Elite Political Culture in Contemporary Thailand: Voters, Members of Parliament, and Political Parties in the Debates of the 2007 Constitution Drafting Committee (original) (raw)

Public Hearings on Thailand’s Draft Constitution: Impressions from Chachoengsao Province.

KPI Thai Politics Up-date. No. 3 , 2007

Observations on six public hearings, which took place between May 14 to May 18, are reported. The papers details how the hearings were organized and conducted. It is shown that these hearings in fact were not at all public, but rather deliberately aimed at recruiting people connected to the state sector. Similar to what politicians do when mobilizing participants for their election rallies, the provincial-level branch of the Constitution Drafting Assembly even paid 100 baht “travel allowance” per head for those attending the hearings. As for what the participants said on constitutional issues, six of them are reported in some detail, namely Buddhism as national religion, education rights, decentralization, Members of Parliament, senators, and the crisis group. The conclusion briefly throws some critical light on two elements of the dominant political culture that compete with the model of democratic politics. The first point contrasts the ideas of individual citizenship (democracy) with that of collective compliance (authoritarianism), as symbolized in the “yellow shirt” phenomenon throughout the hearings. The second point confronts the official “nation, religion, King” ideology with the democratic model of “citizens, constitution, politicians, elected government.”

Thailand's Elusive Quest for a Workable Constitution, 1997–-2007

Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of …, 2009

The "People's Constitution" drafted in 1997 was seen as a watershed event in Thai constitutional history due to the breadth and depth of its reforms. Yet just ten years later, in August 2007, a new Constitution was promulgated, the 18th since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

Chapter 2 Culture in Action: The Case of Contemporary Thai Politics

Religion and Politics in Southeast Asia, 2020

Cultural images and expectations are being used in Thailand to construct oppressive structures within the political landscape. While some may claim that these structures are merely manifestations or extensions of long-standing cultural norms, I argue that this is a case of culture in action (Swidler 1986). Following Swidler, I argue that, in this case, "culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values towards which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or a 'toolkit' of habits, skills and styles from which people construct strategies of action" (pg. 373). In other words, elites are using culturally salient building blocks in order to fashion seemingly acceptable rules that suit their own particular goals. Culture, in other words, doesn't determine the form of governance, it's merely exploited by it and makes it possible. In so constructing this legitimacy, elites use traditional values as their toolkit. When this is done correctly, it forms a virtuous circle. In this chapter, I will illustrate how this construction of legitimacy operates in theory, and how it operates in Thailand. I then argue that there are important changes taking place currently. The king is moving from the role of an object of legitimation to a more active role. This move is poised to alter the make-up of Thai political governance. HOW IT WORKS As Thomas Piketty has made clear, the process of legitimation is universal: Every human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse. Every epoch therefore develops a range of contradictory discourses and ideologies for the purpose of legit-imizing the inequality that already exists or that people believe should exist. From these discourses emerge certain economic, social, and political rules, which people then use to make sense of the ambient social structure. (Piketty 2020: 1)

Constitutions, Regimes and Power in Thailand

2007

Constitutions are both a site of social and political conflict and a means to structure and limit political participation. This article emphasizes the contested nature of constitutions and constitutionalism to explain how and why modes of participation have been affected. It maintains that constitutions are themselves punctuated by struggle over the kinds of participation that are promoted, tolerated, and suppressed. There is good reason for a focus on Thailand and its constitutional struggles over the past decade. Thailand is often said to have had serial coups and serial constitutions. The drafting of the 1997 constitution was a long process, pitting various social groups against each other, but grew out of a broad-based political opposition to military rule. A military coup in September 2006 scrapped the 1997 constitution, and established a highly controlled process to develop a new basic law. The process to develop the new constitution specifically limited participation to the elite and carefully selected representatives of civil society from the middle class.

Constitution-Making in 21st-Century Thailand:The Continuing Search for a Perfect Constitutional Fit

The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, 2019

In the 21st century, the constitutional and political stability that Thailand has sought seems to be harshly convulsed by the occurrence of ‘colour-coded politics’ between the Red and Yellow factions from 2006. The conflict between the two factions resulted in two military coups in 2006 and 2014, which, in turn, led to the revocation of two permanent constitutions (those of 1997 and 2007) and the enactment of two new ones (those of 2007 and 2017) as well as the promulgation of two interim constitutions (those of 2006 and 2014). In this article, we will examine the constitution-making process in 21st-century Thailand based, in particular, on its two contesting sources of legitimization—that is, the conflict between global ideas of constitutionalism and its local alternative: Thai-ness.

INTERTEXTUALITY AS DISCOURSE STRATEGY: THE CASE OF NO-CONFIDENCE DEBATES IN THAILAND

2002

The discourse of Thai parliamentary no-confidence debates is intended to be formal in nature, and is defined as such by the constitution and relevant parliamentary regulations. However, the reality of this 'parliamentary' discourse does not always meet this idea. There is evidence of mixed genres and the combination of the language user's (henceforth S) voice and other's throughout the discourse of the debate. The combination of genres and voices in the discourse represents two levels of intertextuality (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999 : 49).