regular resort to elections and political decentralization, would seem to offer a reasonable means of negotiating their way beyond their current impasse in a sustainable way. Resort to procedural solutions, however, is more plausible where actors can commit themselves to abiding by the broad rules of the game and not just the use of elections. Given the ease with which constitutions can be amended in Thailand, the limited commitment to the 2007 constitution while it remained in force, the Thai politicians’ penchant for amending constitutions, the rising inclinations to disregard judicial powers, and the ongoing resort to extralegal political measures, such a broader commitment to a procedural framework to regulate political competition has been elusive. Social democracy is a still more implausible outcome for Thailand. In addition to the factors cited above that are necessary to underpin liberal democracy, social democracy would require an even more vibrant civil society that could work in tandem with robust political institutions in fostering inclusive and enduring social bargains. Social democracy makes heavy demands on the flexibility and effectiveness of political institutions. The requirements for successful social democracy are fairly stringent (Sandbrook et al. 2007) and, in fact, such regimes seldom can be found outside (or indeed within) the West. Social democracy tends to be rooted in broad and explicit social bargains of a type to which Thai deliberative habits do not conduce. It is rooted in values of egalitarianism and full social inclusion that have only a weak hold among Thais. Thailand has in the past had political regimes that could be characterized as bureaucratic authoritarian (e.g., in the aftermath of the 1932 coup), but in general Thai military-bureaucratic rule has featured clear military dominance rather than broader bureaucratic ascendancy, and typically has been under the rule of a great leader, or a trio of leaders, rather than a broader corporate leadership. The future does not look good for sustained military or bureaucratic dominance of any type. International norms dis-

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

215

courage efforts to sustain such regimes, and the levels of mobilization of Thai social forces would tend to impede it. Among the changes in Thailand that suggest that bureaucratic or military dominance will not be sustained are a more urban and educated population. Hierarchical values that foster deference to high-ranking state officials are under challenge. The military rarely is highly unified and neither is it well insulated from society. Its corporate identity is not particularly pronounced. Young talent in Thailand is no longer drawn as powerfully to careers in these institutions, and ongoing social changes continue to make society more complex and diverse. Finally, military and other bureaucratic elites in the future decreasingly will be able to draw on the well of the monarch’s charismatic authority to bolster their own influence. Nonetheless, the 2014 coup installed a military-dominated bureaucratic authoritarian regime. It promised to write a new constitution and hold elections. As of early 2016 these were scheduled to be held in mid2017. The constitution was likely to feature a variety of different institutional expedients aimed at avoiding future Thaksin or Thaksin-like problems. Some of these constitutional measures, including a less than fully elected Senate, would tend to institutionalize elements of bureaucratic authoritarian rule in the shorter term. We suggest below that, if Thailand remains caught up for some time in conflict between two competing networks of elites, this development could extend the life of this form of military-dominated regime. The two remaining political regime types, authoritarian populism and some form of elite pluralism refereed by a greatly weakened monarchy, are by default most likely to dominate Thai politics over coming years. These outcomes are more likely than the sort of sustained commitment to institutionalized uncertainty associated with more deeply entrenched democracies. However, in either outcome, elections would continue to be important. On the whole, Thais’ commitment to government of rules, rather than of men and women, remains fragile. Thailand therefore will continue to rely on either a nonelected referee presiding over political competition among different groups, or an elected political leader able to dominate the political system as Thaksin was able to do. In one form or another, Thai politics is likely to sustain a place for a dominating figure. In essence, we conclude that a purer form of balance-of-power politics in Thailand will not be sustainable. Games of fairly pure power competition, but underpinned by commitments to abide by impersonal procedures, will have to be moderated by and embedded within some more personalized and accessible social understandings. While in some contexts such social understandings might be comprised of commitments to rule of law, independence of the judiciary, and norms of restraint and tolerance, such arrangements are unlikely to be sufficiently potent in the Thai context any

216

THAI POLITICS

time soon. Instead, the social glue is going to have to be provided by some sort of overlord. The monarchy might continue to play such a role, combining the role of a referee regulating battle among competing political groups and a degree of charismatic authority. However weak future monarchs will be relative to King Bhumipol, they will be able to draw on vast material and symbolic sources of power and authority. It might suit the needs of competing political elites to draw on the institution’s charisma to sanction bargains they make among themselves. Such a regime could bear some resemblance to British ones of the eighteenth century with, however, less well-developed rule of law but more democracy. The most plausible alternative to what could amount to comparatively modest changes in the political regime that generally has operated in Thailand over the past few decades would be a situation in which Thaksin, or a similarly dominant political figure, concentrated power in one set of hands in an electorally based regime. Such an arrangement would be more stable if the leader’s dominance over the entire political system were less pronounced than was Thaksin’s (Przeworski 2003: 115) and if the leader were more conciliatory than was Thaksin. Such rule would be easier to maintain if the leader were successful in centralizing rents effectively to use in making side payments. The last possibility would be undermined should decentralization advance further in Thailand. In its purest form, an authoritarian populist regime would not have to contend with the monarchy as a base of political power. Hence, this outcome becomes more likely to the extent that the monarchy occupies less symbolic space, opening the way for political leaders to exploit symbolic appeals, including nationalism, in building electoral support bases. Thailand’s sharp income inequality will continue to make populist appeals effective in elections. The numbers of poor, undereducated, rural Thais, however, will be declining fairly sharply over coming years. Education beyond primary levels has grown sharply over the past two decades. The share of the rural population that depends primarily on agriculture also has been falling and will continue to do so. Indeed, the share of the nonurban population that is truly rural has also been falling, as more Thais live in growing towns or work in multiple occupations that move them in and out of semiurban settings (Samudavanija 2002: 151; Kitiarsa 2012). Thailand’s abrupt demographic transition, a product of long-established drops in birthrates, contributes to several of these trends. All of them, together with the weakening of traditional hierarchical values, will work to diminish Thailand’s social dualism. One possibility we flagged above is that deep political discord will continue more or less unchanged, leaving Thais suspended between irreconcilable groups, neither of which offers much promise for democracy anytime soon. One position, certain to be rejected by Thaksin’s foes, would

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

217

require the unfettered operation of electoral democracy with full parliamentary sovereignty. In Thailand’s current context, the result likely would be the entrenching in power of Thaksin and his key aides. With Thaksin’s enormous ambition and wealth, it is uncertain whether any centers of power would be able to remain autonomous were he to remain in power for a long stretch of time. An alternative position, exemplified by the government in place following the 2014 coup, has little to offer in the way of a vision of Thailand’s political future. This anti-Thaksin stance might succeed in curbing corruption, at least for a time. It might, more importantly, create a more level playing field once elections resume and hold out some hope that the elections can continue for some time without coming under the control of one man. However, and this too was made clear by the most recent coup government, it offers no concept of an attractive society beyond the recovery of elements of tradition. Hence, Thai politics could remain suspended between these two ultimately unattractive sets of principles. So long as the tension between these principles continues, there will be few prospects for boosting the capacities of the state or entrenching the rule of law. Powerful states together with strengthening political institutions emerged in most countries in Europe over the nineteenth century. Despite the scale of the challenges that unfolded with rapid mass political mobilization and the second Industrial Revolution, these institutions were, in some instances, able to manage “almost all that industrial society could throw at them” (Mann 1993: 728). A considerable range of challenges currently are assaulting the Thai state, and it is not yet clear that it will do as well as those European states (often not at all well) in coping with these challenges. In the shorter term, it is unlikely that comparably strong political institutions will emerge. However, Thailand is undergoing a series of fairly rapid structural and value changes that may eventually tend to facilitate the emergence of stronger political institutions and rule of law, and a more accountable state. The state’s capacities to date have been closely linked to Thailand’s cohesive elite. For decades, King Bhumipol stood at the center of various institutionally based elite networks. As his vigor declined, it was natural for Thais to wonder what implications that decline held for Thailand’s future politics. A parallel from nineteenth-century Brazil is discouraging. A Discouraging Parallel There are some interesting similarities between the long reigns of King Bhumipol and Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil in the nineteenth century. The institution of monarchy in Brazil was both more powerful (Dom Pedro

218

THAI POLITICS

II could exercise his influence openly for the most part, although his formal powers were limited) and less so (the institution was not freighted with the enchanted elements that have helped make it so powerful in Thailand’s Theravada Buddhist context). Dom Pedro II’s life and leadership in Brazil foreshadowed in some ways the upbringing and reign of King Bhumipol. Dom Pedro II grew up under regency from the age of five and actually assumed power in 1840 at the tender age of fourteen. His father faced simultaneous challenges to his rule in Brazil and in Portugal and abdicated in Brazil to tackle his Portuguese difficulties. Dom Pedro II was a generally solitary youth immersed in studies to prepare for the responsibilities that lay ahead (Barman 1999: 33). The regency years were marked by political conflict and instability. Initially, he was manipulated by one political faction, but over time, and with key military backing, was able to assert his political autonomy. He gained the throne when powerful politicians “had lost all faith in their ability to rule the country on their own. They accepted Pedro II as an authority figure whose presence was indispensable for the country’s survival” (Barman 1999: 317). As an adult, Dom Pedro II was a sober, hardworking, patient, and cautious monarch apparently devoted to the welfare of his people. He had broad interests and supported education and culture, the sciences in particular (Barman 1999: 33). He maintained contact with a number of scientists, writers, and intellectuals (Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Louis Pasteur, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Victor Hugo) in Europe (116). He reigned for fifty-eight years, through the 1880s. During those years Brazil, in marked contrast to its neighbors, experienced rapid economic growth, a functional parliament, relatively secure civil and some political rights, and political stability (159). Against widespread and stiff opposition, Dom Pedro II gradually abolished slavery in Brazil. Before his reign ended in a coup that established a republic, the king increasingly became a target for a variety of criticisms of his rule and for his political roles. Republican sentiment was largely restricted to elites, but the king himself offered little resistance to the tiny group of conspirators who brought the Brazilian empire to a close. While King Bhumipol grew up with the expectation that his older brother would be Thailand’s king, the two of them, their mother, and their sister grew up in Switzerland considerably isolated from events in Thailand. Whether due to her Chinese ancestry, their prolonged stay in Calvinist Switzerland, or other factors, the king’s mother was unusually demanding of her children by the standards of Thai parents. When his older brother died, King Bhumipol suddenly lost a close friend and was thrust into his new role while very young. He returned to Switzerland for more study, shifting his focus from sciences to law to prepare himself to reign (Broderick 2013: 97; Handley 2006). Once on the throne, the king’s political roles

THAILAND’S ELUSIVE DEMOCRACY

219

were circumscribed and it was only when Sarit Thanarat came to power that the king enjoyed new opportunities to rebuild the monarchy’s charisma. Similar to Dom Pedro II, King Bhumipol was hard working, curious, active, and devoted to the people’s welfare. He was something of a Renaissance man, with a wide range of hobbies, interests, and skills, including musical ones. At one time or another he jammed with Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz, and many others. King Bhumipol enjoyed a long reign during which Thailand prospered spectacularly and the constant competition for power among military and political party elites generally did limited damage to, and limited good for, the people. There were, of course, great contrasts in these two monarchs’ reigns. For example, Dom Pedro II governed openly and in close cooperation with elected politicians, drawing on popular support. A reputation for impartiality was central to his capacity to work with political parties. He was sensitive to public opinion and respected the legislature’s powers (Barman 1999: 161–162, 165). Dom Pedro II was perhaps “the most popular ‘last monarch’ in the world” (madmonarchist.blogspot.com). He was greeted enthusiastically in his travels around his country (Barman 1999: 111). His able rule was associated in the view of many foreigners with his country’s distinctive, for its region, positive economic and political developments (161–162; see also Bethell 1993). In all these respects, the emperor foreshadowed King Bhumipol. Ultimately, Dom Pedro II was overthrown in a military coup. After his fall, Brazil was subject to weak republican government, periodic economic and political crises, and dictatorship (Barman 1999; Bethell 1993). It is not fanciful to anticipate that Thailand will continue for some time to confront difficult political challenges in making the transition to a new political dispensation without the shelter long provided by its king. Dictatorship is unlikely to feature prominently in Thailand’s future, but electorally based and somewhat authoritarian rule seem possible. Thais, however, confront relatively few fundamentally contentious issues beyond the divides that emerged in Thai politics from 2005. That conflict seems to be less deeply rooted in competing political visions than many observers believe. Indeed, merely changing the personalities at the heart of the conflict would go a long way toward softening it and enabling its partial resolution fairly quickly. The underpinnings of traditional values are weakening and deep wealth inequalities may tend to subside, although ongoing weaknesses in the educational system do not encourage that result. On balance, Thailand’s economic and political futures look brighter than Brazil’s past. Nonetheless, Thais must undergo a series of rather fundamental changes in attitudes, values, and adjustments to new underlying structural realities before a new, sustainable, more democratic, and participatory politics is

220

THAI POLITICS

likely to emerge. The reconstitution of Thai society and politics to suit a new era is a process with a title: democracy. Its story, however, remains to be written (Greenfeld 1993: 167). Notes The title of this chapter is adapted from Greenfeld (1993: 167). 1. This is not to argue that low participation is a necessary condition for economic and political success. Rather, it was a central element of Thailand’s particular political economic configuration. As participation expands, much else in Thailand will have to change as well. 2. The coup government in place from 2014 may have been sincerely committed to making progress in this area. 3. This discussion draws on Danny Unger, “A Dark, Lawless, and Insatiable Ambition?” (2009).

References

Aberin, M., and E. Saenwan. 2013. “Ending Illiteracy Demands Innovative Approaches,” Bangkok Post, September 9, p. 11. Abuza, Z. 2015. “Military Should Focus on Clear and Present Dangers,” Bangkok Post, July 14, p. 11. Achakulwisut, A. 2011. “Your Luck Is on the Line,” Bangkok Post, April 12, p. 9. Ackerman, B., and J. S. Fishkin. 2003. “Deliberation Day,” in J. S. Fishkin and P. Laslett, eds., Debating Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 7–30. Agrast, M. D., J. C. Botero, J. Martinez, A. Ponce, and C. S. Pratt. 2013. World Justice Project Index: Rule of Law Index 2012–2013. http://worldjustice project.org/sites/default/files/WJP_Index_Report_2012.pdf, accessed September 20, 2014. Aldrich, J. H. 1995. Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Almond, G. A., and S. Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Amornvivat, S. 2015. “Slow Growth Is a Small Price for Reform,” Bangkok Post, February 8, p. 11. Anderson, B. 1990. “Murder and Progress in Modern Siam,” New Left Review, no. 181: 33–48. Anderson, P. 1985. Lineages of the Absolutist State, 2nd ed. London: Verso. AP News. 2013. “Thai Court Delays Start of Flood Prevention Works,” June 28. http://asiancorrespondent.com. Archavanitkul, K., A. Poungsomlee, W. Jarusomboon, and A. Chansomwong. 1999. “Thai Civil Society: The Making of Thai Citizens,” in A. Poungsomlee and K. Archavanitkul, eds., Thai Civil Society: The Making of Thai Citizens. Nakhonprathom: Research and Action Project on Development of Civil Society, Mahidol University, pp. xxvii–lviii. Article 19. 2009. “Impact of Defamation law on freedom of expression in Thailand,” July. www.article19.org/data/files/pdfs/analysis/thailand-impact-of -defamation-law-on-freedom-of-expression.pdf, accessed November 7, 2015. Arunmas, P. P. 2012. “Up to 35% of Project Cash Gets Creamed Off,” Bangkok Post, July 18, p. B2. Asia Foundation. 2009. Constitutional Reform and Democracy in Thailand: A National Survey of the Thai People. Bangkok: Asia Foundation.

221

222

REFERENCES

———. 2011. 2010 National Survey of the Thai Electorate: Exploring National Consensus and Color Polarization. Bangkok: Asia Foundation. ———. 2014. Profile of the “Bangkok Shutdown” Protestors. Bangkok: Asia Foundation. Asian Barometer Survey Wave 2, 2005–2008. www.asianbarometer.org/new english/surveys/DataRelease2.htm, accessed December 24, 2014. Asian Barometer Survey Wave 3, 2010–2012. www.asianbarometer.org/new english/surveys/DataRelease3.htm, accessed December 24, 2014. Asian Human Rights Commission. 2005. Special Report: Rule of Law vs. Rule of Lords in Thailand. Article 4, no 2. www.article2.org/pdf/v04n02.pdf, accessed September 5, 2013. Askew, M. 2006. Culture and Electoral Politics in Southern Thailand. Thailand: King Prajadhipok Institute. Askew, M., ed. 2011. “Introduction: Contested Legitimacy in Thailand,” in M. R. Askew, ed., Legitimacy Crisis in Thailand. King Prajadhipok Institute Year Book No. 5, 2008–2009. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 1–30. Baehr, P. 2001. “The ‘Iron Cage’ and the ‘Shell as Hard as Steel’: Parsons, Weber, and the Stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphor in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” History and Theory 40, no. 2 (May): 153–169. Baggini, J. 2015. “Populists Seize the Day as Europe Splutters,” Bangkok Post, July 25, p. 10. Baker, C. and, P. Phongpaichit. 2005. A History of Thailand. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bangkok Post. 2006. “Has PM Turned to Black Magic?” March 16, p. 4. ———. 2010a. “Amnesty for Politicians Gains Favour,” April 30, p. 3. ———. 2010b. “Pracha Wiwat Not a Gift, Says Pheu Thai,” December 19, p. 3. ———. 2011. “Yingluck Will Not Debate,” May 18, p. 3. ———. 2012a. “New NIDA Poll,” March 3, p. 2. ———. 2012b. “Spectrum,” August 2, pp. 3–5. ———. 2013a. “PDRC Shows Its Ugly Side,” December 3, p. 10. ———. 2013b. “Time for Major Reforms,” December 10, p. B1. ———. 2014a. “Road Carnage Must End,” March 12, p. 8. ———. 2014b. “Police Scandal: ‘Never Again,’ says Somyot,” November 26, p. 3. ———. 2015a. “Pheu Thai Party’s Future Up In the Air,” February 2, p. 8. ———. 2015b. “Our Civil Service Needs an Overhaul,” April 26, p. 10. ———. 2016a. “DSI Launches Top Monk Probe,” January 9, p. 1. ———. 2016b. “An Arresting Development,” January 9, p. 11. ———. 2016c. “Obama Issues Reminder of US Strengths,” January 14, p. 1. Bangkok Post Online. 2015a. “Pongpat’s Prison Term Now Exceeds 30 Years,” February 26. www.bangkokpost.com. ———. 2015b. “1m Rai of Forest Lost Each Year,” April 18. www.bangkok post.com. Bangprapa, M., and A. Sattaburuth. 2010. “Red Shirts Accuse Reporters of Bias, Seize Broadcast Vans,” Bangkok Post, April 12, p. 3. Banpasirichote, C. 2004. “Civil Society Discourse and the Future of Radical Environmental Movements in Thailand,” in L. H. Guan, ed., Civil Society in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), pp. 234– 260. Banti, A. M. 2000. “Public Opinion and Associations in Nineteenth-Century Italy,” in N. Bermeo and P. Nord, eds., Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 43–59.

REFERENCES

223

Barber, T. 2013. “Italy’s Scandals Echo the ‘Tangentopoli.’” Financial Times, February 21. http://www.ft.com. Barman, R. J. 1999. Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825–91. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Barme, S. 2002. Woman, Man, Bangkok: Love, Sex, and Popular Culture in Thailand. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Bartolini, S. 2007. The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980: The Class Cleavage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Barzelay, M. 2006. “Intelligent Administration: Productivity, Transparency and Management of Change,” International Public Management 7, no. 1: 6–12. Barzun, J. 2000. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins. Basham, A. L. 1954. The Wonder That Was India. New York: Grove Press. BBC. See British Broadcasting Corporation. Bell, P. 1978. “Cycles of Class Struggle in Thailand,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 8, no.1: 51–79. Bellah, R., et al. 2007. Habits of the Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bendix, R. 2001. Work and Authority in Industry. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Benedict, R. 1952. Thai Culture and Behavior: An Unpublished War-Time Study. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University. Berghahn, V. R. 1982. Modern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bermeo, N., and P. Nord. 2000. “Introduction,” in N. Bermeo and P. Nord, eds., Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. xiii–xxxiii. Bertelsmann Transformation Index. 2012. http://knoema.com/GSBTI2012/bertels mann-transformation-index-2012, accessed April 6, 2013. Besley, T. 2006. Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bethell, L. 1993. “Independence of Brazil,” in L. Bethell, ed., Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–42. Bingham, T. 2011. The Rule of Law. London: Penguin UK. Black, A. 2001. “Concepts of Civil Society in Pre-modern Europe,” in S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–38. Blanchard, W. 1957. Thailand, Its People, Its Society, Its Culture. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. Blanning, T. 2007. The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815. New York: Viking. Blom, P. 2008. The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900–1914. New York: Basic Books. Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Boot, M. 2006. War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Gotham Books. Bourdieu, P. 1998. On Television. New York: New Press. Bourges, J. de. 1995. “Religious Tolerance,” in M. Smithies, Descriptions of Old Siam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 29–34. Bowie, K. A. 1997. Rituals of National Loyalty: An Anthropology of the State and the Village Scout Movement in Thailand. New York: Columbia University Press.

224

REFERENCES

Bowornwathana, B. 2007. “The Politics of Big Businesses in Power: Comparing Thaksin and Berlusconi,” in Zhu Xiao-ming and Zhao Shu-rong, eds., Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Public Administration. Anhui: University of Electronic and Science Technology of China Press, pp. 621–683. Bramsted, E. K., and K. J. Melhuish. 1978. Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Croce. New York: Longman. Bratton, M., and R. Mattes. 2001. “Support for Democracy in Africa: Intrinsic or Instrumental?” British Journal of Political Science 31, no.3: 447–474. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2014. “Thailand Crisis: ‘Red Shirts’ Warn of Civil War Threat,” April 5. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26904622, accessed December 28, 2015. Broderick, R. 2013. King by Virtue: Reflections on the Life-Long Endeavor of King Bhumibol of Thailand. Bangkok: Bangkok Post. BTI. See Bertelsmann Transformation Index. Bunbongkarn, S. 2006. “A Reflection on the Role of a Justice of the Thai Constitutional Court,” in N. Rathamarit, ed., Eyes on Thai Democracy: National and Local Issues. King Prajadhipok Institute Year Book No. 3, 2004–2005. Bangkok: King Prajadhipok Institute, pp. 41–48. ———. 2012. “Authoritarianism, Democracy and the Monarchy,” in S. Bunbongkarn and P. Jumbala, eds., Monarchy and Constitutional Rule in Democratizing Thailand. Bangkok: Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 203–249. Bureekul, T. 2000. Public Participation in Environmental Management in Thailand. Working Paper No. 1. Bangkok: Center for the Study of Thai Politics and Democracy, King Prajadhipok Institute. Burke, E. 1982. Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York: Penguin Classics. Buruma, I. 2013. “The Indiscreet Charm of Tyranny,” New York Review of Books, February 13, pp. 35–37. Campbell, A., and P. E. Converse. 1980. The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, C. 2014. “If There’s Going to Be a Thai Civil War, Isaan Will Be Its Front Line,” Time, July 2. Capoccia, G. 2005. Defending Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caramani, D. 2004. The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chachavalpongpun, P. 2011. “The Necessity of Enemies in Thailand’s Troubled Politics,” Asian Survey 51, no. 6: 1019–1041. ———. 2013. “Media Mired by Binary Blinders,” Bangkok Post, December 8, p.11. Chaiching, N. 2010. “The Monarchy and the Royalist Movement in Modern Thai Politics, 1932–1957,” in S. Ivarsson and L. Isager, eds., Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 147–178. Chaisukkosol, C. 2014. “A New Social Contract: The Way Out for Thailand’s Political Transformation Crisis.” www.fes-thailand.org, accessed July 16, 2015. Chaloemtiarana, T. 1979. Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism. Bangkok: Social Sciences Association of Thailand and Thai Khadi Institute of Thammasat University. Chambers, P. W. 2010. “In the Shadow of the Soldier’s Boot? Assessing Civil-Mil-

REFERENCES

225

itary Relations in Thailand,” in M. Askew, ed., Legitimacy Crisis in Thailand. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 197–233. Chambers, P. W., and A. Croissant. 2010. “Monopolizing, Mutualizing, or Muddling Through: Factions and Party Management in Contemporary Thailand,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 29, no. 3: 3–33. Chambers, S., and J. Kopstein. 2006. “Civil Society and the State,” in J. S. Dryzek, B. Honig, and A. Phillips, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 363–381. Chang Noi. 2010a. “From Smoke and Mirrors to Fear, Fluff and Folly,” The Nation, February, 22, p. 12A. ———. 2010b. “If I Shout Loud Enough, I Won’t Hear You,” The Nation, May 31, p. 12A. Chantanusornsiri, W. 2011. “The Burgeoning Costs of Maintaining a Welfare State,” Bangkok Post, January 6, p. 9. ———. 2015. “Overhauling the System,” Bangkok Post Year-End Review 2015, p. 27. Chantornwong, S. 2002. “The 1997 Constitution and the Politics of Electoral Reform,” in D. McCargo, ed., Reforming Thai Politics. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 203–223. Chardchawarn, S. 2009. “Decentralization Under Threat? Impacts of CEO Governor Policy Upon Local Thai Government,” in F. Nagai, N. Mektrairat, and T. Funatsu, eds., Local Government in Thailand—Analysis of the Local Administrative Organization Survey. Chiba: Institute of Developing Economies. Charoensin-o-larn, C. 2012. “A New Politics of Desire and Disintegration in Thailand,” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 87–96. Chatterjee, P. 2001. “On Civil and Political Society in Post-Colonial Democracies,” in S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 165–178. Chetchotiros, N., and M. Bangprapa. 2015. “Changes to Justice System Fail to Ease Rifts,” Bangkok Post, April 20, p. 3. Chongkittavorn, K. 2010. “Spotlight on the Thai Media at a Time of Conflict,” The Nation, May 10, p. 13A. Choonhavan, K. 2013. “Thaksin’s ‘War on Drugs’ a Crime Against Humanity,” Bangkok Post, December 13, p. 13. Christensen, S., and A. Siamwalla. 1993. “Beyond Patronage: Tasks for the Thai State.” Paper presented at Thailand Development Research Institute 1993 YearEnd Conference, Chonburi, December 10–11. Collier, R. 1999. Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Committee to Protect Journalists. 2010. “Attacks on the Press 2010: Asia Analysis, Partisan Journalism and the Cycle of Repression.” https://cpj.org/2011/02 /attacks-on-the-press-2010-asia-analysis.php, accessed July 6, 2011. Connors, M. K. 2007. Democracy and National Identity in Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic lnstitute of Asian Studies. ———. 2012. “Notes Towards an Understanding of Thai Liberalism,” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 97–107. Costa Pinto, A., and P. Tavares de Almeida. 2000. “On Liberalism and the Emer-

226

REFERENCES

gence of Civil Society in Portugal,” in N. Bermeo and P. Nord, eds., Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 3–22. Crispin, Shawn W. 2012. “Thailand’s Classless Conflict,” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp.108–119. Cunningham, P. 2010. “Triumph of the Shrill, Rhetoric of the Reds,” Bangkok Post, May 13, p. 9. Day, T. 2002. Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. di Lampedusa, Giuseppe T. 1960. The Leopard. Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Pantheon. Diamond, L. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Disraeli, B. 2008. Sybil. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doner, R. F. 2009. The Politics of Uneven Development: Thailand’s Economic Growth in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Doniger, W. D. 2010. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dressel, B. 2010. “Judicialization of Politics or Politicization of the Judiciary? Considerations from Recent Events in Thailand,” Pacific Review 23, no. 5: 671– 691. Dressel, B., ed. 2012. The Judicialization of Politics in Asia. New York: Routledge. Dryzek, J. S. 2008. “Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building.” Paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 28–31. Dunn, J. 1999. “Situating Democratic Political Accountability,” in A. Przeworski, S. C. Stokes, and B. Manin, eds., Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 329–344. ———. 2001. “The Contemporary Political Significance of John Locke’s Conception of Civil Society,” in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities. New York: Cambridge Unversity Press, 39–57. The Economist. 2010. “Lest Ye Be Judged,” October 14, p. 56. ———. 2014. “The President’s Stargazer,” November 8, p. 8. Egan, T. 2014. “Why Do We Re-elect Them?” New York Times, October 9, p. A29. Ekachai, S. 2006. “More than a Monarch,” Bangkok Post, June 9, p.11 Elias, N. 1982. The History of Manners: The Civilizing Process, vol. 1. New York: Pantheon. Ellul, J. 1964. The Technological Society. New York: Knopf. Elster, J. 1999. “Accountability in Athenian Politics,” in A. Przeworski, S. C. Stokes, and B. Manin, eds., Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 253–278. Engel, D. M. 1975. “Law and Kingship in Thailand During the Reign of King Chulalongkorn.” Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia No. 9. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. ———. 1978. Code and Custom in a Thai Provincial Court. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. Engel, D. M., and J. S. Engel. 2010. Tort, Custom, and Karma: Globalization and Legal Consciousness in Thailand. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

REFERENCES

227

Englehart, N. A. 2003. “Democracy and the Thai Middle Class: Globalization, Modernization, and Constitutional Change,” Asian Survey 43, no. 2: 253–279. Eoseewong, N. 2006. Pen and Sail: Literature and History in Early Bangkok. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. Feeny, D. 1979. “Paddy, Prices, and Productivity: Irrigation and Thai Agricultural Development, 1900–1940,” Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 2: 132– 150. Ferrara, F. 2011. Thailand Unhinged: The Death of Thai-Style Democracy. Singapore: Equinox. Field, N. 1993. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor. New York: Vintage Books. Flyvberg, B. 2001. Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Enquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Freedom House. 2007. “Countries at the Crossroads 2007.” https://freedom house.org. ———. 2010. “Thailand 2010 Report.” https://freedomhouse.org. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. 2010. “Asian Media Barometer: A Locally Based Analysis of the Media Landscape in Asia, Thailand 2010.” Bangkok: Friedrich-EbertStiftung Thailand. Fukuyama, F. 2011. The Origins of Political Order. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ———. 2014. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Fullbrook, D. 2012. “Changing Thailand: An Awakening of Popular Political Consciousness for Rights?” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp.131–140. Gambetta, D. 1998. “Claro! An Essay on Deliberative Machismo,” in J. Elster, ed., Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19–43. Gardels, N. 2015. “Urban Migration: A Modern Story,” Bangkok Post, October 31, p. 9. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1994. “Primordial and Civic Ties,” in J. Hutchinson and A. D. Smith, eds., Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 29–33. Gilley, B. 2014. The Nature of Asian Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ginsburg, T. 2009. “Constitutional Afterlife: The Continuing Impact of Thailand’s Post-Political Constitution,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 7, no. 1: 83–105. Girling, J. L. S. 1981. Thailand: Society and Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1996. Interpreting Development. Capitalism, Democracy, and the Middle Class in Thailand. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University Press. Gonzalez, L. 2014. “Unpacking Delegative Democracy: Digging into the Empirical Content of a Rich Theoretical Concept,” in D. Brinks, M. Leiras, and S. Mainwaring, eds., Reflections on Uneven Democracies: The Legacy of Guillermo O’Donnell. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 240–268. Gorski, P. S. 2003. The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

228

REFERENCES

Gramsci, A. 1971. Prison Notebooks. New York: Columbia University Press. Gray, C. 1991. “Hegemonic Images: Language and Silence in the Royal Thai Polity,” Man 26, no. 1: 43–65. Greenfeld, Liah. 1993. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grzymala-Busse, A., and P. J. Luong. 2002. “Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-Communism,” Politics and Society 30, no. 4: 529–554. Haberkorn, T. 2013. “An Uneasy Engagement: Political Crisis and Human Rights Culture in Thailand, 1958 to 1988,” in C. Barry, ed., Rights to Culture: Heritage, Language, and Community in Thailand. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 115–134. Haggard, S., A. MacIntyre, and L. Tiede. 2008. “The Rule of Law and Economic Development,” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (June): 205–234. Haines, F. 2005. Globalization and Regulatory Character: Regulatory Reform After the Kader Toy Factory Fire. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Handley, P. 2006. The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hanks, L. M. 1962. “Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order,” American Anthropoloist 64, no. 2 (December): 1247–1262. Hanson, S. E. 2010. Post-Imperial Democracies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Harding, A., and P. Leyland. 2011. The Constitutional System of Thailand: A Contextual Analysis. Portland, OR: Hart. Hefner, R. W. 2000. Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Helmke, G., and S. Levitsky. 2006. “Introduction,” in G. Helmke and S. Levitsky, eds., Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 1–30. Hengkietisak, K. 2011. “History Points to Negotiation as the Only Answer,” Bangkok Post, April 30, p. 10. Hewison, K. 1997. “The Monarchy and Democratization,” in K. Hewison, ed., Political Change in Thailand: Democracy and Participation. New York: Routledge, pp. 58–74. ———. 2002. “Responding to Economic Crisis: Thailand’s Localism,” in D. McCargo, ed., Reforming Thai Politics. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 143–161. ———. 2012. “Class, Inequality, and Politics,” in M. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., Bangkok May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of South East Asian Studies, and Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 143–160. Hewison, K., and K. Kitirianglarp. 2010. “‘Thai-Style Democracy’: The Royalist Struggle for Thailand’s Politics,” in S. Ivarsson and L. Isager, eds., Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 179–202. Hirschl, R. 2004. Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hirst, P. 1994. Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Holmes, S. 2003. “Lineages of the Rule of Law,” in Jose Maria Maravall and Adam Przeworski, eds., Democracy and the Rule of Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 29–61.

REFERENCES

229

Hood, C. 1998. The Art of the State. Culture, Rhetoric, and Public Management. New York: Oxford University Press. Hugo, V. 1996. Les Miserables. New York: Ballantine Books. Human Rights Watch. 2011. Descent into Chaos: Thailand’s 2010 Red Shirt Protests and the Government Crackdown. www.hrw.org. Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Huntington, Samuel P., and J. M. Nelson. 1976. No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Index Mundi. 2014. Thailand Demographics Profile 2014. www.indexmundi.com /thailand/demographics_profile.html, accessed February 2, 2015. International Center for Prison Studies. 2016. www.prisonstudies.org/country/thai land, accessed December 30, 2015. International Crisis Group. 2015. “Thailand’s Lengthening Roadmap to Elections.” Asia Report No. 274, December 10. Interpol. 2016. “Royal Thai Police.” http://www.interpol.int/Member-countries /Asia-South-Pacific/Thailand. Jackson, P. A. 2004. “The Thai Regime of Images,” Sojourn 19, no. 2: 181–218. ———. 2010. “Virtual Divinity: A 21st-Century Discourse of Thai Royal Influence,” in S. Ivarsson and L. Isager, eds., Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 29–60. Jacobs, N. 1971. Modernization Without Development. New York: Praeger. Johnson, P. 1991. The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815–1830. New York: HarperCollins. Jory, P. 2014. “The Weakness of the Thai Royalists,” New Mandala. http://asia pacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/02/07/the-weakness-of-the-thai-royal ists, accessed May 12, 2015. Jumbala, P. 2012. “Prajadhipok: The King at the Transition to Constitutional Monarchy in Siam,” in S. Bunbongkarn and P. Jumbala, eds., Monarchy and Constitutional Rule in Democratizing Thailand. Bangkok: Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 106–202. Jumbala, P., and M. Mitprasat. 1997. “Non-Governmental Development Organizations,” in K. Hewison, ed., Political Change in Thailand. New York: Routledge, pp. 195–216. Kalyvas, S. N. 1998. “From Pulpit to Party,” Comparative Politics 30, no. 3: 293–312. Kamnuansilpa, P., and J. Draper. 2015. “Thailand Needs to Be Open to Adopting Foreign Ideas,” Bangkok Post, April 8, p. 11. Kasetsiri, C. 1999. Bannānukrom wādūai rư̄ang Ayutthayā (Bibliography of Sources on Ayutthaya Province, Thailand). Bangkok: Thammasat University. Katerenchuk, W. 2006. “Thai Politics 2005: A Year in Review,” in N. Rathamarit, ed., Eyes on Thai Democracy: National and Local Issues. Bangkok: King Prajadhipok Institute, pp. 201–271. Kaviraj, S. 2001. “In Search of Civil Society,” in S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kesboonchoo-Mead, K. 2004. The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism. New York: Routledge Curzon. Key, V. O. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Knopf/Vintage. Keyes, C. 1977. The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

230

REFERENCES

———. 2006. Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Asian Research Institute Working Paper Series No. 80. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Khanthong, T. 2014. “Farmers Call Time on Yingluck’s Rice Farce,” The Nation, February 14, p. 9. Khilnani, S. 2001. “The Development of Civil Society,” in S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–32. Kirsch, A. T. 1973. Feast and Social Oscillation: Religion and Society in Upland Southeast Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kitahara, A. 1996. The Thai Rural Community Reconsidered: Historical Community Formation and Contemporary Development Movements. Bangkok: Political Economy Centre, Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University. Kitiarsa, P. 2012. “From Red to Red: An Auto-Ethnography of Economic and Political Transitions in a Northeastern Thai Village,” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., Bangkok, May 2010. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 230–247. Kitschelt, H., and S. I. Wilkinson. 2007. “Citizen-Politician Linkages: An Introduction,” in H. Kitschelt and S. I. Wilkinson, eds., Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–49. Kittayarak, K. 1990. “Due Process and the Thai Criminal Procedure: A Comparative Study.” PhD dissertation, Stanford University. Klausner, W. J. 1983. Reflections on Thai Culture, 2nd ed. Bangkok: Siam Society. ———. 1999. “Reflections on the Independence of the Thai Judiciary: Past, Present and Future,” in Thai Institutions and National Security: Danger and Opportunity. Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS) Paper No. 3. Bangkok: Institute of Security and International Studies, pp. 183–195. ———. 2012. Thai Culture in Transition: Social and Political Implications, 4th ed. Bangkok: Charansanitwong Printing, pp. 47–49. ———. 2013. Interviewed by the authors, June 5, Bangkok. ———. 2015. Thai Culture in Transition: Social and Political Implications, 7th ed. Bangkok: Charansanitwong Printing. Klein, J. R. 2003a. “Public Participation and Hearings in the New Thai Political Context,” in K. H. and P. Siriros, eds., Legal Foundations for Public Consultation in Government Decision-Making. Bangkok: Executive Public Administration Foundation, pp. 113–129. ———. 2003b. “The Battle for Rule of Law in Thailand: The Role of the Constitutional Court,” in A. Raksasataya and J. R. Klein, eds., The Constitutional Court of Thailand: The Provisions and the Working of the Court. Bangkok: Constitution for the People Society. Kohli, A. 1990. Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Krasner, S. D. 1983. “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” in S. D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–22. Krittikarn, S. 2010. “Entertainment Nationalism: The Royal Gaze and the Gaze at the Royals,” in S. Ivarsson and L. Isager, eds., Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 61–87. Lakoff, G. 2002. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

REFERENCES

231

Laothamatas, A. 1992. Business Associations and the New Political Economy of Thailand: From Bureaucratic Polity to Liberal Corporatism. Boulder, CO: Westview. ———. 1996. “A Tale of Two Democracies: Conflicting Perceptions of Elections and Democracy in Thailand,” in R. H. Taylor, ed., The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201–223. Lecky, W. E. H. 1978. “Democracy Does Not Harmonise Well with Liberty,” in E. K. Bramsted, and K. J. Melhuish, eds., Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Croce. New York: Longman, pp. 617–620. Lendvai, P. 2003. The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Levitsky, P. 2001. “Organization and Labor-Based Party Adaptation: The Transformation of Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective,” World Politics 54, no. 1: 27–56. Lewis, B. 2004. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, G. 2002. “The Media and the Thaksin Government,” in C. Hogue, ed., Thailand After a Year of the Thaksin Government. Canberra: National Thai Studies Centre, Australian National University, pp. 179–197. Leyland, P. 2007. “Thailand’s Constitutional Watchdogs: Dobermans, Bloodhounds or Lapdogs,” Journal of Comparative Law 2, no. 2: 151–177. ———. 2010a. “The Struggle for Freedom of Expression in Thailand: Media Moguls, the King, Citizen Politics and the Law,” Journal of Media Law 2, no. 1: 115–137. ———. 2010b. Droit Administratif Thai Style: A Comparative Analysis of the Administrative Courts in Thailand. Legal Studies Research Paper Series No. 13/2010. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, School of Law. Linz, J. J., and A. Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipset, S. M., M. Trow, and J. Coleman. 1956. Union Democracy: The Inside Politics of the International Typographical Union. New York: Free Press. Lomborg, B. 2015. “How to Tackle Extreme Poverty,” Bangkok Post, August 4, p. 10. Loos, T. 2006. Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Luebbert, G. M. 1991. Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Interwar Regimes in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lukacs, J. 1988. Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture. New York: Grove. Lyne, M. M. 2007. “Rethinking Economics and Institutions: The Voter’s Dilemma and Democratic Accountability,” in H. Kitschelt and S. I. Wilkinson, eds., Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 159–181. The Mad Monarchist. 2009. “Monarch Profile: Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.” mad monarchist.blogspot.com/2009/07/monarch-profile-emperor-pedro-ii-of.html. Madison, J. 2000. “James Madison to W. T. Barry,” in The Founders’ Constitution, Volume 1, Chapter 18, Document 35, University of Chicago, http://press -pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html, accessed January 2, 2016. Mahakanjana, C. 2009. “Municipal Government and the Role of Cooperative Com-

232

REFERENCES

munity Groups in Thailand,” in B. L. Read and R. Pekkanen, eds., Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society. Routledge Studies on Civil Society in Asia. New York: Routledge, p. 101–120. ———. 2012. “An Update on Thailand’s Decentralization: A Look at Local Personnel Systems, Education, and Accountability,” in Comparative Public Administration, vol. 11: Integrated Human Capacity Building in the Age of Decentralization. Tokyo: Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration Local Government Center, pp. 135–153. ———. 2014. “Institutional Reforms and Social Changes in Thai Municipal Governments,” Thai Journal of Public Administration 12, no. 2: 9–35. Mahakanjana, C., and D. Unger. 2013. “Why Sub-National Governments in Thailand Are Not Creating Electronics Industry Clusters,” in F. Hutchinson, ed., Sub-national Governments and the Electronics Industry in Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 121–147. Mahakanjana, C., and A. Wongpridee. 2011. “Local Government and Decentralization in Thailand,” in E. Berman, ed., Public Administration in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Macau. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, pp. 53–78. Manjoo, F. 2015. “Facebook Study Finds It’s Not Too Polarizing,” Bangkok Post, May 9, p. 8. Mann, M. 1986. The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1993. The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and NationStates, 1760–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Manorom, K. 2014. Interviewed by the authors, June 12, Bangkok. Maravall, J. M. 1999. “Accountability and Manipulation,” in A. Przeworski, S. C. Stokes, and B. Manin, eds., Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–196. ———. 2003. “The Rule of Law as a Political Weapon,” in J. M. Maravall and A. Przeworski, eds., Democracy and the Rule of Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 261–301. Maravall, J. M., and A. Przeworski. 2003. “Introduction,” in J. M. Maravall and A. Przeworski, eds., Democracy and the Rule of Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–18. Marshall, A. 2014. A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. London: Zed Books. Mazzuca, S. L. 2014. “Rentier Populism and the Rise of Super-Presidents in South America,” in D. Brinks, M. Leiras, and S. Mainwaring, eds., Reflections on Uneven Democracies: The Legacy of Guillermo O’Donnell. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 89–105. McCargo, D. 1997. “Thailand’s Political Parties” in K. Hewison, ed., Political Change in Thailand: Democracy and Participation. New York: Routledge, pp. 114–131. ———. 2002. “Introduction: Understanding Political Reform in Thailand,” in D. McCargo, ed., Reforming Thai Politics. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 1–18. ———. 2005. “Network Monarchy and Legitimacy Crises in Thailand,” Pacific Review 18, no. 4: 499–519. ———. 2012. “The Changing Politics of Thailand’s Buddhist Order,” Critical Asian Studies 44, no. 4: 627–642.

REFERENCES

233

McCargo, D., and U. Pathmanand. 2005. The Thaksinization of Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. McCargo, D., and A. Zarakol. 2012. “Turkey and Thailand: Unlikely Twins,” Journal of Democracy 23, no. 2: 71–79. McVey, R. 2000. “Of Greed and Violence and Other Signs of Progress,” in R. McVey, ed., Money and Power in Provincial Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 1–29. Meacham, J. 2009. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. New York: Random House. Media Monitor. 2013. http://mediamonitor.in.th, accessed February 12, 2014. Melzer, A. M. 2014. Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mendus, S. 2006. “Impartiality,” in J. S. Dryzek, B. Honig, and A. Phillips, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 423–435. Merton, R. K. 1964. “Foreword,” in J. Ellul, The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Migdal, J. S. 2001. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Milner, H. 2002. Civic Literacy. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2009. http://www.mfa.go.th/main/en/media-center/28 /2972-OnApril-2009-at-0900-hours,-Prime-Minister-Abh.html, accessed December 27, 2015. Mishra, P. 2012. From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia. London: Penguin. Missingham, B. D. 2003. The Assembly of the Poor in Thailand: From Local Struggles to National Protest Movement. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. Montesano, M. J. 2010. “Four Thai Pathologies, Late 2009,” in M. Askew, ed., Legitimacy Crisis in Thailand. King Prajadhipok Institute Year Book No. 5, 2008–2009. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 273–302. ———. 2014. “What Is to Come in Thailand,” Iseas Perspective No. 7, February 10, pp. 1–12 Moore, B., Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press. Moore, C. G. 1998. Heart Talk: Say What You Feel in Thai. Bangkok: Heaven Lake Press. Morlino, L. 2001. “The Three Phases of Italian Parties,” in L. Diamond and R. Gunther, eds., Political Parties and Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 109–142. Morrell, D., and C. Samudavanija. 1981. Political Conflict in Thailand: Reform, Reaction, Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain. Mulder, N. 1985. Everyday Life in Thailand, 2nd ed. Bangkok: DK Books. ———. 1998. Thai Images: The Culture of the Public World. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. Munger, F. 2007. “Culture, Power, and Law: Thinking About the Anthropology of Rights in Thailand in an Era of Globalization,” New York Law School Law Review 51, no. 4: 818–838. Murray, D. 1996. Angels and Devils: Thai Politics from February 1991 to September 1992, A Struggle for Democracy? Bangkok: White Orchid Press. Muscat, R. J. 1994. The Fifth Tiger: A Study of Thai Development Policy. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

234

REFERENCES

Mydans, S. 2006. “Saving Thailand’s Democracy: Will the Cure Kill the Patient?” New York Times, August 30. Nabarath, D. 2000. Siam’s Rural Economy Under King Chulalongkorn. Bangkok: White Lotus. Nagai, F., T. Funantsu, and K. Kagoya. 2008. “Central-Local Government Relationship in Thailand,” in F. Nagai, N. Mektrairat, and T. Funantsu, eds., Local Government in Thailand—Analysis of the Local Administrative Organization Survey. Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, pp. 1–30. Nanuam, W. 2006. “Prem Slams ‘Unethical Leaders,’” Bangkok Post, July 29, p.1. ———. 2009. Lap Loung Prang. Bangkok: Matichon. ———. 2011. “Show of Strength to Protect Monarchy,” Bangkok Post, April 20, p. 3. ———. 2014. “Fortune Teller Tips Prayuth for PM,” Bangkok Post, June 6, p. 4. The Nation. 2006. March 16, p. 31. ———. 2009. “Army Chief Will Sue If Linked to Sondhi Plot,” May 7. ———. 2010a. “Media Freedom in Thailand Is at Stake,” May 3, p. 12A. ———. 2010b. “Groups Urge Outlets to Be Ethical, Not Stir Unrest,” May 11, p. 15A. ———. 2010c. “Censure Debate in Limbo?” February 25, p. 3. The Nation Online. 2006. “Democrat Leaders Attacked in Chiang Mai,” March 31. www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/03/31/headlines/headlines_30000602.php, accessed September 7, 2015. Neher, C. D. 1979. Politics in Southeast Asia. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Nelson, M. H. 2010. “People’s Alliance for Democracy: From ‘New Politics’ to a ‘Real’ Political Party?” in M. Askew, ed., Legitimacy Crisis in Thailand. King Prajadhipok Institute Year Book No. 5, 2008–2009. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 110–159. Ngamkham, W. 2011. “Bhumjaithai Banks on Local Lure,” Bangkok Post, June 29, p. 4. Nishizaki, Y. 2011. Political Authority and Provincial Identity in Thailand: The Making of Banharn-buri. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program. Nogsuan, S. 2006. “Party Elite in the Business Conglomerate Model of Thai Political Parties,” in Niyom Rathamarit, eds., Eyes on Thai Democracy: National and Local Issues. Bangkok: King Prajadhipok Institute, pp. 103–135. Ockey, J. 1991. “Business Leaders, Gangsters and the Middle Class.” PhD dissertation, Cornell University. ———. 1994. “Political Parties, Factions and Corruption in Thailand,” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 2: 251–277. ———. 2002. “Civil Society and Street Politics: Lessons from the 1950s,” in D. McCargo, ed., Reforming Thai Politics. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 107–123. ———. 2004. “State, Bureaucracy and Polity in Modern Thai Politics,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 34, no. 2: 143–162. ———. 2005. “Monarch, Monarchy, Succession and Stability in Thailand,” Asia Pacific Viewpoint 46, no. 2: 115–127. Office of the Public Sector Development Commission. 2009. Towards Good Governance in the Public Sector: A Thai Chronicle. Bangkok: Office of the Public Sector Development Commission. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. 2015. “2015 Trafficking in Persons Report,” US Department of State. http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt /countries/2015/243547.htm, accessed November 7, 2015. Ouyyanont, P. 2008. “The Crown Property Bureau from Crisis to Opportunity,” in P.

REFERENCES

235

Phongpaichit and C. Baker, eds., Thai Capital After the 1997 Crisis. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 155–166. Overholt, W. H. 1988. “Thailand: A Moving Equilibrium,” in A. Ramsay and W. Mungkandi, eds., Thailand-US Relations. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, pp. 155–194. Oz-Salzberger, F. 2001. “Civil Society in the Scottish Enlightenment,” in S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani, eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 58–83. Pamuk, O. 2004. Snow. London: Faber and Faber. Panyalimpanun, T. 2015. “Facebook and Thai Politics: Press ‘Like,’ and Hope for the Best,” July 7. http://asiancorrespondent.com. Parry, R. L. 2014. London Review of Books. 36, no. 2 (June 6): 11–12. Peleggi, M. 2002. Lord of Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Penth, H. 2004. A Brief History of Lan Na. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. PERC. See Political and Economic Risk Consultancy. Phatharathananunth, S. 2002. “Civil Society and Democratization in Thailand: A Critique of Elite Democracy,” in D. McCargo, ed., Reforming Thai Politics. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 125–142. ———. 2003. “Isan Political Tradition: Patron-Clients vs. Socialism” in Ji Giles Ungpakorn, ed., Radicalising Thailand: New Political Perspectives. Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, pp.152-165. Phillips, H. B. 1965. Thai Peasant Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Phongpaichit, P., and C. Baker. 2002. Thailand: Economy and Politics, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2004. Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand. Bangkok: Silkworm Books. ———. 2012. “Thailand in Trouble: Revolt of the Downtrodden or Conflict Among Elites?” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., Bangkok, May 2010. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 214–229. Phongpaichit, P., and S. Piriyarangsan. 1996. Corruption and Democracy in Thailand. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. Piromya, K. 2012. “Thailand’s Rocky Path Towards a Full-Fledged Democracy,” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 161–170. PISA. See Programme for International Student Assessment. Pitkin, H. F. 1987. Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli. Berkeley: University of California Press. Platt, M. 2010. “Culture of Monarchy: A Repertory Theatre Through Time,” in S. Ivarsson and L. Isager, eds., Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 89–101. Political and Economic Risk Consultancy. 2013. “Corruption’s Impacts on the Business Environment,” Asian Intelligence, no. 871: 1–7. Pongsapich, A., and N. Kataleeradabhan. 1997. Thailand Nonprofit Sector and Social Development. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Printing House. Poo, M. 2006. “Man Beaten to Death After Desecrating the Erawan Shrine,” March 22. www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/03/22/headlines/headlines_20003314.php, accessed August 27, 2015.

236

REFERENCES

Poungsomlee, A. 1999. Thai Civil Society: The Making of Thai Citizens. Kabuankan Pracha Sangkhom Thai: Khwam Kleanwai Pakpolamuang (in Thai). Bangkok: Amarin. Prizzia, R. 1985. Thailand in Transition: The Role of Opposition Forces. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Programme for International Student Assessment. 2009. “PISA Report 2009.” https://pisathailand.ipst.ac.th/?cat=13, accessed June 23, 2014. Przeworski, A. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. States and Markets: A Primer in Political Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, A., and F. Limongi. 1997. “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49, no. 2: 155–183. Przeworski, Adam, Susan C. Stokes, and Bernard Manin. 1999. “Introduction,” in A. Przeworski, S. C. Stokes, and B. Manin, eds., Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–26. Punyaratabandhu, S. 2007. National Survey on Attitude on Good Governance. Data Set from a National Survey Between 2005 and 2006 on Attitude on Good Governance. Bangkok: Graduate School of Public Administration, National Institute of Development Administration. Punyaratabandhu, S., and D. Unger. 2009. “Managing Performance in a Context of Political Clientelism: The Case of Thailand,” in C. Wescott, B. Bowornwathana, and L. R. Jones, eds., The Many Faces of Public Management Reform in the Asia-Pacific Region. Bingley, UK: Emerald, pp. 279–306. Putnam, R. 1988. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3: 427–460. Race, J. 2007. “On May 30, a Grave Truth Was Revealed,” Bangkok Post. June 15, p.11. ———. 2014. “History Shows Way Out of Conflict,” Asia Times Online, January 13. www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia.html. Rajchagool, C. 1994. The Rise and Fall of the Thai Absolute Monarchy: Foundations of the Modern Thai State from Feudalism to Peripheral Capitalism. Bangkok: White Lotus. Raksasataya, A., and J. R. Klein, eds., 2003. The Constitutional Court of Thailand: The Provisions and the Working of the Court. Bangkok: Constitution for the People Society. Raksaseri, K. 2010. “Media Plays Crucial Role in Conflict,” The Nation, May 8, p. 2A. Rawls, J. 2005. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Reynolds, C. J. 1994. Thai Radical Discourse: The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today. Studies on Southeast Asia No. 3. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program. ———. 2006. Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Past. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ricci, D. M. 1987. The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Riggs, F. W. 1964. Administration in Developing Countries: The Politics of Prismatic Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 1966. Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity. Honolulu: East-West Center Press. Rithdee, K. 2016. “Tabloid Saga and Our Gang Mentality.” Bangkok Post, January 9, p. 9.

REFERENCES

237

Roberts, Edmund. 2012. Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat. London: Forgotten Books. Roberts, K. M. 2006. “Populism, Political Conflict, and Grass-Roots Organization in Latin America,” World Politics 38, no. 2: 127–148. Robertson, P., Jr. 1996. “The Rise of the Rural Network Politician,” Asian Survey 36, no. 9: 924–941. Rojanaphruk, P. 2006. “Takeover Sets Bad Precedents, Forum Told,” The Nation, February 1, 2006. ———. 2008. “Thaksin’s Lawyers Imprisoned,” The Nation, June 26, p. 3. ———. 2010a. “Protest Peacefully: Red-Shirt Media,” The Nation, March 13, p. 4. ———. 2010b. “Debate Widens Rift,” The Nation, June 2, p. 1B. Rojanaphruk, P., and J. Hanthamrongwit. 2010. “Distorted Mirror and Lamp: The Politicization of the Media in the Post-Thaksin Era,” in M. Askew, ed., Legitimacy Crisis in Thailand. King Prajadhipok Institute Year Book No. 5, 2008– 2009. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 161–195. Rojanaphruk, P., and B. Sinlapalavan. 2014. “PDRC Reform Found Useful, But More Inclusive Debate Is Still Needed,” The Nation, March 24, p. 3. Rojanasathien, B. 1987. Interviewed by the authors, May 7, Bangkok. Ruangdit, P. 2011a. “Confusing Scenarios Emerge as Political Uncertainty Festers,” Bangkok Post, March 28, p. 3. ———. 2011b. “Red Shirt Power Shores Up Pheu Thai in the North,” Bangkok Post, June 29, p. 3. ———. 2012. “Prem Says Traitors Doomed,” Bangkok Post, April 4, p. 4. Rueschemeyer, D., E. H. Stephens, and J. D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ruland, J., C. Jurgenmeyer, M. H. Nelson, and P. Ziegenhain. 2005. Parliaments and Political Change in Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Saiyasombut, S. 2015. “Thai Juntas Lawmakers See Nothing Wrong with Hiring Family Members,” March 2. http://asiancorrespondent.com. Samabuddhi, K. 2011. “Getting Rid of Bad Politics Is Not Enough,” Bangkok Post, May 27, p. 9. ———. 2012. “Nitirat Core Leader Attacked at Thammasat,” Bangkok Post, March 1, p. 1. Samudavanija, C. 1995. “Bypassing the State in Asia,” New Perspective Quarterly 12, no. 1: 9–12. ———. 2002. Thailand. State-Building, Democracy and Globalization. Bangkok: Institute of Policy Studies. Sanchez-Cuenca, I. 2003. “Power, Rules, and Compliance,” in J. M. Maravall and A. Przeworski, eds., Democracy and the Rule of Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 62–93. Sandbrook, R., M. Edelman, P. Heller, and J. Teichman. 2007. Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Satthaburuth, A., and A. Mahitthirook. 2013. “Pheu Thai, House Leaders Raise Pressure on Court,” Bangkok Post, November 19, p. B1. Sawasdee, S. N. 2006. Thai Political Parties in the Age of Reform. Bangkok: Institute of Public Policy Studies. Schedler, K., and I. Proeller. 2007. “Public Management as a Cultural Phenomenon: Revitalizing Societal Culture in International Public Management Research,” International Public Management Review 8, no. 1: 186–195. www.ipmr.net.

238

REFERENCES

Scott, J. C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sennett, R. 2003. Respect in a World of Inequality. New York: W. W. Norton. Setabutr, N. 2006. “Thai Politics over a Period of 72 Years,” in N. Rathamarit, ed., Eyes on Thai Democracy: National and Local Issues. King Prajadhipok Institute Year Book No. 3, 2004–2005. Bangkok: King Prajadhipok Institute, pp. 1–40. Sewell, W. H., Jr. 2005. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shakespeare, W. 1992. Hamlet. New York: Dover Publications. ———. 2006. King John. New York: Simon and Schuster. Shapiro, R. Y., J. T. Young, K. D. Patterson, J. E. Blumenfeld, D. A. Cifu, S. M. Offenhartz, and T. E. Tsekerides. 1991. “Media Influences on Support for Presidential Candidates in Primary Elections: Theory, Method and Evidence,” International Journal of Public Opinion 3, no. 4: 340–365. Shefter, M. 1994. Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shigetomi, S. 2002. “Thailand: A Crossing of Critical Parallel Relationships,” in S. Shigetomi, ed., The State and NGOs: Perspectives from Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 124–144. Siamwalla, A. 2011. “Thailand After 1997,” Asian Economic Policy Review 6, no. 1: 68–85. ———. 2012. “Without Accountability, What Reform?” Bangkok Post, February 18, p. 7. ———. 2014. Personal communication with the authors, June 3, Bangkok. Sieder, R., L. Schjolden, and A. Angell. 2005. The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Siffin, W. 1962. “Economic Development,” in J. L. Sutton, ed., Problems of Politics and Administration in Thailand. Bloomington: Institute of Training for Public Service, pp. 125–152. ———. 1966. The Thai Bureaucracy: Institutional Change and Development. Honolulu: East-West Center Press. Simpkins, D. 2003. “Radical Influence on the Third Sector: Thai NGO Contributions to Socially Responsive Politics,” in J. G. Ungpakorn, ed., Radicalising Thailand: New Political Perspectives. Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 253–288. Sirisumphand, T. 2009. “Introduction,” in C. Kamolsirisakul, ed., Towards Good Governance in the Public Sector: A Thai Chronicle, Office of the Public Sector Development Commission, pp. 3–15. Sirivunnabood, P. 2009. “Local Party Branches in Thailand.” PhD dissertation, Northern Illinois University. Skinner, W. G. 1957. Chinese Society in Thailand: An Anthropological History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1958. Leadership and Power in a Chinese Community in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Slater, D. 2010. Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Smart, B. 1985. Michel Foucault, rev. ed. New York: Routledge. Smithies, M. 1995. Descriptions of Old Siam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sng, J., and P. Bisalputra. 2015. A History of the Thai-Chinese. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet. Somin, I. 1998. “Voter Ignorance and the Democratic Ideal,” Critical Review 12, no. 4: 413–457.

REFERENCES

239

Spengler, O. 1991. The Decline of the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sperber, J. 2013. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life. New York: Liveright. Srivalo, P. 2011. “Jilted Mingkwan May Quit Pheu Thai Party After Thaksin Rebuke,” The Nation, April 10. Stimson, S. C. 2006. “Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law,” in J. S. Dryzek, B. Honig, and A. Phillips, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 317–332. Stinchcombe, A. L. 2001. When Formality Works: Authority and Abstraction in Law and Organizations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Streckfuss, D. 2011. Truth on Trial in Thailand: Defamation, Treason, and Lèse Majesté. New York: Routledge. Sunstein, C. 2013. “An Original Thinker of Our Time,” New York Review of Books, May 23, pp. 14–17. Suwannathat-Pian, K. 2003. Kings, Country and Constitutions: Thailand’s Political Development 1932–2000. New York: Routledge Curzon. Tangprasert, P. 2012. “Police Exam Cheat Gang Nabbed,” Bangkok Post, June 12, p. 1. Taylor, J. 2004. “New Buddhism, Urban Space, and Virtual Civil Society,” in L. H. Guan, ed., Civil Society in Southeast Asia. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, pp. 78–100. Tejjapira, K. 2003. “De-Othering Jek Communists: Rewriting Thai History from the Viewpoint of the Ethno-Ideological Other,” in J. T. Seigel and A. R. Kahin, eds., Southeast Asia over Three Generations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program. Terwiel, B. J. 2005. Thailand’s Political History: From the Fall of Ayutthaya to Recent Times. Bangkok: River Books. Thabchumpon, N., and D. McCargo. 2011. “Urbanized Villagers in the 2010 Thai Redshirt Protests,” Asian Survey 51, no. 6: 993–1018. Thailand. 1968. Thailand Official Yearbook. Bangkok: Government House Printing Office. Thailand Public Broadcasting Service. 2015. “General Premier Says Hates Corruption.” englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/gen-prem-says-hates-corruption, accessed January 9, 2016. Thip-Osod, M. 2011. “UDD Leader Threatens Prem with Lèse-Majesté Legal Action,” Bangkok Post, April 14, p. 3. Thongnoi, J. 2014. “What’s the Frequency, General?” Bangkok Post, December 14, pp. 6–7. Tilly, C. 1992. Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990–1992, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Tips, W. E. J. 1998. Crime and Punishment in King Chulalongkorn’s Kingdom. Bangkok: White Lotus. Tocqueville, A. de. 1978. “The Influence of Democratic Opinions and Sentiments on Political Society,” in E. K. Bramsted and K. J. Melhuish, eds., Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Croce. New York: Longman, pp. 605–609. TPBS. See Thailand Public Broadcasting Service. Trankell, I. 1999. “Royal Relics: Ritual and Social Memory in Louang Prabang,” in Grant Evans, ed., Laos: Culture and Society. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, pp. 191–213. Transparency International. 2013. Corruption Perceptions Index 2013. www.trans parency.org/cpi2013/results, accessed July 13, 2014. TRCT. See Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand.

240

REFERENCES

Treisman, D. 2007. The Architecture of Government: Rethinking Political Decentralization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Trevor-Roper, H. 1968. “Lord Macauley: Introduction,” in Lord Macauley, Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., The History of England. London: Penguin Books, pp. 7–42. Trocki, C. 1977. “Boonsanong Punyodyana: Thai Socialist and Scholar, 1936– 1976,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 9, no. 3: 48–51. Trotsky, L. 1959. The Russian Revolution. New York: Anchor. Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand. 2011. Interim Report. www .nationmultimedia.com/home/admin/specials/sound/file/Interrim%203_final.pdf, accessed May 23, 2012. UNDP. See United Nations Development Programme. Unger, D. 1998. Building Social Capital in Thailand: Fibers, Finance, and Infrastructure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. “Principals of the Thai State,” in B. Heredia and B. Schneider, eds., Reinventing Leviathan. Miami, FL: North-South Center Press, pp. 181–207. ———. 2009. “A Dark, Lawless, and Insatiable Ambition?” American Studies Working Paper No. 3. Bangkok: Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University. ———. 2012. “Flying Blind,” in M. J. Montesano, P. Chachavalpongpun, and A. Chongvilaivan, eds., Bangkok, May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012. Unger, D., and P. Siroros. 2011. “Trying to Make Decisions Stick: Natural Resource Policy Making in Thailand,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 41, no. 2: 206– 228. Ungpakorn, G. J. 2003a. “A Marxist History of Political Change in Thailand,” in J. G. Ungpakorn, ed., Radicalising Thailand: New Political Perspectives. Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 6–40. ———. 2003b. “From the City, Via the Jungle, to Defeat: The 6 October 1976 Bloodbath and the C.P.T.,” in J. G. Ungpakorn, ed., Radicalising Thailand: New Political Perspectives. Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 187–225. Ungpakorn, J. 2011a. “Time for Mainstream Media to Do Their Job,” Bangkok Post, February 23, p. 11. ———. 2011b. “Can We Make Our Justice System Accountable to People?” Bangkok Post, March 23, p. 9. United Nations Development Programme. 2009. Human Security, Today and Tomorrow, Thailand Human Development Report 2009. Bangkok: United Nations Development Programme. ———. 2010. The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. Bangkok: United Nations Development Programme. Van Creveld, M. 1999. The Rise and Decline of the State. New York: Cambridge University Press. Van der Cruysse, D. 2002. Siam and the West, 1500–1700. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. Vanijaka, V. 2011. “Why We Don’t Yet Trust Democracy,” Bangkok Post, November 17, p.11 ———. 2012. “Shall We Dance?” Bangkok Post, March 25, p. 11. ———. 2013. “Time for Factions to Show True Colors,” Bangkok Post, November 3, p. 11. Varshney, A. 1998. Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vatanasapt, V. 2003. “Public Participation in Thailand: Country Trends on Develop-

REFERENCES

241

ment and Public Participation,” in K. J. Haller and P. Siroros, eds., Legal Foundations for Public Consultation in Government Decision-Making. Bangkok: Executive Public Administration Foundation, pp. 65–82. Voice of America. 2006. “Thai Court Finds Media Activist Not Guilty in Shin Corporation Libel Case,” June 15. www.voanews.com. Waisbord, S. R. 2006. “Reading Scandals: Scandals, Media, and Citizenship in Contemporary Argentina,” in E. Peruzzotti and C. Smulovitz, eds., Enforcing the Rule of Law: Social Accountability in the New Latin American Democracies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 272–303. Waitoolkiat, N. 2006. “Information Costs and Voting in Thailand: Explaining Partyand Candidate-Centered Patterns.” PhD dissertation, Northern Illinois University. Waldner, D. 1999. State Building and Late Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Walker, A. 2012. Thailand’s Political Peasants: Power in the Modern Rural Economy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Warren, M. E. 2006. “Democracy and the State,” in J. S. Dryzek, B. Honig, and A. Phillips, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 382–399. Weber, M. 1994. Political Writings. Peter Lassmann, ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Weingast, B. R. 2003. “A Postscript to ‘Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law,’” in J. M. Maravall and A. Przeworski, eds., Democracy and the Rule of Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 109–113. Whittaker, A. 2004. Abortion, Sin and the State in Thailand. New York: Routledge Curzon. Wichiarajote, W. 1973. The Theory of Affiliation Society. Bangkok: Prasanmitr College. Wilson, D. 1962. Politics in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Winichakul, T. 1997. Siam Mapped. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Winters, J. A. 2013. “Oligarchy and Democracy in Indonesia,” Special Issue: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics, Indonesia 96 (October): 11–33. Wipatayayothin, A. 2011. “Controversial Power Plant Gets Go Ahead from Board,” Bangkok Post, May 5, p. 3. Wolfe, A. 2010. The Future of Liberalism. New York: Vintage Books. Wolfinger, R. E. 1978. “Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts,” in D. W. Abbott and E. T. Rogowsky, eds., Political Parties, 2nd ed. Chicago: Rand McNally, pp. 51–76. Wongsamuth, N., and N. Tephaval. 2013. “TDRI: Income Gap Widens Despite Populist Outpouring,” Bangkok Post, November 19. www.bangkokpost.com. Wongtrangan, K. 1990. “Executive Power and Constitutionalism in Thailand,” in C. V. Sison, ed., Constitutional and Legal System in ASEAN Countries. Manila, Philippines: Academy of ASEAN Law and Jurisprudence, University of the Philippines, pp. 287–312. Wootton, D. 1996. Modern Political Thought: Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. World Bank. 2013. Worldwide Governance Indicators. http://info.worldbank.org /governance/wgi/index.aspx#home, accessed June 10, 2015. ———. 2016. “Government Expenditure on Education as % of GDP.” http://data .worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS, accessed January 5, 2016.

242

REFERENCES

World Values Survey, Wave 5, 2005–2008. Official Aggregate v.20140429. World Values Survey Association. Aggregate File Producer: Asep/JDS, Madrid SPAIN. www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed October 4, 2014. World Values Survey, Wave 6, 2010–2014. Official Aggregate v.20150418. World Values Survey Association. Aggregate File Producer: Asep/JDS, Madrid SPAIN. www.worldvaluessurvey.org, accessed October 4, 2014. Wyatt, D. K. 2003. Thailand: A Short History, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Yodmani, S. 2010. Interviewed by the authors, June 27, Bangkok. Yoshihara, K. 1994. The Nation and Economic Growth: The Philippines and Thailand. Southeast Asia Social Science Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, S., and S. Pitsuwan. 1978. “Democracy and Traditional Culture in Thailand.” Unpublished paper. Zweig, Stefan. 1943. The World of Yesterday. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Index

Abhisit Vejjajiva, 138, 141, 150, 154, 158, 177, 186 absolute monarchy, 1; checks on power of, 103; end of, 3, 37, 40, 85, 86; roles in state rituals, 67, 77; succession, 77, 79 abstraction, 22, 106, 108 accountability institutions, 53, 64, 122, 123. See also Constitutional Court Administrative Courts, 53, 57, 58, 64, 124 ammat and phrai, 140 Anand Panyarachun, 49, 50, 177, 186 Anek Laothamatas, 52, 137, 151 anticorruption agencies, 53, 54–55, 64, 125 Argentina, 4, 208 associational propensities, 165, 181 associations, early, 170, 171 attitude and behavioral change, 164 attitude changes, causes of, 158 authoritarianism, views of, 71–72

Bangkok, as primate city, 171 Banharn Silpa-archa, 51, 185 Berlusconi, Silvio, 125, 188, 208, 209 Bodin, Jean, 26, 102 Boonchu Rojanasathien, 183 Brahma shrine, destruction of, 153 brokering social bargains, 100 Bumjaithai Party, 185, 186, 191 bureaucratic polity, 42, 43, 75

Cambodia, 41, 46, 49, 81, 152, 168, 171, 208 censorship. See lèse majesté and defamation laws centralization, 82, 83, 85, 93, 104 Chakkri dynasty, 18, 37, 152, 153 Chalerm Yubamrung, 150, 188 Chang Noi, 61, 158 Chatichai Choonavan, 48, 49 Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, 125, 141 Chinese in Thailand, 79, 86, 166, 168– 170; affiliations, 168, 169; business, 83, 87, 167, 168, 169, 171, 197, 43, 44, 85, 88; impact, 85, 87; organization, 38, 85, 168; politics, 42, 51–52, 169; violence among, 168– 169 Chulalongkorn University, 151, 153 city-rural gap, 190 civic culture, 109 civil society, 20–22, 39, 52, 92, 162, 170–182; Chinese civil society, 169; defined, 170; described, 163, 165, 166, 177, 178, 181; foreign funding for, 53, 175; NGOs, 48, 56, 91, 175; origins, 175; political roles, 91, 174, 180–182; relations with Thaksin, 56; religious links, 203, 204; speaking for the people, 175; understandings of, 24, 51, 132, 151, 163 civil war threat, 4, 151; in Thailand, 4 class conflict, 5. See also inequality clientelism: basis of mobilization, 166,

243

244

INDEX

167, 183; electoral politics, role in, 136, 184; fit with NPM reforms, 91– 92, 99, 170; modeling Thai politics, 47, 57, 164 colonialism, absence of, 18, 43, 166 communist insurgency, 172 Computer Crimes Act, 144 Constitutional Court, 55, 61, 63, 124– 126, 128. See also courts’ policy and political roles constitutions, 99, 121, 122, 127; amending constitution, 63, 121, 214; draft constitutions after 2014, 29, 65; longevity of, 3, 120–121; 1932 constitution, 121; 1974 constitution, 2, 46; 1997 constitution, 2, 39, 51, 52, 71, 121–123, 121, 142, 176, 177; 1959 interim constitution, 121; participation in constitution drafting 2, 52, 60, 172; real constitution, 28, 100, 121, 202; 2007 constitution, 60, 121, 126, 123, 126, 177, 214 corruption, 14, 49, 68, 95, 110–111, 117, 136; corruption rankings, 71, 117, 118; fighting it, 3, 95, 111, 119, 120, 176, 197–198; legislature, 115; Pastry Gate, 117; policy corruption, 118, 124, 197; regulation of, 99, 116, 125, 140, 176; tolerance of, 71, 72, 100, 112–113 courts’ policy and political roles, 2, 3, 45, 53, 60–61, 99, 101, 119–121, 126–127; costs of heavy reliance on judiciary, 99, 128; courts used against Thaksin and allies, 61, 123–124, 126, 187; Thaksin case (2001), 55, 110, 120, 125–126, 142, 156, 179 critical juncture, 161

delegative democracy, 11, 29, 73, 162, 180, 191 deliberations, 31–32, 147, 132, 148–151, 154; decline with mass–based politics, 186, 211 democracy, 123, 137, 174; Bangkok versus provinces, 51; business influence, 52; favorable conditions for, 196–204; politicians’ illegal activities, 115; Thai understandings of, 10, 164; vote selling (buying), 48, 59

democracy, facilitating conditions, 11– 13, 17 democracy, and per capita incomes, 3–4, 12 democratic consolidation, 2, 4, 5, 48–49, 51, 59 Democrat Party, 3, 50, 53, 138, 184, 191; election boycotts (2006), 150, 184; 2014, 14, 63–64, 151, 154, 184; governing coalition from 1997, 186; governing coalition from 2008, 144, 219; street politics embraced (2012– 2013), 150, 151, 178 demographic conditions, 47, 87, 191, 216

economic conditions, 1, 17, 41, 48, 53, 56, 90; agriculture’s share of GDP and labor force, 190, 216; business organization, 89, 95; economic collapse 1997, 39, 54, 177; economic development strategy, 44, 49; external balances, 89, 117; industry, 88, 171, 190; macroeconomic conditions, 86, 89, 172; market economy, 17, 197; performance after 2014 coup, 196, 213; poverty rates, 18; shift in strategy under Sarit, 42, 44, 86–88, 171; structural power of capital, 95; trade, 85, 89 education increasing, 86, 90, 158, 171 education reform, 83–84, 138–139; Thai reading habits, 139 Egypt, 113, 208 elections regulator, 125, 126, 138 elections: failed elections of 2014, 64; local elections, 86, 158; Senate elections, 128 elections, legislative: of 1975, 2, 45; of 1976, 183; of 1992, 39, 49, 50; of 2001, 39, 53; of 2005, 57; of 2006, 127; of 2007, 61, 124; of 2011, 179 electoral politics, growing importance of, 185 electoral system, 53, 61, 126, 128, 189 elites, 82, 116, 166, 173, 210; consensus, 1, 2, 69, 93, 95, 116, 192; entrenched, 5, 92; loss of consensus among, 128, 172, 201; obstacles to democracy, 205 Emergency Decree (2005), 144

INDEX

enchantment, 18, 100, 108, 114, 131, 151–154; astrology, 151, 152, 153; occult weapons, 153; spirits, 151, 154, 170 Engel, David, 103, 110 environmental conditions, 93 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 124, 208 European liberals and democrats in conflict, 31, 51, 133, 135, 137, 180, 206 European state formation, 73–76 executive control of security forces, 68

false consciousness, 131, 133–134 Fukuyama, Francis, 75, 191 future regime prospects, 213–217

Geertz, Clifford, 27, 77 geographic mobility, 91, 158, 170 good governance: accountability, 90, 92, 93; transparency, 91 good leaders, 5, 25–26, 30, 83, 137, 206 Gray, Christine, 149–150 Greece, 4, 191

hate speech, 141, 144, 154, 155 historical Thai states, 76–80 Hungary, 104, 149 Huntington, Samuel P., 190, 199

illegality, 99, 111 impartiality, 107, 112 impersonal procedures, 70, 76, 100; impersonal norms, 30, 106, 108; loyalties personalized, 79. See also personalism India, 67, 77, 93, 161, 190, 192; democratic versus liberal values, 190 inequality, 5, 6, 7, 8, 198, 199; before the law, 99, 108, 112, 116; of education, 198; of income, 197 informal sector, 191 information as collective good, 157 information filtering, 158 infrastructure, provision of, 83, 84 Internal Security Act: of 2007, 144; of 2008, 126, 144 International Monetary Fund, 53, 91, 138, 186, 209 intolerance of opposed views, 149, 151

245

Italy, 125, 149

Jackson, Andrew, 161, 207, 209–212 Japan, 40, 82, 84, 88, 106, 165, 173; economic assistance, 53, 177; military in Thailand, 41, 86, 167 Jaruvan Maintaka, 57 Jit Phumisak, 47 judges’ royal audiences, 115, 118, 127 judicial review, 100, 125, 128 Judicial Service Commission, 118–120 judiciary: fighting against, 116, 126, 127, 128; prestige of, 106, 118 junta, 2014: 65; political isolation of, 213; vision, 217

King Bhumipol Adulyadej, 8–9, 18, 25, 38, 58; character, 201, 219; charisma, 28, 38, 40, 45, 78, 88; criticism of, 144; focus of nationalism, 202; gratitude, deference, or loyalty to, 8, 13, 25, 29–30, 108, 199; impact on politics, 28–29, 48, 59, 146; links to economic development, 202; little political cover for junta, 213; monarchy and judiciary, 119; network monarchy, 59, 78; ninth in line, 153; political arbiter, 39–40, 45, 50, 174, 202, 205, 215; political dependence on monarchy, 127; protector of the poor, 53; providing third-party enforcement, 28–29, 116; regained influence, 42; relations with Sarit, 44–45; seeking institutional substitutes for, 128; social centrality, 28–31, 42–43, 108, 200, 201; successor, 201, 216; Thai-style democracy, 30, 51; theater state, 202; ties to rightists in 1970s, 174; travel upcountry, 87, 88 King Chulalongkorn, 33, 43, 70, 80–85, 103, 105 King Dom Pedro II, 217–218 King Narai, 77, 140 King Vajiravudh, 86, 118, 170, 202 Kukrit Pramoj, 141, 173, 183

land issues, 165, 166, 171, 173 law linked to kingship, 102, 103, 104, 105 legal reforms, 106, 109, 110

246

INDEX

legal tradition, 104 lèse-majesté and defamation laws, 2, 30, 58, 146–148; self-censorship, 146; media intimidation, 148 liberal features of democracy, 3; conflict with democrats, 21; growing importance, 39, 45, 47 localism, 177 lottery results, 140 Louis XIV, 73, 77, 140 low information context, 131 Luebbert, Gregory M., 137–138, 199

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 12, 136, 201 mass inclusion, 20, 27, 135, 160, 193, 207, 209. See also political inclusion mass media, 132, 162, 170, 171, 186; advertising, 142; development of, 140–141; quality of, 141, 142, 145– 146, 156 mass mobilization, 2, 50, 68, 93, 137, 165, 197; state repression of, 165 mass society, 182 masses’ political capacities, 133–134 McVey, Ruth, 115, 121 media reform, 141 Meechai Viravaidya, 47 Melzer, Arthur, 31–32 military coup: coup habit, 11, 39; of 1932, 38; of 1976, 183; of 1991, 2, 49; of 2006, 2, 59, 60, 124; 2014, 2, 4, 65, 124 military, 40, 71, 94, 117; military bypassed, 2, 39; 1992 middle class opposition to, 176 Mill, John Stuart, 23, 71, 132–134, 136– 137 Ministry of Interior, 52, 186 Ministry of Justice, 105, 106, 119 modernity, transitions to, 18–19 monarchy, 11, 18; Brahmanism, 28, 78; ceremony and ritual, 30, 85, 87; closely linked with monks, 103, 200, 203, 218; embeds enchantment, 206; sacred character, 166; symbolic space, 216; Theravada Buddhist societies and monarchy, 16, 31, 46, 77–78, 200, See also absolute monarchy; King Bhumipol Adulyadej Montesquieu, 102, 109

Napoleon, 162, 211 nation building, 86, 204 National Committee on Reform and Reconciliation Strategy, 116, 128 natural and positive law, 102–104 NEDB, 86, 88. See also NESDB NESDB, 48, 139. See also NEDB new mass and social media, 133, 143, 144, 155–156, 178 Newin Chidchob, 62, 152 newspapers and news websites (Thai), 141, 144 newspaper circulations, 140

Pamuk, Orhan, 133, 213 parliament’s political centrality, 2, 3, 176; parliamentary sovereignty, 217; rising importance, 46, 52, 172, 211 party hopping, 176 patrimonialism, 73, 75, 80, 196 peasants, 12, 45 People Against Dictatorship (PAD), 9, 58, 61, 62, 178–179. See also street politics People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), 14, 64, 65, 69, 150, 178, 180. See also street politics People’s Power Party. See Pheu Thai Party personalism, 23–25, 93, 95, 100, 109, 206; personal networks, 103, 198. See also impersonal procedures Pheu Thai Party, 8, 39, 53–54, 61, 187; amending constitution, 63; one-party domination, 92, 193; party’s support base, 154; promises to voters, 187; Red Shirts’ hopes of influence, 188 Phibun Songkhram, 40–41, 143, 170, 171, 208; modernizer, 41, 42 plebiscitary democracy. See delegative democracy police, 40, 64, 117; number of, 118 political amnesty, 13, 14, 63, 111, 116 political attitudes, 136, 138 political awakening, 132, 137 political conflict, causes of, 5–9 political inclusion, 21, 93, 162, 212; Thaksin and inclusion, 27, 56, 161. See also mass inclusion political institutions, 5, 11, 12, 22, 26, 93; fit between informal and formal

INDEX

institutions, 99, 108–109, 127, 212; impersonal institutions, 16, 93, 128; informal institutions, 26–28, 91, 206; social sanctions bolstering formal law, 95, 111; weak political institutions, 49, 78, 199 political mobilization, 2, 3, 46, 95, 172, 173, See also political participation political participation, 88, 93, 132, 162, 163, 176; forms of, 163, 164; levels of, 89, 165 political parties, 50, 51, 181, 182–186; catch-all parties, 183; party politicians, 46, 47, 89, 92, 173, 184; political finance, 50–51, 136, 183, 185. See also Bumjaithai Party; Democrat Party; Pheu Thai Party; Social Action Party political polarization, 2, 3, 46, 116, 146, 172, 201 political reform, 51, 52, 84, 118, 173, 176 political rhetoric, 131, 141, 143, 144, 154 political society, 192 political sophistication, 59, 134, 136, 138–139 political spectacles, 150 political violence, 2, 45, 62–64, 94, 173– 174, 177 populism, 136, 182, 197, 200; authoritarian populism, 193, 215; conditions for, 213, 216; fiscal health, impact on, 191, 200; Latin American–style populism, 10; populist appeal at polls, 190, 191, 192; populist programs, 8, 118, 133, 137, 182, 191 potency of images, 150, 157 Prayut Chan-ocha, 152, 198 Prem Tinsulanonda, 2, 48, 58, 89, 94, 152 Pridi Phanomyong, 37, 40, 41, 201 Prince Damrong, 83, 105 Prince Dilok Nabarath, 84 Prince Rabi. See Prince Ratburi Prince Ratburi, 104–106 print media in Thailand, 140 Privy Council, 119, 146 procedures, formal, 15, 114, 206, 214; impersonal procedures, 70, 76, 100; procedural solutions, 108, 114

247

prosecutors, 118, 119 prospects for different regime types, 162 public hearings, 124, 176 public opinion, 134 public views of judiciary, 39, 112 Puey Ungpakorn, 87, 175

Rama I, 79, 104 Rama V. See King Chulalongkorn reconciliation, 14, 61, 148, 214 Red Shirts, 19, 62, 63, 156, 178–180; rallies, 62, 146, 155, 156; Red Shirt villages, 179; relations with Thaksin and Pheu Thai Party, 63, 179, 180, 191, 193, 199; support for elections, 65; use of mass media, 21, 179. See street politics redistribution of wealth, 8, 10 regional identities, 19, 167, 185, 196, 201; Northeastern Thailand, 39, 49, 61, 110, 135, 152, 174; northern Thailand, 61, 135, 154, 156, 173; Pheu Thai in north and northeast; regionalized politics, 185; southern Thailand, 17, 50, 56, 112, 183 reliance on newspapers for news, 141 Riggs, Fred, 42, 75, 121 right-wing mobilization, 89, 173 rule of law, 17, 28, 51, 56, 99, 125, 209; concept, 100, 106; importance, 101, 102, 106–107; link to good governance, 102, 206; regimes of exception to, 126–127; Rule of Law Index, 115; in Thai worldview, 107, 109, 113, 122; rural brokers, 182, 209 rural conditions, 171, 172 rural protest, 53, 91, 176, 181 rural Thais, as democrats, 158

Samak Sunthornwej, 61, 141 Sarit Thanarat, 28, 42, 70, 92, 115, 172; authoritarian rule, 38, 44; economic policies, 44, 87; political interests, 86, 87; King Bhumipol, relations with, 42, 44–45, 87, 88, 219 security forces’ legal impunity, 111, 117 security found in patrons, 108 segmentary states, 73, 78 Senate composition, 14, 51, 53, 60, 63, 124; composition in new constitution,

248

INDEX

128, 215; efforts to make fully elected, 23, 63, 128; keystone of 1997 constitution, 53; checking Pheu Thai and Thaksin, 126 Shin Corporation, 58, 147 Social Action Party, 173, 174, 175, 183 social and political change, sources of, 59 social cleavages, 167 social discipline, 23, 31, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 94 social dualism, 25, 137, 191, 192, 205, 207, 216 social exclusion, 196, 198 social recognition, 8, 10, 39 Sondhi Limthongkul, 57, 141, 143, 148, 153 state as personalized networks, 69, 70, 77 state capacity, 43, 67, 77, 81, 83, 87; and democracy, 67, 69; sources of, 69, 94 state employees, 170, 172 state failure and market failure, 87, 88 state policy weaknesses, 93, 95 state size and services, 68, 69, 70, 91, 92 state violence, 116, 117, 154, 176 statist traditions, 90 street politics, 150, 165; in 2006, 152 structural adjustments, 89 students in politics, 45, 46, 171–172 Suchinda Kraprayoon, 50, 142 Supreme Court, 62, 124 Supreme Court Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions, 61, 126, 117 Surayud Chulanont, 60 Suthep Thaugsuban, 63, 133 Switzerland, 218

television, 132–133, 140, 142–143, 155, 158, 185, 210 Thai levels of trust, 5, 24–25 Thai news websites, 144 Thai political culture, 11–13, 27, 30, 85, 43–44; hierarchical bonds, 24; hierarchical values in decline, 216; insecurity, 9, 24, 43, 108; merit equated with wealth, 111; social affect, 24; status hierarchy, 109; traditional values, 5. See also personalism

Thai Rak Thai Party. See Pheu Thai Party Thai views on media controls, 148 Thaksin Shinawatra, 3, 7, 8, 14, 25, 90, 53–60, 152, 186–189; accountability, 187, 210; business interests, 49, 53, 58, 62, 186, 209; comparisons to Berlusconi, 188, 208, 209; comparisons to Jackson, 207, 209– 212; comparisons to Peron, 208; and impact on democracy, 11, 21, 56, 127, 182, 186; legal cases, 61, 125, 147; media relations, 55, 8, 60, 150; media use, 144, 187, 188, 210; modernizer, 41, 54, 92, 210; nationalization of politics, 159, 185– 186; palace, 28–29, 57, 58; polarizing politics, 19, 187, 208, 209, 210, 212; political maneuver, 53–54, 63, 127, 133, 136, 142–143, 150; political success explained, 39; 54–56, 133, 137, 187, 188; popular welfare, impact on, 46, 54, 56; problem of future Thaksins, 213, 215, 216; progressives, relations with, 60, 182; return to Thailand sought, 13–14; state centralizer, 91, 92, 210; supporters, relations with, 134, 187. See also populism Thammasat University, 119, 154, 157 Theravada Buddhism, 149; in decline, 203; integrating society, 42–43; sangha’s political polarization, 203; selecting new Supreme Patriarch, 29; Thammakai, 204 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 32, 73, 122, 134 tolerance of authoritarian rule, 71, 113 tolerance of lies, 158 transition, triple, 3, 20, 212 Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand, 151, 156 Turkey, 56, 72, 113, 208

United for Dictatorship and Against Democracy (UDD). See Red Shirts; street politics United States, relations with: 44–45, 86, 87, 88, 172

Vietnam 46, 49, 81, 139, 175 violence, 154–157, 165, 174; Hymn of

INDEX

Hate, 157; incitements to violence, 156; Thammasat University in 1976, 154, 157 voting: behavior, 189, 192, party voting, 183, 184; vote brokers, 184

weak corporate organization, 167 Weber, Max, 23, 43, 76, 78, 81 Wilson, David, 42, 121

women’s associations, 170, 171 World Bank, 86, 87, 177 World Justice Project, 105, 115, 118

249

Yellow Shirts. See People Against Dictatorship (PAD) Yingluck Shinawatra, 63, 65, 69, 118, 124, 149, 150; government, 144, 152; Thaksin clone, 188, 189

About the Book

seemed strong in the 1990s. Yet, as most recently demonstrated by military coups in 2006 and 2014, that hasn't happened. Why not? Why have factors typically considered advantageous for democratization turned into barriers? Is there a uniquely Thai reason that democratization efforts have failed? Daniel Unger and Chandra Mahakanjana explore the intersecting and often contradictory forces that are shaping the nature of Thai politics today. Paying overdue attention to a complex of social, cultural, and institutional dynamics, they offer a nuanced portrait of the ongoing tug-of-war between authoritarian and democratic impulses. THE PROSPECTS FOR THAILAND'S EMERGENCE AS A DEMOCRACY

Daniel H. Unger teaches political science at Thammasat University. Chandra Mahakanjana teaches in the Graduate School of Public Admin-

istration at Thailand's National Institute of Development Administration.

251