Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Patrick Jory, UQ
When Thailand’s royalist-military junta appointed a panel to draft the new Thai constitution following the September 2006 coup, the idea was to ‘firewall’ the document from any changes the regime’s enemies might try to impose in the future.
One of these firewalls was Article 291, which lays down regulations designed to stymie such attempts. Read more…
Author: Dilaka Lathapipat, TDRI
There is a widespread belief among Thais that immigrants reduce local workers’ job opportunities and depress wages.
This is evident from an opinion survey study conducted in late 2010 by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Triangle Project on public attitudes to migration and migrant workers. Read more…
Author: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University
While Thai politics has long been unruly, it has rarely been so unsettled and intractable as in 2011.
Thailand has entered 2012 bruised and battered, even compared to previous bouts of political instability. Read more…
Author: Anders Engvall, Stockholm School of Economics
On the evening of 25 October 2011 the southern Thai town of Yala was shaken by a string of 30 explosions that caused great terror and loss of life. The following day the neighbouring province of Narathiwat saw a similar wave of attacks.
This latest bombing campaign was a stark reminder from southern Thailand’s insurgency movement of the seventh anniversary of the Tak Bai massacre. Read more…
Author: Pasuk Phongpaichit, Chulalongkorn University and Kyoto University
Thailand has become a wealthier but also more unequal society over the past few decades.
Until recently inequality was not a burning issue — but Thailand’s prominent political convulsions have changed this.
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…
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: Arief Ramayandi, ADB
The slow resolution of the European debt crisis has evolved into a liquidity problem which threatens the global financial system.
And these long-drawn-out efforts to address the sovereign debt problems have heightened uncertainties about resolving the crisis and induced speculative activities, threatening the survival of many European banks. 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…