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"Thailand Politics and government 20th century."
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External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation
This book explores ways foreign intervention and external rivalries can affect the institutionalization of governance in weak states. When sufficiently competitive, foreign rivalries in a weak state can actually foster the political centralization, territoriality and autonomy associated with state sovereignty. This counterintuitive finding comes from studying the collective effects of foreign contestation over a weak state as informed by changes in the expected opportunity cost of intervention for outside actors. When interveners associate high opportunity costs with intervention, they bolster sovereign statehood as a next best alternative to their worst fear - domination of that polity by adversaries. Sovereign statehood develops if foreign actors concurrently and consistently behave this way toward a weak state. This book evaluates that argument against three 'least likely' cases - China, Indonesia and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.
eBook
External intervention and the politics of state formation : China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893-1952
\"This book posits that when foreign actors face high opportunity costs of intervention in a weak state, their behavior may foster state sovereignty\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Democracy and National Identity in Thailand
This book seeks to illuminate how Thai elites have used democracy as an instrument for order and discipline. Drawing on interviews, numerous Thai language sources, and critical theory, the author reveals a remarkable adaptation of the idea of democracy in the Thai context. Connors shows how elites have drawn on Western political theory to design projects to create modern citizens. He argues that it is possible to see the idea and practice of elite liberal democracy in Thailand, and elsewhere, as a key ideological resource in the project of securing hegemony over undisciplined populations. In this perspective the ideas of civil society, civic virtue, social capital and democracy itself are all part of the weaponry deployed in an effort to create 'good citizens', who act as guardians of the elite defined common good.
eBook
The crown and the capitalists : the ethnic Chinese and the founding of the Thai nation
\"Despite competing with much larger imperialist neighbors in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Thailand--or Siam, as it was formerly known--has succeeded in transforming itself into a rival modern nation-state over the last two centuries. Recent historiography has placed progress--or lack thereof--toward Western-style liberal democracy at the center of Thailand's narrative, but that view underestimates the importance of the colonial context. In particular, a long-standing relationship with China and the existence of a large and important Chinese diaspora within Thailand have shaped development at every stage. As the emerging nation struggled against colonial forces in Southeast Asia, ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs were neither a colonial force against whom Thainess was identified, nor had they been able to fully assimilate into Thai society. Wasana Wongsurawat demonstrates that the Kingdom of Thailand's transformation into a modern nation-state required the creation of a national identity that justified not only the hegemonic rule of monarchy but also the involvement of the ethnic Chinese entrepreneurial class upon whom it depended. Her revisionist view traces the evolution of this codependent relationship through the twentieth century, as Thailand struggled against colonial forces in Southeast Asia, found itself an ally of Japan in World War II, and reconsidered its relationship with China in the postwar era\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Dynastic Democracy
The political history of Thailand since the overthrow of absolute
monarchy in 1932 has conventionally been interpreted as a long
series of popular struggles for representative democracy and
against military authoritarian rule. Yoshinori Nishizaki argues
that this history can be better understood as one of struggles by
elite political families for and against \"dynastic democracy\"-a
form of democracy that is characterized by the patrimonial
transmission of power between members of select ruling families.
Dynastic Democracy suggests it is these familial-based
contestations for political ascendancy that underlie the tumultuous
politics of Thailand, a country that has experienced no fewer than
twenty-two coups over the course of the past century. Drawing
extensively on Thai-language primary sources, including assets
documents and cremation volumes for deceased politicians and their
kin, Nishizaki traces the intricate blood and marriage connections
among Thailand's political families. These families may fall into
two categories: influential commoner families that have held
parliamentary seats since 1932 and form the core of Thailand's
dynastic democracy; and upper-class families that are kin to or
aligned ideologically with the royal family and have repeatedly
challenged dynastic democracy through coups, constitutional
changes, and other political maneuvers. Nishizaki's exploration of
dynastic democracy illustrates how democratic pluralism in Thailand
has been consistently stifled, to the detriment of ordinary
citizens. Dynastic Democracy fleshes out a widely
acknowledged yet heretofore empirically unsubstantiated facet of
Thai political history-that in Thai politics, family matters.
eBook
Cultural Crisis and Social Memory
This book explores social memory in the context of cultural crises of modernity in Thailand and Laos. It explicates the ways in which social memory constructed by the people enters modernity, and how this in turn causes fundamental ruptures with their past, as well as the various ways cultural crises are experienced in their lives. The essays in this book consider how in these crises the people constitute their cultural, social, or individual identities, particularly focusing on the theoretical issues of identifications and their relevance to distinct historical processes in Thailand and Laos. Both countries, particularly in the two decades since the 1970s, have been undergoing radical social and economic changes. Whilst Thailand has travelled down the road to industrialization, neighbouring Laos experienced a communist revolution in 1975 and only since the late 1980s has attempted to follow a reformist path to development. Increasingly influenced by globalised economic and social institutions, both countries have come to face crises that have made people insecure in the present and anxious about the future.
eBook