Author: Prajak Kongkirati, ANU

On the surface the general election of 3 July 2011 may look like any other Thai election, but both its timing and context set it apart as historically significant.

Incumbent Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva called for elections on 11 March 2011, even though his government had until the year’s end to finish its term. Read more…

Author: Pisit Leeahtam, Chiang Mai University

After facing two violent street protests in the last two years, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s coalition government started 2011 in relative calm.

The then-opposition Pheu Thai Party was without a visible leader, and many saw the red shirts as still suffering from the May 2010 violence and thus unlikely to stage another street protest. Read more…

Authors: Desmond Ball and Nicholas Farrelly, ANU

In the lead-up to Thailand’s July 2011 election the tough-talking army chief, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, weighed into the political debate, insisting that voters should defend the king and elect ‘good people’.

General Prayuth hoped, no doubt, that his efforts to sway popular sentiment would lead to a victory for the embattled Democrat Party. Read more…

Author: Bruce Chapman, ANU

A sustained effort to upgrade human capital is needed for countries in Southeast Asia to increase living standards to those of the advanced economies. Higher education and access to it are essential in boosting long-term productivity and supporting economic outcomes that are crucial to a country’s ability to integrate into the increasingly knowledge-based global economy.

Public investment is one element in improving higher education, but fully subsidising higher education has been shown to be inefficient and expensive. Read more…

Author: Chris Baker, Kyoto University

Last year, fire; this year, water.

The largest demonstrations in Thailand’s political history ended with over 90 deaths in April–May 2010, but 18 months later, with the country’s biggest floods in half a century, some believed that togetherness in suffering would revive a mythical ‘national unity’. Read more…

Author: Somchai Jitsuchon, TDRI

That Pheu Thai (PT) Party won Thailand’s general election was hardly a surprise, even to its principal political opponent, the Democrat Party.

What was surprising was the overwhelming majority it won. Read more…

Authors: Prema-chandra Athukorala, ANU; and Archanun Kohpaiboon, Thammasat University

The proliferation of FTAs over the past two decades has sparked a debate in Australian and international policy forums about their implications for the operation of the global trading system and ways of mitigating likely discriminatory effects on both partners and non-signatory countries.

An examination of the impact of the Australia–Thailand free trade agreement (TAFTA) of January 2005 on trade between the two countries provides valuable input into this debate. Read more…

Author: Tyrell Haberkorn, ANU

Coups are not uncommon in Thai politics — September 2006 saw the tenth successful coup since the country’s transformation from absolute to constitutional monarchy in 1932 — but the aftermath of Thaksin Shinawatra’s deposition has been exceptionally bitter and violent.

Many observers hoped the newly elected Yingluck Shinawatra government would begin to consolidate the rule of law and respect for human rights in Thailand. Read more…

Author: Gavin Jones, ANU

Thailand went through its fertility transition more quickly than almost any other country, with the average number of children born to the average woman declining from about six to two in little more than two decades, between about 1970 and 1990.

Fertility rates have since gone still lower, now standing at around 30 per cent below replacement level (the level that would lead to long-run population stability). This does not mean that Thailand’s population has stopped increasing. Read more…

Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun, ISAS

The increasing frequency of lèse-majesté cases over the past few years suggests that Thailand’s claim to be the ‘land of the free’ no longer rings quite true.

There are many reasons behind the law’s application. Propping up a weakened monarchical institution and disguising the uncertainty of the royal succession is one rationale. Attempts to control society, conserve elitist privileges, prolong the military’s role in politics, obstruct democratisation and cope with the technological revolution in cyberspace also play a significant role. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

The death toll from Thailand’s worst floods in more than half a century is more than 600, millions of hectares of farmland have been inundated, 20,000 factories and plants have been damaged, some that are not likely to reopen, leaving at least 1.5 million unemployed.

As the clean-up continues, accusations of incompetence and corruption in the management of the crisis and the allocation of relief, have dominated the media and the Parliament. Read more…

Author: Peter Warr, ANU

Thailand is caught in a middle-income trap of its own creation. How did this come about?

Are current policies making it better or worse, and what needs to be done to escape the trap? Read more…

Author: Chayut Setboonsarng, GWU

After torrents of water broke through makeshift barriers around Bangkok in the nation’s worst flood in 50 years, the Yingluck administration was slammed for mismanagement, weak leadership and fragmented coordination in handling the monsoon.

And the credibility of the Flood Relief Operations Center (FROC), led by Police General Pracha Promnok, deteriorated due to its inexperience. Read more…

Author: Vikas Kumar, Bangalore

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, commentators on East Asia Forum have highlighted the moderate character of Southeast Asian Islam.

Bahrawi argues that contested interpretations of Islam are democratising Islam in Southeast Asia — but similar contests seem to be ineffective in countries like Pakistan. And van Bruinessen argues that large, resilient Islamic organisations are stabilising Indonesian democracy — but comparable organisations are failing to play such a role in other Islamic countries. So are local factors playing a bigger role in Southeast Asia than is usually suspected?  Read more…

Author: Pisit Leeahtam, Chiang Mai University

Since the 2006 coup, which ousted Thaksin Shinawatra, there have been two general elections in Thailand.

Both these elections — in 2007 and 2011 — saw successor parties allied with Thaksin win more seats than any other party, all while Thaksin himself was in exile. Read more…