2014_The old is dying and the new cannot be born: Organic crisis, social forces, and the Thai state, 1997-2010. PhD thesis, University of York. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
This thesis is a study of the crisis-ridden social transition of the Thai state (1997-2010) by analysing the interrelations of social forces in the Thai historical bloc. The thesis argues that the recent political conflict in Thailand that reached its peak in 2010 transcended the conflict between the Thaksin government and its social antagonists, or merely the conflict between the Yellow and the Red Shirt forces. Rather, the organic crisis of the Thai state in the recent decade should be seen as social reflections of the unfinished process of social transition. Furthermore, this transition contains features of ‘crises’, ‘restructuring’, ‘transition’ and ‘other crises’ within the transition. The thesis employs a Gramscian account as a major theoretical framework because it stresses the importance of history, provides tools to analyse configurations of social forces, and offers a combined focus of political, social, and ideological matters. This thesis finds that the street fights and...
Thai Spring? Structural roots of the Thai political crisis.
This paper attempts to study the Thai political crisis in a global context, comparing the events with the Arab Spring of 2011. In Thailand military installed regimes have been the ones which pushed through greater neoliberal free-market policies, while democratically elected governments, especially the TRT government in 2001, had to consider the wishes and interests of the electorate, not just the rich corporations. The Thai crisis began as a conflict between the Military and their conservative allies against Taksin’s political and electoral machine. This dispute then became expanded into an all-out class-related conflict when the Red Shirts were formed. Red Shirt anger was triggered by the 2006 coup d’état and all that followed. But the underlying tensions in society had been growing stronger for decades and were similar to tensions in the Middle-East. These tensions arose from a conflict between the conservative superstructure of the Thai elites and the changes in society resulting from uneven economic and social development.
Thailand’s “Twilight of the Gods”: Understanding Thai Politics in the Interregnum
Ten years ago Thailand had a popular elected government operating under a publically-endorsed democratic constitution, a thriving economic model dubbed “Thaksinomics” that was being held up as an example for the Southeast Asian region, and had begun to implement historic welfare reforms. Since then the country has seen two military coups, intense political polarization, killings of pro-democracy protesters in the streets, frequent judicial interventions in politics, leading to today’s full-blown military dictatorship which rules by decree. What went wrong? In this talk I explain the reasons for this tumultuous period in Thailand’s politics, assess the strength of the current regime, and consider prospects for the county’s immediate future.
The Irony of Democratization and the Decline of Royal Hegemony in Thailand
Southeast Asian Studies, 2016
I intend to approach the current decade-long political crisis in Thailand from two perspectives: power shift and cultural political hegemony. From a comparative historical point of view, the current crisis fits into a pattern of cyclical power shifts in modern Thai politics in which an initial opening/liberalization of the economy led to the emergence of a new class/social group, which in turn grew and rose to politically challenge the existing regime of the old elites and their allies. An extended period of political contest and turmoil ensued, with varying elements of radical transformation and setback, reaction and compromise, which usually ended in a measure of regime change. A remarkable feature of the ongoing power shift in Thailand is the ironic reversal of political stance and role of the established urban middle class, who have turned from the erstwhile vanguard democratizers of the previous power shift into latter-day anti-democratizers of the current one, with the globally dominant ideology of liberal democracy being torn asunder as a result. The preferred strategy of recent anti-democratic movements has been violent street politics and forceful anarchic mass occupation of key administrative, business, and transportation centers to bring about socioeconomic paralysis, virtual state failure, and government collapse. The aim is to create a condition of un-governability in the country that will allow the movement's leaders to exploit King Bhumibol's hardearned hegemonic position and the deep-seated constitutional ambiguity of the locus of sovereignty in Thailand's "Democratic Regime of Government with the King as Head of the State" so as to appeal to heaven for divine political intervention. This has inadvertently resulted in the increasing politicization of the monarchy and concomitant decline of royal hegemony as the symbolic ties between democracy and the monarchy in Thailand become unraveled. In this light, the latest coup by the NCPO military junta-on May 22, 2014-was a statist/bureaucratic politic attempt to salvage the cohesiveness of the Thai state apparatus in the face of the societally self-destructive, protracted political class conflict that has reached a stalemate and the aggravatingly vulnerable monarchy.
The Thai Ethnocracy Unravels: A Critical Cultural Analysis of Thailand’s Socio-Political Unrest
Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s model of ethnic relations is applied to the socio-political unrest of Thailand in the early 21st century. This paper argues that Pieterse’s model of global multiculture and multiethnicity complements Marxist and neo-Marxist explanations of the political unrest in a dialectical relationship. Thus, structural factors such as the economy and the political system are dialectically influenced by cultural and ethnic politics. The use by the royalist elite of state power to install and then defend a national culture (based on a civic religion) is explored in a variety of activities and spheres such as education, the media, usage of public space, economic public policy, religion, and foreign policy. Increasing efforts to defend the Thai ethnocracy are revealed to reflect its weakening vis a vis competing ethnicities and cultures seeking a place in the national culture and socio-political institutions. Finally the paper concludes that renewed calls for greater autonomy for minorities and for the renaming of the country to its old name, Siam, are signs that the country is moving to Pieterse’s third stage of ethnic relations called “ethnic competition” which explains the recent exponential increase in socio-political unrest throughout the entire country.
Thailand’s Crisis and the Fight for Democracy
Chapter 1: Red Shirts vs Yellow Shirts Chapter 2: The PAD, NGOs and the Peoples’ Movement Chapter 3: The Crisis for the Monarchy Chapter 4: Historical changes in Thailand Chapter 5: The Civil War in the South Chapter 6: A Personal Note