BANGKOK - Thai politics are undergoing big changes that make political
forecasting a challenge. During earlier periods of upheaval in Thailand over
the past 35 years, it was possible to predict with some confidence the
direction of change, if not the pace. This time around it is tougher to guess
what the country’s politics are going to look like ten years out. And some of
the plausible outcomes are not all that pleasant.
Part of the bad news in Thailand's politics of recent decades was the ease with
which the privileged few could overturn the electoral choices of the many.
Former prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa might have insisted in the mid-1990s
that "Bangkok is not Thailand", but heading a fragile coalition he could not
cling to power once urban intellectuals, the media, and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) concurred in giving him thumbs down. True, this coalition
of middle-class forces typically had some
reasonable complaints, in particular governments rife with corruption.
Part of the good news of more recent years was that when the same coalition
soured on the government of Thaksin Shinawatra and determined that he must go,
they could not, at least for a time, make it happen. In the view of the
opposition middle classes, the sins of Thaksin’s government went beyond
venality and new styles of corruption; they were also alarmed about the power
accumulating in the premier's hands.
During the years of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party rule, power flowed as to a
black hole. Thaksin sucked up parties, factions, judges, military generals,
newspapers, and more. He co-opted or enfeebled most possible sources of
opposition, including the media, the upper house of parliament, and most of the
institutions created with the express purposes of providing checks on executive
power. And then there was the matter of the government’s perceived tetchy
relations with the royal advisory Privy Council.
Thaksin was not easily budged from power because, through mergers and
acquisitions, he had an unassailable power base in parliament. He also was able
to buy influence over other institutions. Of course his electoral success owed
much to effective populist policies, slick marketing, and his bid symbolically
to include the rural, often poor, majority in the country’s political
community. One further factor facilitating Thaksin's rise was the blindness on
the part of his political opponents of the opportunities to market themselves
nationally and, in seeking support from voters, of the need to speak some sort
of language of social justice.
Most of the gravest challenges Thailand faces over the coming decades are tied
up with the gulf that separates the privileged and the poor. This is true in
economic and social policy as well as politics. Forty years ago political
scientist Samuel Huntington saw that with city and countryside becoming
"different nations, different ways of life", the political inclusion of farmers
was as difficult as it was crucial. How emerging democracies draw farmers into
national political life may shape their political trajectories decades into the
future.
During the 19th century there was a "mania for associations" in much of Europe
as civil society expanded and became more active. How civil society shaped the
development of democracy depended in part on what sorts of links existed
between civil society and political parties. Also important was whether an
initially urban-based civil society drew in rural groups among which
traditional patron-client relations were the norm. Where low agricultural
productivity persisted, as in Spain and Portugal, personalized politics
survived and politicians were elected to office without offering voters broad,
policy-based reforms. This same pattern was evident in Thailand until Thaksin
smashed it, and hopefully for good.
Many of the 19th-century European liberals who battled for civil liberties and
against autocratic rule were more than a little uneasy about the arrival on the
political scene of huge numbers of politically active peasants. In Italy, a
split emerged between supporters of liberal monarchism and of democratic red
shirts (however, in Italy, in contrast to today's Thaksin-aligned protest
movement in Thailand, Garibaldi's red shirts were dominant in the south and the
liberals in the north.)
Italian liberals, including the enormously influential social scientists
Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto, typically were wary of an ill-educated
peasantry and the political parties they supported. In Germany, with universal
male suffrage at the national level, mass politics and mass associations
overwhelmed the liberals. In much of Eastern Europe after World War I, highly
salient and contentious movement politics, weak political parties, and limited
links between civil society and parties probably contributed to democratic
collapses and the advent of fascist regimes.
Rural dilemma
So what's in store for Thailand? By one means or another, the process of
including rural Thai voters into the country’s political mainstream will move
forward in the coming years. It might happen under a government dominated by
political parties linked to Thailand’s red-shirt movement. At the same time,
given the weaknesses of Thai political parties, social deliberative capacities,
and its civil society, to say nothing of the coming monarchical succession, it
is not difficult to imagine the emergence of an increasingly authoritarian,
nationalist regime. Or a Democrat Party-led coalition, under current Prime
Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, could manage the process of drawing the rural poor
into the country’s political mainstream.
His fans like to argue that former president Franklin Roosevelt, an American
plutocrat, helped save capitalism in the United States. Can Abhisit, a Thai phu
dii (gentleman), keep open the possibility in Thailand that democracy
might develop in liberal (rule of law and respect for rights) and republican
(the concept of civic duty, particularly among rulers) directions?
Abhisit, particularly in contrast with most of his predecessor prime ministers,
seems a poster boy for liberal and republican values. Now, of course, he has
his hands full with an economic collapse and deep political divisions. Whether
or not he can maintain power, much less his bearings, as he swims with the
sharks of Thai politics, is far from certain.
Foreign reporting on the current government, and on Abhisit, has been critical,
even condescending. It is true that, from early 2006 until coming to power at
the end of 2008, he and his Democrat Party's dalliances with the yellow shirt
People's Alliance for Democracy street protest movement and the military
disqualify them as candidates for a loyal (to the democratic regime)
opposition. Support for Abhisit at home, even among those who might be expected
to view him as their last best hope, often seems tepid as well.
So what can Abhisit and the Democrats do? The economic turmoil hands them an
opportunity to gain popularity by spending money at a time when all agree that
the Thai economy needs a fiscal stimulus. The recent mooting of inheritance and
land taxes is a very promising, and long overdue, step that the government, if
it lasts long enough, should push through parliament. Perhaps most broadly, the
Democrats need to stop thinking of themselves as little more than the party of
competent, technocratic, economic management.
It is not just that, even if unfairly, this claim is not an easy sell after
their late-1990s tainting through perceived ties to the International Monetary
Fund's unpopular austerity measures. More important, Thailand, as well as its
democracy, needs leadership with a broader political-economic vision. In the
1990s it was popular to suggest that while educated, urban voters thought like
citizens when choosing their representatives, the rural poor thought like
clients. According to that analysis, the urban sophisticates weighed the
probity and managerial competence of the candidates while the ignorant farmers
calculated which candidate would pay most for their vote and would bring to
their district the most construction projects.
This "valence" versus vision voting notion, while incomplete, probably was not
entirely off base. However, it no longer applies today. Valence voting occurs
when there are no sharp policy differences among parties. If all agree on the
broad outlines of public policies, many voters might well choose on the basis
of their estimations of the different parties' levels of competence and
propensity for corruption.
After Thaksin and the Thai Rak Thai, however, the urban-rural income gap is on
the agenda and so are policy differences among parties. The Democrat Party
cannot afford to sustain its reputation as a relatively passive, but competent,
and (relatively) clean party. It must instead embrace, sell, and implement a
vision of how it can create in Thailand a society less fundamentally hobbled by
its status and wealth inequalities.
Danny Unger is associate professor of political science at Northern
Illinois University and has taught at Thailand’s Thammasat and Rangsit
Universities, as well as the National Institute for Development Administration.
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