Civil society and democratization in Thailand, 1973-1992.

摘要

Between 1973-1992, Thailand has made three transitions to democracy. While the democratization process in 1973 and 1991-92 involved mass demonstrations that forced powerful generals out of political office, the military itself initiated the 1977 transition without any organized pressure from civil society. Moreover, the 1977 transition took much longer to unfold, and produced a regime that was considerably less democratic than the transitions of 1973 and 1991-92.; What accounts for the difference between the 1973 and 1991-92 transitions on the one hand, and the 1977 transition on the other? I hypothesize that the strength of civil society affected the nature of the three transitions. Since the degree of democracy achieved by the 1977 transition was significantly less than that of the 1973 and 1991-92, I further argue that the strength of civil society before a transition can have material consequences for the degree to which the regime actually changes and the level of democracy realized afterwards. I will provide a methodology for measuring the strength of civil society, which I will apply to Thailand's three recent democratic transitions, and show how the strength of civil society influenced the way that the transitions occurred and thus the degree of democracy that resulted.; I also demonstrate that civil society in Thailand did not develop in a linear fashion, but varies across time, space, and sector. In particular, the state had a crucial role in determining the strength and shape of civil society. Finally, I show that the growing strength of civil society in Thailand did not have unequivocally democratic implications. While the rise of student organizations, non-governmental organizations, and labor unions proved critical to the democratic transitions of 1973 and 1992, the increasing strength of business associations had little impact on the democratization process. Organized capital made virtually no contribution to any of the three democratic transitions that occurred from 1973-92. Any analysis of the relationship between civil society and democratization must therefore consider the fluctuations in civil society strength across time, space, and sector, as well as the differential contribution to the transition process that each of its sectors makes.