Democratic regression in Thailand: the ambivalent role of civil society and political institutions.

• Author: Kuhonta, Erik Martinez
• Position: Report

A general image has now emerged of Thailand in the past eight years (2006-14): one characterized by a spiral of political instability, street mobilization and violence, and clear democratic regression. All of this is somewhat surprising given the fourteen years of democratic progress that occurred between 1992 and 2006. Even more puzzling than the political decay that has gripped Thailand is the fact that the actors and institutions involved in this democratic regression have included those that one generally equates with liberal values. Civil society, judicial courts, and constitutional structures have all contributed to a weakening of Thailand's democracy. Certainly military intervention has served as the coup de grace that on both 19 September 2006 and 22 May 2014 brought democracy to its demise. However, the military only acted after violent street protests that sought to oust democratically-elected governments and paralyzed parts of Bangkok. Thailand now finds itself in a situation it has never faced before: a democracy under threat not just from the usual suspects such as the military, but from unexpected actors, such as the judiciary and civil society.

This special issue of Contemporary Southeast Asia, "The Challenges of Democratic Consolidation in Thailand", revisits the underlying forces and institutions that have contributed to Thailand's democratic regression. With an emphasis on civil society, political institutions and violence, it poses the following question: what are some of the conditions that have contributed to the collapse of democracy in Thailand? More specifically, it asks: what has civil society's role been in the erosion of democracy? Has the judiciary been a source of objective rulings or a forum for the advancement of partisan interests? What is the relationship between violence and elections? How do rules on party banning affect party development?

The main theme pursued in this special issue is that the "normal" patterns of democratic development that we are accustomed to seeing in consolidating democracies are not present in Thailand. First, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in civil society have revealed themselves to be deeply ambivalent, if not outright antagonistic, towards democracy. As we chart in this introduction and as Eli Elinoff demonstrates in the subsequent article, NGOs have their own interests at heart and their positions regarding social and political rights are often clouded by their own paternalistic and elitist views towards their constituents. Like any institutions or actors in the political system, NGOs must protect their interests, and if threatened by other forces in the system, they can react against such forces even if a consequence of that reaction may be to undermine democracy.

Second, judicial courts and constitutional reforms have operated in the interest of traditional, conservative elites rather than in the interest of the broader public. As Duncan McCargo analyses in this issue, judicial courts have acted numerous times in a partisan manner that have ultimately moved against liberal democratic values or against the rule of law. Many of the decisions of the judicial courts in Thailand therefore reflect political interests rather than the objective application of the rule of law. Furthermore, efforts to reform the constitution have fallen prey to different political interests seeking to manipulate the system in their favour. The constitution thus has not served as a document that can enshrine the rights of its citizens and that can objectively create a just system of institutional accountability, but instead has been deployed as a deus ex machina to resolve all the partisan battles that divide the Thai elites.

Third, we also see in Thailand that its current ideological division between the Red Shirts and the Yellow Shirts has led to unexpected outcomes. So, for example, bans on political parties--that have become increasingly commonplace in Thailand--should undermine support for democracy among the party's supporters, yet the opposite is in fact apparent. As Aim Sinpeng demonstrates in this issue, bans on political parties have not affected the relative support of parties, particularly those associated with ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thailand's deep polarization has led to strong support for political parties from groups on different sides of the aisle. Finally, it is generally assumed that electoral violence will wane as democracy becomes more consolidated, but the Thai case demonstrates that the effect of democratization on political violence is not a straightforward one. In this issue, Prajak Kongkirati argues that electoral violence increased during the 2001 and 2005 elections because of Thaksin's intervention at the local level, whereby his alliances with some local elites made the struggle for parliamentary seats even more fraught. The articles in this special issue thus explore the themes of civil society, an activist judiciary, political violence and party bans that together complicate simple theories about the building blocks of democracy and democratization.

Two factors critical to Thailand's democratic woes--civil society and political institutions--will be the focus of this introductory article to the special issue. In our discussion, we show that interests matter and that they are fragmented and in most instances they tend to supersede other efforts at strengthening democracy. Institution building remains instrumental despite the long period of "crafting". Building more institutions has not, and will not, get Thailand closer to democratic ideals as long as these institutions remain at the whims of political elites who devise them. Likewise, while the growth of civil society bodes well for the overall expansion of political participation, the extent to which civil society helps to breed democratic behaviour and values remains extremely mixed.

The article proceeds as follows. The first section charts the development of civil society in Thailand. Beginning with democratization in the 1970s, Thailand has gradually opened up its space for new actors and groups. The 1990s witnessed the greatest expansion of the "people's sector". We advance the following claims regarding the relationship between civil society and democracy in Thailand. First, civil society can grow in both democratic and authoritarian times. Civil society can emerge and be nurtured during authoritarianism. Second, there is no unified conception of democracy for civil society. In other words, civil society organizations can and do have diverse understandings of democracy. Third, the extent to which civil society groups lend support to democracy depends on how their interests are aligned. Civil society organizations are more likely to support democratic development if they can benefit from it. We warn against automatically assuming that civil society, by its very nature, must support democratic development.

The second section looks at the crafting of political institutions through constitution-making. Here we compare the 1997 Constitution with the 2007 Constitution and show that each one had a clear purpose. The 1997 Constitution sought to undermine patronage-style politicians by strengthening the executive and political parties. However, this strengthening went much beyond what the constitutional drafters intended and as a result Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) Party were able to dominate the polity in an unprecedented manner. The 2007 Constitution was therefore a direct response to the unintended effects of the 1997 Constitution. In order to prevent such a situation from recurring, constitutional drafters selected by the military made every effort to return the political system to the pre-1997 framework, where political party identity was weak and where the executive was more easily constrained by Members of Parliament (MPs). Following the 2006 coup, what we also see is that a key institution, the Constitutional Court, which was intended to provide checks and balances in the system, has ended up openly siding with the royalist-Yellow Shirt camp in handing down ruling after ruling that have sought to undermine Thaksin's position.

Civil Society in Thailand

Our analysis in this section focuses on what Thais refer to as "the people's sector": a broad category of NGOs, interest groups and labour unions. We choose to focus on the grassroots, organized form of civil society so that it is sufficiently specific. The non-profit sector in Thailand experienced its greatest expansion alongside the process of political liberalization in the 1980s and subsequent democratization in the 1990s. The expansion of civil society and the rise of NGOs and people's movements contributed to democratic development in Thailand by allowing greater public participation in politics. Civil society organizations create channels for the articulation, aggregation and representation of interests. They act as a brokerage between the people and the state. NGOs help lobby for local groups--those often marginalized or negatively affected by state policies--directly with state officials, be it at the local or national level. The most famous civil society phenomenon in the 1990s was the Assembly of the Poor, which grew out of a campaign by villagers in northeast Thailand against the controversial Pak Mun Dam. This was the first nationwide organization to emerge since the Peasants' Federation of Thailand in the 1970s. (1) In 1997, the Assembly staged a 99-day rally in Bangkok and succeeded in extracting important concessions from the government on livelihood compensation for those affected by the construction of hydroelectric dams, review of certain projects and an end to eviction of long-standing residents from areas classified as forest. (2)

However, not all people's movements mobilize for open politics and democracy. A careful analysis of Thai...