Dr. Napon Jatusripitak and I wrote an ISEAS Perspective on the causes and effects of Pheu Thai’s “grand compromise” with the conservative parties. We also created a system to classify Thailand’s political parties.
Executive Summary:
After the 2023 general election, the Pheu Thai Party agreed to a grand compromise with the conservative parties, allowing Pheu Thai candidate Srettha Thavisin to take office as prime minister.
A new strategic triangle of progressives, conservatives, and Thaksinites has locked Pheu Thai and the former members of the conservative Prayut Chan-o-cha coalition into a marriage of convenience.
Mapping Thailand’s political parties based on their stance on the status quo and the extent to which they successfully mobilised votes through nationally programmatic or localist strategies, makes it possible to illustrate the nature of Pheu Thai’s shift in political position.
Thailand’s party system is likely to remain destabilised as the shift in Pheu Thai’s political brand may produce major changes in voter linkages to the party.
Three major cases went before the Constitutional Court last week. Of the most anticipated cases — the potential dissolution of the Move Forward Party and ouster of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin — we received word that the court will need more time for deliberation next month.
The Constitutional Court did make one major ruling, however, on the legality of the Senate election procedures. The court had received a petition claiming that the law governing how the new Senate is to be elected violated the 2017 constitution. The constitution had mandated that the election process should be as insulated as possible from political influence; the petitioners claimed that the rules did not observe the spirit of the charter. The Constitutional Court’s opinion is that the election procedures are legal. This now opens the way for a new upper house.
I was on Khun Suthichai Yoon’s English show to discuss uncertain times ahead in Thai politics: Move Forward’s potential dissolution, potential threats to Thaksin Shinwatra and Srettha Thavisin, and the triangular dynamics that currently underpin Thailand’s political landscape.
Being the Governor of Bangkok and pleasing everyone is an impossible task. Being a designer and pleasing everyone is an impossible task. Put the two together, and one wonders whether or not there is a mathematical equation to multiply impossible with impossible.
For years, looking up from the skywalk near Pathumwan intersection, you would see a crusty old banner saying “Bangkok: City of Life.” It had been designed under Governor Apirak Kosayodhin, who left office sixteen years ago. In between the text was a symbol inspired by the “lai pracham yam” Thai pattern. In the years since it was put up, the banner had turned increasingly faint and grey. But it also became a popular tourist destination, a place for Instagrammers from abroad to announce that they had reached the nation’s capital.
At some point, however, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration had to make a decision about what to do with the banner; it had deteriorated to the point where it was barely readable. The BMA had recently spent 3 million baht commissioning a new corporate identity for Bangkok. In came a new specifically-designed font, inspired by the writing of Prince Narisara Nuwattiwong, and a bold new color scheme. The city decided that this new brand identity would be put to good use to replace the old Bangkok banner.
In late December, a prominent young member of the United Thai Nation Party, Shinapat Kitlertsirivatana, sent in a fiery resignation letter to the party. “The United Thai Nation Party cannot change this country if it will not change its internal working processes,” he declared. “I’m clear that the monarchy must remain. But conservatives need to stand for more than just protecting the monarchy and prohibiting amendment of section 112.”
Shinapat’s resignation did not cause much of a storm outside his own party; he had only been a deputy spokesperson. Curiously, however, his criticism seems to have resonated with the wider political scene, even if not as a direct result of what he said.
Not long after Shinapat’s resignation, the UTN’s spokesperson insisted that the party is a “conservative party in a new era.” In April, the Palang Pracharath Party’s Prawit Wongsuwan announced that they would be rebranding to a “modern conservative party.” Even the Thai Sang Thai Party, which had stood by the doomed Move Forward-led coalition until the bitter end, told members to stand by “progressive conservative principles.”
There’s no use in going into a Thomas Edison versus Nikola Tesla battle about who came first with this “new conservatism” label. There are other couple questions worth asking, however. What is this new flavor of conservatism that the parties speak of? Why are so many parties positioning themselves this way? The fact that all these parties have their antennae sensing gold at this new branding suggests something is afoot. And will it work on the electorate?
This past year, I had the opportunity to serve as the Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) — the University of Michigan’s equivalent to a Teaching Assistant — for two political science courses. In the fall, I taught Southeast Asian Politics with Prof. Allen Hicken and Chinese Politics with Prof. Mary Gallagher in the winter. It was a great opportunity to teach two classes that fit quite squarely in my area of interest as a researcher focused on the Asia-Pacific region.
Something that I’ve realized, however, is that there is not a lot of written guidance on being a graduate student instructor for courses that sit at the intersection of area studies and political science. Perhaps that is for an obvious reason: it is a bit of a niche topic to write about! Aside from what is offered by campus centers on teaching, there usually isn’t a whole lot of guidance on how to teach discussion sections to begin with.
But this is a topic that is particularly close to my heart, because some of my favorite classes when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley were these area studies classes. And more importantly, I strongly believe that area studies still deserves a significant place in an undergraduate social science education. These courses can often serve as the first gateway for many students, especially in the United States, to engage with previously unfamiliar regions. And so I thought that it would be worth sharing some of my reflections on what I’ve learned from my year of teaching Asia-related discussion sections in political science, just in case it is useful to anyone who might be assigned to teach a similar class in the future. Hopefully, by writing about some of my experiences, it can help future graduate student instructors feel less like they are reinventing the wheel.
Challenge #1: Balancing context-provision and active learning
How much knowledge about the region can you assume? When teaching about Asia in an American university, it appeared safest to assume some knowledge but not a lot (in the case of China) or essentially nothing (in the case of Southeast Asia). This presents a big tension: trying to balance the amount of time spent on providing regional context with ensuring there is sufficient time for active learning. There is a deep temptation to spend a lot of time lecturing at students when you are unable to presume any knowledge, but that would of course defeat the purpose of a discussion section. And when there is no presumed prior knowledge, it is difficult to spend time on learning activities or discussion because you suspect that students will just respond with, “I don’t know enough about X country to say anything meaningful about this issue.”
I certainly made mistakes that went both ways. Sometimes, in a bid to give enough context, my presentations would run over the anticipated time. And once, I asked students to read an excerpt from Tom Pepinsky’s piece in Vox on how life in authoritarian states is “mostly boring and tolerable” (which focuses on Malaysia) and asked students to discuss whether or not these arguments would apply in Vietnam or Laos. Major problem: we had not discussed Laos in sufficient detail for students to actually transfer knowledge and apply it in a Laotian setting.
Eventually I was able to settle on a couple of strategies that helped mitigate this challenge:
Mini-lectures in discussion sections are not a bad thing.
Yes, discussion sections are supposed to be for discussion, but taking 15-20 minutes to recap major arguments from lectures and readings and providing additional content that extends students’ understanding of the region was generally very useful. Students feel that they are on the same page, and it provides an opportunity for the course content to be digested again. I think that having good slides here is imperative, but this is probably very much up to your teaching style. There’s always opportunity to insert prompts for discussion and food for thought as well.
Pair short in-class readings with designed discussion protocols.
The traditional format of discussion section is to just talk about previously assigned course readings. Something that I found useful to do, however, was to assign very short excerpts of articles that students would read together for the first time in section and then discuss. Again, students are all on the same page. And secondly, it is a nice opportunity to dive into primary source materials. This would normally would be more appropriate for history courses, but I feel is also important for area-based political science courses since the first portion of these types of classes tend to always focus on historical background.
I paired these readings with discussion protocols or a designed activity of some sort that provide the opportunity for active learning. In one instance, I had students read an excerpt of Sun Yat-sen’s writings on the Three Principles of the People and had students analyze “four As” on the text (key assumptions, calls for action, counter-arguments, and an assessment of Sun’s vision). Another activity that worked well was an activity for students to role-play a provincial governor in China: students were given excerpts on key Xi Jinping policies such as Dual Circulation, Common Prosperity and New Productive Forces, and asked to propose some policies that would fulfill these (sometimes competing) objectives while maximizing GDP growth.
Visual analysis is great!
Asking students to interpret maps and charts together as a class is also a great way to provide both context and active learning at the same time. I particularly like maps as they also allow students to automatically look at cases in comparative perspective — this was particularly helpful in my own teaching on the middle income trap and developmental states (which I did in both courses). The more counterintuitive the chart, the more fun!
Challenge #2: Navigating the tension between conceptual understanding and area-specific knowledge
The second challenge in teaching a class that sits at the intersection of political science and area studies is balancing conceptual and regional knowledge. The goal of a good area studies class in political science should be to allow students to explore broader themes in comparative politics in addition to gaining understanding about a certain region. Class time is so limited: there’s already barely enough time to introduce a new country. Do we spend most time on history and “just the facts” and hope that students draw the connections to comparative concepts that they might have seen in other classes? (It would be far more likely that students never quite get the conceptual link).
I found that getting at the right balance required being both intentional and explicit in framing the link between regional content and broad concepts. In my Southeast Asia discussion sections, I ended up focusing on 1-2 concepts that were introduced explicitly and separately. Activities were focused on illustrating how the concept and country content were tied to each other. The following are some examples:
Country
Concept
Activity
Malaysia
Consociationalism and ethnic power-sharing
Mind-mapping key components of the Malaysian social contract
Indonesia
Industrialization strategies
Advise Suharto on pursuing import-substitution or export-oriented industrialization strategies
Philippines
State capacity, clientelism
Guided discussion on the incentives behind vote-buying
Singapore
One-party dominant regimes
Writing a stump speech for People’s Action Party/Worker’s Party candidates to illustrate incumbency benefits for the PAP
In my last Southeast Asia discussion section, I also explicitly provided a list of key concepts to students that we had covered during the entire semester and asked them to reflect as a group on what they have gained in conceptual understanding.
A note of personal reflection for myself: I found it less pressing when teaching on China to be explicit about links to broader concepts than when teaching about Southeast Asia. Part of it is perhaps the less urgent need to justify why learning about China is important; China’s importance on the global stage seems self-evident, in a way that Southeast Asia may not be, particularly to American students. This probably made me more conscious about illustrating how Southeast Asia can be a useful case for broader theory-building. If I did teach on China again, however, I would try to be more intentional in linking concepts with content there as well.
Challenge #3: Piquing student interest in distant, seemingly irrelevant regions
“The eleven countries of Southeast Asia may still seem geographically peripheral to Western eyes. No other region is so distant from both North America and Europe. Yet…Southeast Asia’s diverse political systems are far from peripheral to the most momentous global trends. It is a region that the rest of the world can ill afford to ignore or misunderstand.” (Kuhonta, Slater and Vu 2008)
While teaching a course on a seemingly distant and irrelevant region might sound like a challenge for students’ intrinsic motivation, I found that there is a very simple antidote: storytelling. Some of the best stories come out of things you previously had very little idea about previously. My students told me that some of the sections they enjoyed the most were the ones where I talked about the decades-long frenemy relationship between Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, for example, or a mini-lecture I did on how China has tried to regulate reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism. I also love sprinkling fun facts liberally in a discussion section. The weird, wacky and wonderful aren’t a waste of time: fun facts help students grapple an unfamiliar region and it’s often the little stories that stick with them. At least that’s what I felt given the number of students who now seem to know that Pad Thai is fascist.
A potentially controversial piece of advice is to not be shy about discussing personalities. Many instructors try to shy away from the “great man” theory of history in favor of a more institutional focus. That’s probably a good thing overall. But dedicating some time in discussion sections — which would then overall account for only a small portion of time in the course — to discussions of personality is, in my experience, helpful. It is the easiest way to craft a compelling narrative. When teaching about both Southeast Asia and China, there was no shortage of colorful personalities that could help pique student interest.
And finally, I think that it’s also fun to go beyond politics and show some pop culture as well. If the course is a student’s first gateway to a new region, I would like them to leave with a more holistic perception of society outside the bubble of politics. In my China discussion sections, for example, I enjoyed showing and discussing Mandarin pop music. (It was a little bit difficult to do this for a Southeast Asia course; it’s hard to know well the pop culture of ten different countries!)
I hope that this piece was at least somewhat helpful to any political science graduate students who may teach a discussion section for an area studies course. I am not a pedagogy expert by any means, so if there is anything here that actually contravenes with best practices, or if you have any suggestions for me to improve my own teaching, I would love to hear from you as well.
Despite campaigning last year on being able to “think big and deliver,” the Pheu Thai government has recently found itself struggling to deliver on one of the most basic tasks of maintaining a government: producing a cabinet of ministers. What was supposed to be a routine reshuffle, the normal adjustment of ministerial portfolios that every government undergoes every once in a while, has instead become a major distraction for Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and produced a flurry of negative headlines at a time when this government looks like it just can’t catch a break.
One only has to glance through the front pages of Thai newspapers in the last couple of weeks to see the extent to which Srettha could do without a self-inflicted public relations injury. There was Paethongtharn Shinawatra’s declaration of war on central bank independence, which was roundly criticized by economists and policy experts. The Pheu Thai government’s newfound obsession with selling rice a decade old dating back to Yingluck Shinawatra’s rice pledging scheme has produced puzzlement and mockery. So it has hardly helped Srettha to also be buffeted by continual dripping of bad news that resulted from his cabinet reshuffle late last month.
Much has been written about the departure of former foreign minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara, who was dissatisfied with the removal of his deputy prime minister title. Most importantly, this was damaging to Thai foreign policy; Parnpree had taken a proactive approach as Thailand’s top diplomat and deserved to continue in this role. And to take a public relations perspective, this was also a poor look for Pheu Thai’s electoral position.
In Thailand, there is a pantheon of food with foreign-sounding names that have nothing to do with their supposed countries of origin. We have, for one, the Kanom Tokyo, a folded crepe that few Japanese would be able to identify. Or take the Lod Chong Singapore, another dessert that would mystify Singaporeans.
One that I feel deserves more attention is “American fried rice.”
For — ironically — any American (and non-Thai) readers of this piece, allow me to briefly describe its glories. The core of this dish is rice cooked with ketchup and soy sauce, allowing it to turn orange. (Keep an open mind!) It is then placed with a variety of ingredients that feel as American as it gets: fried chicken, ham, sausages, and a fried egg. It is often topped with, although I fail to understand why, raisins.
The standard American fried rice that people think of would probably be similar to the one you can order at Took Lae Dee (“Cheap and Good”) — the iconic Foodland restaurant, prized by expats and Thais alike. But restaurants specializing in the dish have also come into existence. One, “Lucky’s Hungry American Fried Rice,” has variants featuring Angus beef, pork patties and smoked ham.
I took this picture of American fried rice in Bangkok, circa 2021. It is missing raisins (which I don’t think should belong anywhere in this dish).
I think I was only dimly aware in my childhood that this is not a meal that you can find in the United States. Eat it I did; the school I attended often served it for lunch. Only as I grew up did I realize that the vast majority of Americans will have never even have heard of this dish — let alone try it.
I have sometimes wondered how an American fried rice food truck would fare in, say, the Bay Area, but I have come to concede that it would probably be a spectacular business failure. To describe its cooking would be cause enough to horrify most (“rice in ketchup?!”) Maybe real Americans reading about this would find the notion that such a dish is being called American fried rice offensive — but trust me, it’s really not as bad as it might sound.
So how in the world did American fried rice come to be? The origins of American fried rice is murky, with a couple of competing theories. The first popular theory is that a chef named “Go Jek” who worked at a military base in Udon Thani during the Vietnam war invented this dish to serve to American troops who were stationed in Thailand. For nostalgic American soldiers it was a hit. I think that this is the theory that most Thais, to the extent that they have thought about the origins of this strange dish at all, would subscribe to.
Another is an account by Khunying Sureepan Maneewat, who was running a restaurant at Don Muang Airport. She described its invention in an interview with the Sakul Thai magazine:
“Did you know that the American fried rice that is now so popular came from me? There were ingredients left over, so we had to use it…an airline cancelled on us, but we had already prepared breakfast [for the passengers]: eggs, sausages, so many things. So I said, since we already have fried rice, just put the eggs and the chicken on top. Once we started eating it as an example, the air force officers started ordering it too. An American soldier then said that this looks good, and so I christened it ‘American fried rice.’ Khun Tawee Julapan was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force at the time, and he really liked this name. Some days I would change the meat from sausage to roast chicken or fried beef, depending on what was left over in the kitchen.”
Plausible as well? Perhaps. It could even be the case that both stories are true, and that American fried rice was invented by two different people around the same time period.
Some might say that it is strange that America, hegemonic in many areas but often mocked for its food (I write this even as I fully admit that American fast food is a personal weakness), would have such an enduring influence on a culinary superpower in the form of a common dish. One of my American friends who works in government did say, upon hearing of American fried rice: “This is American soft power at work. It’s tremendous.” Indeed, the only time that I had ever seen this dish named anything differently at a Thai restaurant, it was called khao pad maha amnaj – “great power fried rice.”
And that perhaps explains why American fried rice in itself is not entirely unique. When one thinks of the ubiquity of spam in Korean cuisine, for example, we likewise see the American alliance system at work in the food we consume.
But while great powers rise, their influence can also wane. American fried rice could, in some ways, be seen as a proxy for America’s hold on Thailand, her oldest ally in Asia. As the anthropologist Nattha Chuenwattana has suggested, what were once expensive ingredients that wowed when they were placed together in one plate has instead become a symbol of the declining specialness of American food. “Ham, sausage, and fried chicken have become commonplace staples,” available in street food carts.
In an increasingly multipolar world, as some have come to neglect and place less importance in the US alliance, the once exotic American fried rice has also become a regular dish, unremarkable in its existence. Yet at the same time, the fact that it exists at all is a reminder of the ties that continue to bind together Thailand and America, a representation of a partnership that continues. It is undeniable that America has left an indelible imprint on Thailand, and we still see it in food courts everyday, in the form of American fried rice.
And so you have it. I’ll be waiting for the day a courageous Thai restaurant tries serving this in America. Or perhaps a diner like Denny’s might want to take this on?
I went on Khun Suthichai Yoon’s new English show to discuss the current Thai political landscape. We had a great discussion on the Move Forward Party’s impending dissolution, PM Srettha’s record so far, and Thailand’s “COO-State.”
Decades ago, Thaksin Shinawatra liked to talk about his vision of Thailand as a CEO-state. “A company is a country, a country is a company,” he said in 1997. As As Pasuk Pongpaichit and Chris Baker described it, he “claimed the methods of business management were superior to the traditional practice of bureaucracy or government. He lectured the Cabinet on the latest management theory.” He was not just a businessman who became premier; he was the CEO prime minister.
Not since Thaksin’s fall from power until now has such a prominent businessman taken the role of prime minister. Srettha Thavisin should theoretically also feel like he is another CEO prime minister, hailing as he does from Sansiri. But no one thinks of Srettha along those lines.
Most importantly, people are not sure if he is in charge. “I am in control,” he insisted to TIME in an interview, after it was suggested that he was a mere puppet for Thaksin. Few leaders who are in control feel the need to proclaim that fact to the world.
