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Contesting Democracy: Thailand’s Forum of the Poor
Current Development in Thai democracy:
From the military coup to a new Constitution
Naruemon Thabchumpon
Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University
This paper investigates Thai democratisation process and its impacts on political
participation at the grassroots. The research enquiry of this paper concerns the new
political structure resulting from the 19 September 2006 military coup de’tat and its
2007 agendas, which created political and socio-economic impacts to marginal
movements, especially in relations to their campaigns for political participation and
economic empowerment. The paper also discusses how various actors respond to the
structural conditions provided by the 2007 Constitution and its political consequences at
the grassroots.
In the following sections, the paper first discusses the failure of Thailand’s 1997
electoral reform and representative politics in dealing with party politics and the
consolidation of power of the Thaksin government after the 2001 election. Second, the
paper analyses the contentious politics and contradictory perceptions of democracy
among civil society organisations and the ‘middle-classes politics’ that led to the uninstitutionalising of Thai democracy. Finally, the paper answers the questions related to
the opportunities and threats created by the 2007 Constitutional reform agenda to
marginal movements and their democratic politics at the grassroots.
Throughout this paper, I argue that Thai democracy has been paradoxical. Although
there have been opportunities for grassroots movements and radical organisations to
explore their perceptions of democracy, major challenges that seek to bring about
substantive political reform in Thailand have not proved successful. Under the politics
of a strong administration and authoritarian state, the possibility that progressive
elements of civil society organisations may yet foster democracy in Thai society seems
remote.
Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
Electoral democracy in the Thai context and its limitation
This section discusses the failure of Thailand’s 1997 electoral reform and representative
politics in dealing with party politics and the consolidation of power of the Thaksin
government after the 2001 election. It argues that the antagonism between participatory
democracy and a version of formal democracy which was categorised by many political
commentators as a perversion of political reform was clearly evidenced in the 1997
reform agenda and during the political crisis of 2006. The problematic and contested
nature of Thai democracy was abundantly illustrated by the military coup d’etat of 19
September 2006, that elites still see themselves of having the right to override popular
participation for their own ends.
Thailand has a political history of long periods of authoritarianism alternating with
periods of ‘semi-democratic’ government. Since the installation of the first
representative government in 1932, the military has interrupted the constitutional order
more than 18 times, witnessing more than 20 changes of government and 16 written
constitutions after the abolition of the absolute monarchy. The most recent coup
happened in September 2006, when an elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra was
overthrown by the military group known as the Council of Democratic Reform for
Constitutional Monarchy (CDR), which later removed the word ‘for constitutional
monarchy’ to avoid international criticism. The military justified its political
interventions by using the Palace to show royal assent to the coup leader and to the
selection of General Surayut Chulanonda, a Privy Council’s member to serve as the
interim Prime Minister after the 2006 coup (McCargo, 2006; The Nation 2006; Bangkok
Post 2006).
The political role of the royal family, largely created since the 1958 coup, has continued
to be influential in politics. The King himself is an important actor for political changes
in Thailand’s politics. McCargo (2005: 499 – 519) argues that the interventionist role of
the Palace— either the King himself or a member of his privy council—in the Thai
political process and political institutions including the elected parliament, has been
apparent since 1973. McCargo examines the interventionist role of members of the
Privy Council as a proxy network of the monarch, and Bamford and Chanida (2006: 2)
argue that the action or inaction of the palace was largely seen as a political signal of
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
the monarch to politicians. Both Bamford and Chanida agree with McCargo that no
political player have taken the risk of making a direct approach to the throne but rather
that delicate feelers are put out to members of the Privy Council from time to time. In
particular two former military commanders on the Privy Council have been canvassed:
General Prem Tinasulanonda, the Chairman of the Council, during the political crisis
and General Surayut Chulanonda in relation to the conflicts in the far South and as the
interim Prime Minister after the 2006 coup.
Democracy in the Thai context has been defined by the state only as ‘electioneering
democracy’, by which is meant elections and access to the parliament. Thai politicians
have often been described by the media as ‘electioneers’ (nak leuktang), who are
elected to office through vote buying rather than ‘representatives’ (phutan puangchon);
moreover, the same kinds of people have always been in power (Bangkok Post, 9
October 1997). According to McCargo (2003: 137), there are two modes of legitimacy,
electoral and technocratic, that any government that wants to survive in Thai politics
had to contend with. The former concerns forming the government: political parties, in
order to gain the highest number of seats in the election, targeted the rural areas, which
are notorious for the practice of vote-buying. The latter comes from a party’s
technocratic expertise in the eyes of the urban middle-classes. Both types of legitimacy
are closely connected with the project of making the politics of representation work.
The project was initiated by the proposal to set up an independent election commission
to conduct free and fair elections (in order to be able to argue that the elected politicians
were the ‘real’ representatives, having obtained their mandate from the people) and the
requirement that all candidates should possess a bachelor’s degree (on the ground that
educated politicians would make more competent administrators). This method of
electoral reform was implemented through several constitutional mechanisms in 1997
agenda in order to create both kinds of legitimacy.
The agenda of the 1997 Thai political reform aimed to make the country’s political
system more accountable, transparent and stable (Suchit, 2002: 4). Even though its
‘preliminary concept’ addressed two types of politics - citizen’s politics and politician’s
politics - the focus of the 1997 Constitution was on the politics of elected politicians.
Underpinning these provisions was the desire on the part of the drafters to create
legitimacy for elected politicians by eliminating vote-buying. An independent election
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
commission was created to supervise the electoral process to ensure free and fair
elections. These institutional arrangements might fit with McCargo’s analysis that
different models of legitimacy could be observed from the different ways of the people
in cities and rural areas viewed their politicians. Whilst from the perspective of people
in Bangkok and the big cities the legitimacy of politicians came from their efficiency
and technocratic, from the perspective of the rural electorates legitimacy came from the
way candidates dealt with local and immediate problems at the grassroots in the style of
patronage politics. Legitimacy is also related to what Connors (2002: 44-47) calls the
neo-liberal agenda caused by the high tide of globalisation, which required a more
transparent and accountable public administration of the Thai political system in order
that efficiently compete in the world market. For neo-liberals, five elements of the
qualities of good governance: accountability, transparency, predictability, participation
and efficiency were guiding government policy, on the assumption that economic
problems would be resolved if competent ministers ran the country and followed the
formula of the liberal model of democracy.
However, the capacity of these institutions to create a system of checks and balances
was in question. Several independent mechanisms were gradually subverted by the
incumbent government and coalition parties while the rhetoric on vote-buying was
unable to help uproot corruption (Callahan, 2005: 87-105). As a result of the failure of
electoral reform, sophisticated forms of corruption and conflicts of interest in the
executive branch became wide-spread, while the mechanisms of the independent
institutions failed to eliminate those malpractices.
The instillation of power of Thaksin’s government after the 2001 election
Under the 1997 Constitution, the separation of powers between the legislative and
executive branches was introduced to create more power and efficiency in the executive
branch. As a result, there was a relatively strong government, especially after the
January 2001 general election when the Thai Rak Thai party, led by telecom tycoon
Thaksin Shinawatra, won a landslide victory based partly on his political marketing
scheme, which included a three-year debt moratorium for farmers, a thirty-baht flat free
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
health scheme across the country, and a one-million-baht revolving fund for every
village.1
According to McCargo and Ukrist (2005: 70-120), the 2001 election had a substantial
impact on Thai political system. The contradiction between the encouragement of
citizens to form political parties (whose membership could be lowest as fifteen
members) and the ideal system of allowing two big parties to compete for the privilege
of running the country has resulted in a small number of large parties. Out of the 26
political parties competing in the 2001 election, only five received more than five per
cent of the popular vote, while the Thai Rak Thai (literary ‘Thais Love Thais’) gained
the largest number of seats, with 200 members from single constituencies and 48
members from the partylists. This party became stronger after merging with the
Seritham and New Aspiration Parties in 2002 and after fighting the 2005 election.
Owning to the provisions of the election law, most small parties were eliminated after
the 2001 election since they did not make the five percent requirement. Some parties
that had barely survived ensured their future by selling themselves to the largest party.
As a result, the system served to concentrated power in the hands of a large party
without any guarantee of effective checks and balances.
According to Kasian (2002: 339), Thaksin rise to power should be seen as ‘an unstable
intermixture of the different and conflicting demands, interests and concerns of both
nationalist popular sentiments and oligarchic support’. McCargo and Ukrist (2005: 1015), argue that it should be seen as the result of combined effect of the 1997 reform
agenda and the dissatisfaction of the Thai public with the performance of the Chuan
government after the crisis. Pasuk and Baker (2002: 22-25), in contrast, regard
Thaksin’s victory as resulting from a combination of the extension of cronyism among
domestic capitalists, political marketing, and rural mass paternalistic politics.
Thai Rak Thai was launched on 14 July 1998. This party was a contradictory mixture of
the new and old styles of Thai political parties. On the one hand, the TRT had a
concrete policy platform and an administrative structure able to deal with its supposedly
1
The word ‘populism’ as used in Thaksin’s economic policy should be seen as denoting a marketing
campaign to win lower-class support rather than as promoting a conservative localism that argues for a
retreat from modernity and industrialisation toward agriculture and locality, which was advocated by
some local NGOs (McCargo, 2001: 89-107, Pasuk and Baker, 2002: 2).
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
million members and their interests during its election campaigns.2 On the other hand,
the party continued to use personal connections and the patronage style of its core
leaders to gain support, and the influence of money was quite obvious both in its
dealing with both local politicians and local supporters.
According to Phumtham (18 August 2002), the TRT benefited from the 1997
Constitution both in terms of policy implementation capacity and political leadership as
the new Constitution helped strengthen the power of the Prime Minister in a sense that
the PM can control the performance of his ministers and remove any incompetents
without worrying about government stability. With support from the 1997 Constitution,
the TRT government could implement its ‘Thaksinomic’ policies and the ‘CEO’s
administrative functions. The coinage of ‘Thaksinomics’ by academics refers to the
government’s fiscal policy of boosting consumption and hence the domestic economy.
The ‘CEO’ designation was part of the government’s marketing strategy, designed to
suggest that the public sector would now borrow from private enterprise’s management
style (CPD’s Newsletter, May-December 2001).
Under Thaksin, the TRT party used a pseudo-participatory approach to formulate the
marketing of its election campaign.3 Before the 2001 election, for example, TRT
organised workshops with farmers’ leaders in every region to focus on rural problems
and solutions as a starting platform before asking its academic staff or technocrats to
analyse the situation and put forward concrete proposals that would appeal to voters. In
the 2005 election, the party did the same thing with different audiences before
publishing its election manifesto. However, TRT did not adopt the policies suggested by
its electorates but rather used them as forums for its publicity and marketing campaign.
However, there was apparent contradiction between state efficiency and popular
participation, which arose because of the fear that popular participation might be
dangerous to the stability and efficiency of the political system if it was not carefully
controlled. Throughout the 1997 Constitution, a three-pronged political reform package
2
TRT proposed to set up a national asset management company to buy the remaining bad loans from
local banks, speed up state enterprise privatisation and listing on the stock exchange and shift funds to
boost the rural economy. The party appealed to small and medium-sized businesses by proposing new
loans for SME – small and medium-sized enterprise - promotion under the ‘one tambon one product’
project. It appealed to the poor and the lower class through its three-year debt moratorium for farmers
and a one-million-baht revolving fund for every village in the country.
3
Phumtham Vejchayachai, Interview, 20 August 2002
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
was introduced without touching on socio-economic disparities. Even though the Prime
Minister had lunch on his first day in office at the Forum of the Poor’s protest camp in
front of Government House and delivered a public statement that poverty was a
structural problem, his government continued to treat people’s grievances with a
legalistic approach. Thaksin himself did not believe that agricultural production was the
way out of poverty, and sought to eradicate poverty by encouraging farmers to become
entrepreneurship by getting loans from the government to open small businesses or
selling local products with support from the state. According to Nithirat (1998: 2),
people at the grassroots had to fight against the state on several issues that affected their
livelihoods, since their definition of political reform was the re-distribution of land,
income and progressive taxation.
In the end, the failure of electoral reform was seen as an indictment of Thaksin’s
management style. The four years of the Thaksin government (between 2001 and 2005)
reflected a complicated problematisation of this issue and the failure of electoral reform
in Thai democracy after the setting of the 1997 political reform agenda. According to
Thirayut (14 October 2004), the Thaksin government had produced ‘GMO [genetically
modified organisation] politics’, which was complicated and highly developed in
dealing with corrupt practices. The Prime Minister’s family, friends and colleagues
owned nearly every telecommunication and transportation company, ranging from a
mobile phone company to the subway rail system. According to Pasuk and Baker (2004:
195-196), money politics, which the 1997 Constitution had aimed to eliminate, was still
practised but in a different way. The corruption of power by collusion between the
senior bureaucracy and local politicians was replaced by bigger money and greater
corruption from big business in a more sophisticated manner. Thai politics was then
characterised by a typical political structure in which power was centralised in a bigbusiness political party that controlled the executive branch without any competent
system of checks and balances, popular empowerment, decentralisation and scrutiny.
Thai civil society and its contentious politics over the perception of democracy
This section analyses the contentious politics and contradictory perceptions of
democracy of civil society organisations and ‘middle-class politics’ that led to the uninstitutionalising of Thai democracy. It argues that the definition of civil society is
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
controversial since its meaning and categorisation reflect the struggle for power among
classes and social groups, and the different political positions of civil society
organisations. The argument over the meaning of democracy among civil society
organisations that lead to their contradictory political positions is clearly seen in the
spectrum of civil society performances.
In the Thai context, the decisions to include the state and business associations in Thai
civil society have a political meaning and reflect the relationship between the state and
civil society. As Connors (1999: 222) has commented, ‘The notion of civil society is
being taken up by elite reformers as a strategy for engendering a new public and
individual morality around the liberal state’. This conception of civil society delegitimises the social movement approach and oppositional politics. Since there is no
equality of power among the members of civil society, those who have access to power
may perceive political strategies and politics in a different way from those who do not
have bargaining power.
Because of the huge variations among Thai civil society organisations, this section
presents the mapping of the civil society as a spectrum of economic and political
perceptions in order to explore a variety of positions and illuminate the contested
politics of these voluntary organisations. At one end of the spectrum are the elite-urban
groups, civic movements and business associations that have strong bargaining power
with the state and are highly commercialised and market-linked; and for them,
democracy contains the liberal economic model with periodical elections of
representatives, and technocratic projects. At the other end of the spectrum are the ruralpopular movements, grassroots organisations working with marginal groups in remote
areas, which link between their economic conditions and the politics of representative
democratic system as obvious and unbreakable connection. Various intermediate forms
of civil society organisations can be placed between these two ends of the spectrum, as
the transformation of the rural political economy has created links between the cities
and rural areas. The intermediate scale of the civil society spectrum has a wide range of
memberships, from middle class activists, professional groups, academic societies and
the media to community and grassroots movements. The composition of these
memberships is drawn from different sectors and is cross-class in affiliation and issuedbased in orientation rather than being an ideological or territorial grouping. This civic
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
politics goes from anti-corruption campaigns, election monitoring and consumer
protection to public health advocacy and environmental awareness. The argument over
the meaning of democracy is clearly seen in the spectrum of civil society performances.
Regarding the related issues of democracy and participation, civil society organisations
also have various perceptions of political participation. At one end of the spectrum, civil
society groups may see political participation only as a procedure of selecting
representatives or delivering a mandate to competent politicians. They may fear the
‘excessive’ participation represented by popular protests and various kinds of
‘uncontrollable’ political actions. At the other end of the spectrum, broad-based and
widespread participation is seen as a vital concept for deepening democracy, which
required an open space that encourages understanding and tolerance in order to allow
the diversity of demands and rights claimed by various social movements in the
political community.
In 1997, although the 1997 Constitution opened a channel for popular movements and
grassroots groups to participate in politics at the policy level, this channel is limited to
procedures. Because of the belief that democracy can be taught, several projects on
democratic education about the rights and responsibilities of citizens were conducted all
over the country without, however, attempting to adjust the structures and relations of
power among the conflict partners. In the end, the grand-scale project of the 1997
reform did not solve the problem of inequality of access to natural resources which
affected the poor. It instead created the potential for the further frustration of grassroots
groups, who were forced to abide by the rigid participatory mechanisms provided by the
Charter. But since the 1997 mechanisms could not resolve the conflicts, the poor
continued to take to the streets if they wanted their concerns to be considered by the
state.
In Thailand, most civil society organisations are not efficient. Many of them are not
membership-based organisations but are dependent on outside financial resources and
less substantial civic actions. These factors reduce their autonomy and capacity. Thai
civil society, therefore, is in a vulnerable situation, prone to co-option by the state and
powerful groups. The state, in contrast, has the resources to create and implement its
own agenda, but the involvement of state officials tends to distort the nature of civic
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
action and the state tends to dominate citizen politics in Thailand. Thus a tension
inevitably arises between the dependency and the autonomy of Thai civil society.
One example was the divided opinions among civil society organisations on the
justification of the 2006 military coup against the Thaksin government. After landslide
victories in two elections in 2001 and 2005, the Thaksin government enjoyed a huge
majority in the parliament and ruled with a strong hand and blind arrogance. Alongside
endemic corruption, Thaksin’s war on drugs and bellicose approach to the conflict in
the Malay Muslim majority Southern border region resulted in the loss of thousands of
lives. Critics and opponents were crushed, and Thaksin increasingly polarized the
country. His strong support came mostly from rural constituencies and in the upper half
of the country while the anti-Thaksin movement was concentrated among educated
urban people and in southern half of the country. Bangkok itself was divided.
According to Chaiwat (2006), those in favour of the 2006 military coup or felt that it
was no other efficient choice would argue in a variety of views. For example, some
argued that the coup was staged to prevent the continuing conflict situation from
sinking deeper into violence, and possibly a civil war between two armed groups, one in
support of Thaksin and those who opposed him; the coup was perceived on the ground
that it was a preventive measure. Other who believed that the coup did not kill the 1997
Constitution because it was already dead long ago at the hands of the Thaksin
government by rendering all independent monitoring channels and autonomous
agencies ineffective through its control of capital, people and the media. Even though
there was a furious debate among academia and civil society organisation on whether
this coup should be considered as a conflict between a dictatorship and a democracy,
many argued that Thai democracy faced a problem of how to deal with a
democratically-elected government that was responsible for so much violence and the
abuse of power during the last five years of its consolidating process.
The contestation over the meaning of democracy was clearly evidenced in the political
crisis of 2006 when Prime Minister Thaksin dissolved the parliament after facing strong
protest against his telecommunication-selling and tax evasion scandal. While the PM
claimed thumping majorities in two elections with more than 10 million votes won by
the Thai Rak Thai party, and was cleared of wrong-doing by the courts, various
10
Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
movements and civil society organisations joined calls for the ouster of the Prime
Minister. By law, Thaksin should have been banned from politics for five years in 2001
following his conviction for false declaration of assets if the formal democracy had
been functioning properly. Many advocates for the 1997 political reform such as
Prawase Wasi, Theerayut Boonmee and Gothom Arya even argued for a new round of
Thai political reform with a new process of constitutional amendments (Manager,
February 2006). In the end, the conflicts were intensified to the point that the opponents
started to believe Thaksin was so demonised and worse than Suharto or the military
regime in Myanmar and that democratic means were not appropriate solutions.
However, those who disagreed with the 2006 coup would argue that this military coup
was unjustified in many ways. For example, according to Chaiwat (2006), despite the
coup was bloodless, it was still be considered as a violent solution of solving political
conflicts and transferring the power. To accept violent solution to political problem
could also be seen as a sign of despair of the country and its inability to handle the
transitional process of democratisation process.
Moreover, according to Thongchai (2006), the September 2006 coup should be seen as
a royalist plot that used the intensifying conflicts to keep the power of the Palace and its
network as the kingmaker in Thai politics. The accusation that Thaksin showed
disrespected towards the monarchy masked a far deeper tension between Thaksin and
the palace that had been well-known but could not be discussed openly in Thailand.
Over the years Thaksin had replaced the palace’s people in the military and in key
bureaucratic agencies with his own men; he even patronized some princes and
princesses and his financial influence over these royals was alarming --especially given
the acute situation currently faced by the throne. To the royalists, therefore, Thaksin
was a threat to the critical juncture of the next Monarch in a sense that he appeared to be
seen as a man who looked for himself the role of kingmaker. This analysis can be
confirmed through certain articles of the incoming 2007 Constitution, such as the power
and political role of the Privy Council, the make-up of the Senate and the establishment
of a group of leaders to run the country during the national crisis.
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
Grassroots movement and radical organisations after the 2007 agenda
This section considers the opportunities and threats created by the so-called ‘2007
Constitutional reform agenda’ and its impacts on marginal movements and their
democratic politics at the grassroots. It argued that to solve the problem of Thailand
democratic deficit, the notion of democracy needed to be reconsidered in a deeper sense
than holding periodical elections and creating the links between representatives and
their electorates. What was needed was a participatory and deliberative model of
democracy that directly involved citizens in discussion and policy formulation.
The Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) had just presented its first draft of the
2007 Constitution. There were five key issues as follows: the establishment of a special
committee to solve national crisis; the reduction of numbers of constituency and partylist MPs; the appointment of the Senators; the elected Prime Minister; and the
appointment of the interim cabinet during the election period. Among these key issues,
the most controversial points were the appointment of 160 senators from various
professionals and the establishment of a special committee during the national crisis.
Although several articles of the draft 2007 Constitution were seen as the expansion of
civil rights and the increasing power of independent organisations, the main concern of
such Constitution mainly focused on power politics and the containment of electoral
democracy. In the context of the 2007 agenda, it can be argued that the idea of popular
participation and un-organised protests is limited and not accepted by the public.
Radical movements that use street politics will find they have less bargaining power to
counteract the state and may face the problem of being regarded as illegitimate from a
strictly legalistic perspective. From the state’s point of view, it will not be appropriate to
use the politics of direct action without first trying all legal processes and institutional
channels. The middle class and urban dwellers are also reluctant to support such
movements, as they were concerned about the instability of the formal political
institutions. It can be forecasted that although radical movements and marginal
organisations at the grassroots may attempt to create collective actions performed by
different grassroots movements coming together to form a broad coalition of democratic
forces, the possibility of success is still in question.
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
This antagonism between participatory democracy and a version of formal democracy
which was categorised by many political commentators as a perversion of political
reform was evidenced again in the political crisis of 2006 when Prime Minister Thaksin
dissolved the parliament after facing strong protest against his telecommunicationselling and tax evasion scandal. While the PM claimed thumping majorities in two
elections with more than 10 million votes won by the Thai Rak Thai party, and was
cleared of wrong-doing by the courts, various progressive and democratic civil society
organisations joined calls for the ouster of the Prime Minister. By law, Thaksin should
have been banned from politics for five years in 2001 following his conviction for false
declaration of assets if the formal democracy had been functioning properly. Many
advocates for the 1997 political reform such as Prawase Wasi, Theerayut Boonmee and
Gothom Arya even argued for a new round of Thai political reform with a new process
of constitutional amendments (Manager, February 2006).
Conclusion
This paper has investigated Thailand politics after the 1997 reform agenda and its
limitation that lead to the 2006 military coup and its 2007 constitutional agenda. In
order to analyse the political consequences resulting from those conditions, the paper
examined the contradictions of the 1997 reform and its limitation to electoral
democracy and representative politics in Thailand. The paper argued that although
several institutional mechanisms were introduced with a high expectation that they
would create opportunities for greater citizen participation and deepen the process of
democracy, the outcome of the reform was a technocratic democracy with a ‘one- man
show’ style of administration. The grand-scale project of the 1997 reform could not
solve the problem of the inequality of access to natural resources by the poor. It instead
created a threat to popular movements and de-legitimated any form of grassroots
politics outside the parliamentary and representative paradigm.
The paper also argued that the problematic categorisation of civil society components
and the unequal power relations between state and civil society organisations created a
process of co-option of civil society by the state. After the 2001 election, moreover, the
concentration of power in the hands of the executive became apparent whilst electorates
were regarded as mere customers in the political market, who were waiting for the state
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Current Development in Thai democracy: From the military coup to a new Constitution?
to deliver its political products and citizen participation was limited for the sake of the
national interest and economic prosperity. This limited democracy was not only unable
to resolve economic and environmental conflicts occurring at the grassroots, but it also
had a negative impact on the institutionalising process of Thai democracy.
Throughout this paper, I have argued that different perceptions of democracy were
clearly voiced within the sphere of Thai democracy discourse. After the 2006 coup, the
role of the state was even more significant as it had political implications for the reform
agenda and people’s participation in Thailand. The politics of co-option and of
confrontation between state and civil society organisations also became apparent. The
advocacy of extensive popular participation, input and empowerment from below had
brought about a debate on the contested perceptions of Thai democracy.
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