Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s troubles began with the leak of her phone conversation with Cambodia’s Senate President and de facto leader Hun Sen. After less than 11 months in power, the government of Thailand’s youngest prime minister now looks imperiled, with her likely removal ready to set off a prolonged period of political dealmaking to elect a new prime minister from a cast of candidates that all have various weaknesses. But beyond the immediate political implications, this crisis looks set to reshape Thai politics for many years.
Ph.D. Candidate
Political Science
University of Michigan
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My piece on how Thailand’s grand compromise is cracking under pressure is the lead article in the East Asia Forum this week.
Thailand’s uneasy post-election alliance between the Pheu Thai Party and the conservative establishment is under growing strain due to continuing legal pressure on former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and factional tensions with the Bhumjaithai Party. Mounting scrutiny on the ‘grand compromise’ — combined with economic stagnation and a resurgent opposition — is pressurising the government’s tightrope walk to the next election.
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I was on the Straight Talk Southeast Asia podcast with Dr. Bridget Welsh to discuss Thai elite dynamics.
The episode looks at the decisions of the courts and Election Commission on leading political figures/parties in Thailand and unpacks the issues and impact on political stability and democracy. From the rice subsidy case and Yingluck Shinawarta to the collusion issues from the Senate 2024 elections, there is a lot to discuss.
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If a book called Why Nations Fail becomes of interest in your country, that should be a pretty good sign that things are not going well. Unfortunately, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s Nobel Prize-winning research has been the talk of the town in Thai social media over the past few weeks.
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In a result that few forecasted, the 2023 general election in Thailand was won by the Move Forward Party, ending twenty years of electoral dominance by political parties affiliated with Thaksin Shinawatra and relegating the conservative parties from genuine competition to form a government. However, the coalition that Move Forward attempted to put together fell apart that summer, and the party found itself ejected from the government camp by the Pheu Thai Party, which instead partnered with its erstwhile foes in the conservative establishment. I call this the “Grand Compromise.”
Here, I outline the research and commentary that I have written on the Grand Compromise, which now serves as the foundation of post-2023 contemporary Thai politics.
Mathis Lohatepanont and Napon Jatusripitak: Causes and Effects of Pheu Thai’s Grand Compromise: The Lurking Instability of Thailand’s Post-2023 Party System
We analyze the “grand compromise” between the Pheu Thai Party and the conservative parties after the 2023 general election, which resulted in a fundamental realignment of Thai politics. We unpack how a new strategic triangle has emerged between Thaksinites, conservatives, and progressives. This piece also proposes a new classification system for Thai political parties, based their stance on the status quo and the extent to which they successfully mobilized votes through nationally programmatic or localist strategies.
Napon Jatusripitak and Mathis Lohatepanont: After the Grand Compromise: Voter Profiles in Thai Politics
A sequel to our previous piece, in this ISEAS Perspective we analyze voter attitudes in Thailand in the wake of the grand compromise between Pheu Thai and the conservatives and how partisan allegiances may shift as a result. We argue that Thai voters can be divided into four categories: reconciliatory conservatives, populist reformists, traditional conservatives, and progressive reformists; analysis of these voter segments reveal that they will likely respond differently to the grand compromise. This piece draws on original survey data conducted in 2023.
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Last week, Thai PBS retracted an article called “Dictatorship Builds Nations: the People Miss Strong Leaders and Growing Economies” (เผด็จการสร้างชาติ” ประชาชน “อาวรณ์” ผู้นำเข้มแข็ง-เศรษฐกิจรุ่ง). The original article, which was published without a byline, has been pulled down from the Thai PBS website. But it was re-published on LINE Today and for now that remains online. So what did the article say that brought it so much heat? For one, it argued that “the nation developed and income streamed in massive amounts mostly during the eras of dictatorship and authoritarianism.” To add fuel to the fire, at one point it states: “the more dictatorial or authoritarian a country, the more economic development will surely increase.”
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Last year’s byzantine Senate elections had represented a triumph for the Bhumjaithai party, as with as many as over half the newly elected Senators having apparent affiliations with the Bhumjaithai Party. (Some even speculate this number to be closer to 150-170 out of 200 upper house members). The Standard provided three examples of upper house members with a “dark blue” (the color of Bhumjaithai) hue: those with links to Bhumjaithai leader Anutin Charnvirakul, former Bhumjaithai candidates for the lower house, and those with ties to the Buriram political machine that Bhumjaithai counts as its local capital. But last year, the implications of having a dark blue senate was not yet clear.
Click here to read the full article at The Coffee Parliament.
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Perhaps President Xi Jinping of China felt a sense of déjà vu when he met with Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of Thailand. Before Paetongtarn, the last time family member of Thaksin Shinawatra’s that Xi had met was then-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who he last met in 2013. Then, he was meeting a political neophyte who had suddenly been catapulted to the role of Thailand’s head of government with very limited political and diplomatic experience, who owed her position to being Thaksin’s sister. A little over a decade on, and history rhymes: Xi found himself shaking hands with Thaksin’s daughter.
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On Saturday, Thailand held elections for Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO) Chairman positions in 47 out of 77 provinces. Barring a highly unexpected dissolution of parliament, this will be the only major set of elections in Thailand this year.
Read the full piece at The Coffee Parliament.
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Hi everyone — I’m starting a new Substack newsletter on Thai politics & policy!
A tradition of societies everywhere is to gather around in a café and talk about the politics of the day — for keeping up to date, for debate, and for intellectual fulfillment. So beloved is this activity in Thailand that Thais have coined a special word for it: the sapha kafae — “coffee parliaments.”
And in this spirit, I’ve started The Coffee Parliament Substack to cover Thailand: a kingdom constantly plunged into political turmoil as power alternates between the ballot and the barracks, an upper middle-income country seemingly eternally on the verge of making the leap to developed country status, a bamboo shifting in the wind navigating the great powers.
If you’re already subscribed to this blog, I probably won’t be cross-posting every article over to this site, so please check out the Substack if you would like to continue reading my articles.
It is free to subscribe — I’ll see you there!