Cover Photo: “Rice Plant Field” by Tom Fisk from Pexels
Volume 3, Number 2: October 2019 | Article
“Water full of fish, field full of rice” is familiar sentence for Thai people. It has been said for a long time which makes Thais aware of how lucky they are to be born in country with high natural richness and used as a tool to foster pride for people. However, that richness is the cause of structural problems that are hard to solve in the present and lastly becomes harm of people’s lives from creating strong extractive political institution.
Origin richness and lack of political participation of Thais in the past
It’s not hard for Thais to agree that current mess of the country now is caused by lacking stability of politics, most politicians use their authority for one’s own benefit more than for the country. But how do these things come from? To understand this issue, we have to go back to the start of this political system which was back in 1989 or early in reign of Rama I when life of Thais was comfortable on natural richness without having to worry about starvation. It has been told from generation to the next ones that back then, if having insufficient food, just row a boat along nearby river, fish will jump up there which can be food for family without problems. Lands are also plentiful and good for agriculture. That’s why living back then did not have to care about changing in political authority as the changes do not affect their lives. This was opposite of what happened in France during the same time which French people were starving unlike elites who were living luxuriously at the palace. High inequality in many dimensions that it lead to climax when we saw low and middle class people protesting for their rights. That was the beginning of change in political system finally.
As mentioned above, comfortable life of Thai is the reasons why they don’t worry about importance of political authority and lack of participation to decide declaration of authority and unfair enforcement. This is why political group started to settle in and continue to protect their advantage from the past. The system itself also changes according to social context, which strengthening the system overtime.
Structural problems that follow
When time goes by, luck that used to take Thai people’s side gradually decreased. Life in the past no longer creates economic value for stable life when it turns to industrial world while Thais remain living the same life with only knowledge of agriculture not industry. Therefore, it can be seen that income of the country changes to industrial business more but most labors cannot participate because of wall of knowledge. The problem of this barrier then gets worse.
Furthermore, while the benefit of industrialization is not sent to overalls people, it is gathered in ruling class that creates extractive economic institutions for this advantage to stay among their own private company. This was then create structural problems in Thai economy. It is obvious in current market situation, we only see a few companies sharing market shares. This monopolized markets makes life of most people within the country worse-off, or richness clusters, poverty spreads.
Continuation of authority and strong relationship between politicians and private companies
It’s not hard to observe that senior administrators of large private companies are retired government officers which reflects reason why Thai political system does not have policy to reduce competitiveness of big companies even that policy might increase advantage for overall country. As they both have strong advantage for each other.
Senior government officers get high advantage from private companies as well, so knowing that their life after retirement will join with capitalist from these big private companies, they do not do things that cut their future advantage. From those reasons, it leads to supporting extract institution and they get rid of inclusive institution to protect their authority.
Are we hopeless? What’s the solution?
Even resources luck increased comfort earlier, but it turns to the point that creates selfish institutions until now. Therefore, solving problems require being aware of these people’s existence. When many Thai people are aware of stolen advantage, participation in fighting for maintaining overall advantage is higher. And by the time society changes ideas of maintaining the good for selfish ruling level to have no place to be, the problem will finally be solved. There maybe a lot of obstacles around us, but one must not need to become one of them.
There is one point I would like to add about the lack of political participation in Thailand. After the Siamese Revolution, Thailand claimed itself as a democratic state. However, in the modern history, the most familiar political regime in Thailand is authoritarianism/military dictatorship. It does not necessary mean that the people accept the type of extractive political institution. People do participate in politics. After each abusive, unjust, and corrupted regime, there is always people uprising. Yet, each uprising does not lead to a sustainable regime change. Thailand cannot establish an inclusive political regime such as democracy. Why is this the case?
Could it be the case that whether Thailand has democracy or not, the livelihood of the people is still the same? Hence, they feel indifferent towards military dictatorship and democracy. Both political institutions may have the same level of corruption and inequality. As a result, such extractive regime keeps haunting Thailand. There is a research by Stefansdotter (2011), it shows a relationship between corruption and democracy. In the early stage of democracy, the amount of corruption will rise. And when democracy is established, the level of corruption would continuously fall. Could this help explain why democracy is not accepted in Thailand? Is our democracy still in the early stage that it allows loop holes for corruption to occur? If so, it is understandable why people might turn away from democracy. However, the research is correct, we should not turn our back and walk away. We must collaborate and participate in more to promote democracy until a certain threshold. Then, we could enjoy the benefits of a sustainable inclusive political institution.
Thanks for your comment, I do agree that there’s no argument that people is accepting the extraction institution at all. However, the main point addressed in this article is that the extractive institutions formed strongly due to lacking of awareness and political participation of Thai people in the past. The mentioned Siamese revolution toward democratic regime have a lot of things to dealt with geo-political issue under the concept of “Modernism” where these concept is mostly defined by those western countries.
The political uprising and participation is started to improved (relative to the past) ,however, looking in the terms of time-frame, this process just started only 50 years ago (while these institution formed as far as dated back to the same period of the french revolution). As a result the establishment of these institution is very strong, and they also evolve and adjust themselves to maintain its power very smartly (they also learn a lot from their mistakes in the past).
In my opinion, the livelihood of Thai people would not get affected much despite the regime would be true in the past context, however this is not the same anymore in the current environment. Also, the regime of democracy is very hard to established. The problems of democracy in Thailand is that, people don’t really understand its concept well enough (some even thinking that having election means democratic regime), while in reality election is just a “tool” for democracy. So even though we take a establishment of democratic regimes the ends result of each election is still greatly influence by those same elite group. It seems hopeless, but I still would like to address the existence of these people behind our Political system.
Really good article. I like the framing of your position between life in the 80’s versus contemporary Thailand and how you noted the differences. When economic paradigm shifts change it definitely leaves those behind who can’t adapt or won’t adapt to the new scenario. I believe this most likely will only get worst as technology waits for no one. As for the political circumstances, extraction of rents by government officials (Corruption) most definitely leads to uprisings and sometimes this corruption can be very difficult to weed out. I think your article does a good job at voicing what you see as endemic level problems in the market. Good job!