The Continual Breakdown of Democracy in Thailand
The Continual Breakdown of Democracy in Thailand
A Case Study on the Role of Elite Competition, Modernization and Political Institutions in the Democratization Process of Thailand
Michelle L. Nguyen
Thesis Adviser: Cornel Ban
Second Reader: Gavril Bilev
Abstract
In this thesis, I will perform an in-depth empirical analysis of Thai political history in an attempt to understand why democracy has failed to consolidate since the 1932 revolution that ended the absolute monarchy. To help disentangle Thailand’s complex democratization process, I engage three salient strands of democratization literature, which I refer to as elite theories, political institutionalist theories, and modernization theories. Elite theories propose that political stability is dependent on the unity or disunity of competing elite groups. Political Institutionalists point to the importance of democratic regime type, stating that parliamentary democracies are more likely to stabilize due to certain secondary mechanisms, such as mutual dependence between the legislative and executive bodies, and more proportional representation across political parties to avoid polarization. The modernization theories that I employ in my analysis propose that modernization stabilizes democracy because it increases access to key resources and consequently, empowers lower and middle classes to have political voice.
My analysis relies on theory-guided process tracing – with important historical events serving as my primary data. I focus my empirical chapters specifically on the historical events leading to the democratic consolidation of the 1990s and the democratic breakdown of 2006, creating two temporal case studies within Thailand’s complex political history. Other data that I employ include election results and socio-economic growth data. I have chosen to revolve my process tracing around the primary and secondary mechanisms of the mentioned democratization literature strands. By tracing these mechanisms within the context of Thai history, I not only develop a clear causal chain that explains Thailand’s various democratic breakdowns, but I also assess the strengths of the theories that I engage.
I conclude that elite theories are exceedingly relevant in determining political stability in the case of Thailand even in the face of modernization and the political empowerment of lower classes. I also conclude that secondary political institutionalist mechanisms associated with political instability played a direct and important role in the democratic breakdown of 2006; however, the existence of these secondary mechanisms even in a parliamentary democracy suggests that more research could be done to improve the nuances of why and how democratic breakdown can still occur regardless of democratic regime type. Modernization mechanisms played an even more complex role in Thailand’s political history, aiding in both the democratic consolidation of the 1990s and democratic breakdown of 2006: modernization empowered the political voice of both the middle class and rural poor; however, due to polarizing populist policies and underlying socio-economic divides, political empowerment of these new voices effectively caused deep political polarization, which ultimately tore the country apart. As a result of these mixed outcomes of modernization mechanisms on democratic consolidation, I suggest that further research should be done to disentangle the exact role of modernization and political empowerment in consolidating democracy in the light of Thailand’s deep socioeconomic class divides.
Click on the link to read the Thesis :
http://devl1980.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/nguyenm_final_thesis.pdf