UN-COLLUSIVE DEMOCRACY: PARTY RIVALRIES AND POLITICAL INSTABILITY IN THAILAND

Abstract

In the decade since 2005, Thailand has had two coup d’états, six prime ministers, and countless rounds of highly destructive protests from both spectrums of its Red-Yellow divide. Why has Thai politics been so unstable in the 2000s? Viewing this empirical puzzle from the perspective of party rivalries, I argue that emerging ideological differences between the Democrat and pro-Thaksin parties have precluded the formation of “collusive democracy” in Thailand. Dan Slater (2004) theorised collusive democracy as an all-inclusive party cartel in which all major parties are co-opted to collude and share the spoils of office together. I extend his concept to explain Thailand’s political instability. Deep-seated ideological rifts have precluded any possibility for either party to enter the same coalition with their political rival, thus excluding a major party from government at any given time. Deprived of the spoils of office, the opposition seeks to unseat the incumbent by fomenting instability and crisis. This in turn further reinforces the ideological schism between the two feuding parties. Over time, prospects for collusive democracy – and by extension, reconciliation and stability – to emerge in Thailand is rendered increasingly elusive. In this paper, I trace the deepening of ideological rifts between the two parties from the onset of the 2000s to illustrate how the dynamics of their rivalry and in turn, the vicissitudes of Thai politics, have shifted in accordance to these developments