Władza niekolonialna: studium przypadku. Historia Tajlandii po polsku

The article reviews the Polish edition of the classical synthesis of Thai history written by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit. While both the book and the translation are of high quality and worth reading, the former contains a few omissions and dubious opinions, and the latter some mistakes.Artykuł omawia polskie wydanie klasycznej syntezy historii Tajlandii pióra Chrisa Bakera i Pasuk Phongpaichit. Jakkolwiek książka jest wysokiej jakości i warta lektury, a przekład oddaje jej sprawiedliwość, zwrócić należy uwagę na kwestie pominięte w pracy i wyrażane w niej wątpliwe opinie oraz na pewne błędy w tłumaczeniu

The Politics of Economic Reform in Thailand: Crisis and Compromise

What explains the varying responses by Thai governments to changes in the international economic environment over time. To answer this the paper emphasizes the link between the nature of the political structure/policymaking environment and the government’s reform capacity. Thailand’s political structure typically undercuts the government’s reform capacity in two way. First, it is difficult to get needed reforms on the political agenda. Second, it is even harder to push reforms through the policy process to implementation. During the 1980s, Thailand was able to overcome some of the challenges inherent in its political system via an informal compromise between party politicians and technocratic reformers. This ‘pork-policy compromise’ gave the government the capacity to adopt certain reforms—reforms that laid the foundation for the economic boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Changes in the political structure in the late 1980s brought an end to this compromise, thereby reducing the government’s reform capacity.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40024/3/wp638.pd

Chris Baker & Pasuk Phongpaichit, éditeurs et traducteurs, The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat

Comme l’on découvre assez peu de nouvelles sources pour mieux connaître l’histoire ancienne de la Thaïlande, c’est à de nouvelles analyses des sources déjà connues que les historiens s’emploient depuis deux ou trois décennies. L’historien anglais Chris Baker, installé en Thaïlande depuis 1979, et son épouse, Pasuk Phongpaichit (ผาสุก พงษ์ไพจิตร), professeur d’économie (aujourd’hui à la retraite) de l’université Chulalongkorn de Bangkok, se sont lancés dans la traduction en anglais de textes l..

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Chris Baker & Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya. Siam in the Early Modern World

Ce livre qui couvre toute la période de l’histoire de la Thaïlande pendant laquelle la ville d’Ayutthaya fait figure de capitale (1351-1767) est la première synthèse de type universitaire en langue occidentale sur le sujet. Il y a quelques années, on pouvait plutôt attendre un tel ouvrage de la part de chercheurs thaïlandais spécialisés depuis longtemps sur cette époque comme Nidhi Eoseewong (université de Chiang Mai), Charnvit Kasetsiri (université Thammasat), Dhiravat Na Pombejra (universit..

Book Review:A History of Thailand (2nd Ed.)

A History of Thailand 1st edition was published in 2005, and it soon attracted public attention and was reprinted twice in the same year. Reprinted once every year thereafter, the book’s 2nd edition came out in 2009 and 2010, followed by the third edition in June, 2014. The book received numerous positive reviews from both Thai and foreign scholars and publishers. This indicates the phenomenal popularity of the book

The role of farmers groups in Thai politics : a case study of domestic and global pressure on rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers

The thesis studies the political participation of Thai farmers and focuses on two main factors, namely the domestic and the external impacts, which inform the case studies of rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups. Overall, the research has established that farmers groups have felt the impacts of domestic factors far more strongly than external factors. Furthermore, through comparative studies in relation to the case studies of rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups in Thailand, differences emerged between these three Thai farmers groups, in terms of the degree to which domestic factors impacted on their political participation. The theories of Western interest groups are reviewed, in order to examine their applicability to explaining farmers groups formation in Thailand. The concepts of 'collective benefits' and 'selective incentives', which were used by Mancur Olson have been adopted as the main theoretical framework. With reference to this, the research has established that selective incentives have played a highly significant role in Thai farmers groups formation, and concludes that the problems of mobilisation, which relate to rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups, have been solved primarily through the provision of a range of selective incentives by the farmers groups themselves. In order to classify the differing levels of political participation of Thai farmers groups, the analytical framework provided by Grant Jordan, Darren Halpin, and William Maloney has been utilised. Accordingly, the rice and potato farmers groups are classified as 'potential pressure participants', whilst the sugarcane farmers group is classified as an 'interest group', which has enabled an examination of their political participation through the Western concept of the policy network/community framework. In order to make the Western policy network/community framework more applicable to the policy-making process in Thailand, the specific, dominant characteristics of the Thai political culture, namely the patronage system and the operation of both vote-buying and corruption are included in the analysis. This conceptual stretching does not significantly affect the original concept of the framework and the way in which it was intended to be applicable, because it already includes informal relationships such as those, which exist within the policy network/community framework. This understanding is an important aspect, which forms a part of the theoretical contribution to the discipline of international political economy and to the arena of Thai political studies. The policy network/community framework provides a new conceptual lens in the study of the political participation of Thai farmers groups. Accordingly, these arguments promote the opportunity to consider alternative frameworks in the analysis of the political participation of Thai farmers groups, and group participation across civil society more generally. The study of the political participation of Thai farmers has utilised empirical evidence, which illustrates the successes of farmers' interest groups in both Japan and the United Kingdom, in order to explain the relative successes and failures of Thai farmers. In contrast to the experiences of Western and notably Japanese farmers groups, in many respects Thai farmers are largely excluded from the policy-making process, with the only exception in Thailand being certain sugarcane farmers groups. The thesis concludes that the political participation of farmers groups in Thailand has generally been affected by domestic impacts rather than by external impacts, and that their influence in domestic policy-making has been, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future at least, somewhat limited

Entrenching the Minority: The Constitutional Court in Thailand\u27s Political Conflict

Since 2006, Thailand has witnessed an unprecedented surge of judicial activism from the Constitutional Court to scrutinize elected politicians in the name of the rule of law. Democracy, argued Constitutional Court judges, could only be consolidated if the rule of law was maintained. But examination of several high-profile constitutional cases suggested that the Constitutional Court was actually working on behalf of the powerful elite minority to obstruct the democratic process under the pretext of protecting the rule of law. This antagonistic position brewed resentment and violence which jeopardized the Constitutional Court’s legitimacy as a neutral political arbiter. The 2014 coup d’etat showed that once again the country has failed to consolidate its democratization. This failure suggests that the Constitutional Court’s notion of the rule of law might not be compatible with the notion of electoral democracy