“Re-examining the Political Landscape of Thailand”: The 2023 Election Results and “the Tale of Two Democracies”
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Abstract
This paper argues that the results of the 2023 general election, for the first time, conclusively reject the “Tale of Two Democracies”–an influential explanation of Thai politics and election results proposed by Anek Laothamatas (1995). On the contrary, this article proposes that a research paper entitled “Re-examining the Political Landscape of Thailand” by Apichat Satitniramai, Yukti Mukdawijitra, and Niti Pawakapan (2013) provides a better explanation for the result of this election. This set of research proposed that during the past thirty years, the socio-economic changes in Thailand had fundamentally and economically eroded clientelism, which was the core idea of the Tale of Two Democracies. These changes gave rise to the new ‘lower middle class,’ who are no longer under the spell of patron–client relations. This election shows that the earlier lower class now turned into a ‘new citizen,’ an active political force.
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