Tom Pepinsky

Category: Politics

  • Not Going to Bangkok

    A good friend of mine is currently in Bangkok doing some exploratory field research (he studies how politicians mobilize the poor). There was a point a couple months ago when we considered whether or not it would be possible for us to meet up while I was here, with me flying up there to see him. Needless to say, we’ve decided that that’s not a good idea. Too bad, because I’ve never been to Bangkok before, but visiting there right now is really flirting with disaster.

    From time to time I get asked what the conflict in Thailand is all about. That’s one of those questions that seems like it has a simple answer, but if you really start digging you realize how hard it is to boil it down to something simple. The proximate issue is the legacy of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was extremely popular among poor and rural citizens but who alienated the middle- and upper-class establishments, in particular in Bangkok. Thaksin was also widely accused of being corrupt (he is fantastically rich), and of being too violent in his campaigns against drug dealers and other enemies of Thai society (he was once a policeman). Thaksin was ousted by a coup in 2006; when the military allowed new elections, a candidate widely considered to be a Thaksin proxy won. Anti-Thaksin groups (“yellow shirts”) eventually mobilized big demonstrations that led to that new government’s ouster, with the help of some of their allies in the courts. The current PM, Abhisit Vejjajiva, represents the yellow shirt faction. Now, pro-Thaksin groups (“red shirts”) who believe the current political order to be illegitimate, are trying to bring the current government down. At the moment, it appears that they have failed…but no one thinks that this is over.

    Red Shirt Rally (source: Straits Times)

    5-20-10

     

    It’s tempting to say, then, that this all starts with Thaksin, that it’s a debate about his legacy. But it goes at least two levels deeper. The first level is about money and representation in Thai politics. The establishment in Thailand since, well, the 1600s or so has had a heavy bias towards comparatively well-to-do urban constituencies. Poor, rural Thais, especially those in the northeast, have always felt marginalized. Thaksin was the first national politician whose policies really targeted those marginalized Thais, and that made him genuinely popular. And because politics is a zero-sum game, strengthening this marginalized group means threatening the urban middle-class establishment. I have no doubt that if Thaksin were allowed to return to Thailand and to compete in another election, he would win handily.

    The second level, though, is about what democratic theorists call “loyal opposition.” Stable, consolidated democracies have what are known as loyal oppositions–factions that lose election but who don’t then overthrow the system in response to having lost. They are the opposition, but they are loyal to the principles of political competition. Thailand has never developed a system whereby the losing side (whoever it is) respects the outcome as legitimate. That means that someone always believes that the system is illegitimate, and will take to the streets to push for revolutionary change. I suspect that the main reason why a norm of loyal opposition never developed is because the Thai king has for too long intervened in Thai politics to solve intractable problems by fiat rather than forcing Thai politicians to come to acceptable agreements on their own. Oh, and the fact that the Thai military keeps launching coups (after Bolivia, no country has had more) doesn’t help either. Instead of working to come to acceptable agreements, both sides look to the king, the military, or both, to solve their problems for them.

    Combine the absence of a norm of loyal opposition with severe imbalances in representation, an old king who is too willing to step into politics, a coup-happy military, and a popular (if flawed) former leader, and you have the recipe for a never-ending war of attrition between two camps that sincerely believe that their opponents have no right to participate in any kind of legitimate government. This gets worse before it gets better.

  • Building Singapore

    Due to the relative lack of anything interesting, I will not be writing about Singaporean politics while I'm here. Suffice it to say, the news this morning reported that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew went to China to have a nice dinner at Jiang Zemin's house, and that PM Lee Hsien Loong had a productive meeting with Indonesia's President Yudhoyono.

    But that doesn't mean I can't reflect on history a bit. So here goes. It is a peculiarity among American scholars of Southeast Asia to say that you "don't like" or "don't enjoy" Singapore. Part of it is that Singapore is so developed and modern (almost postmodern, really) that it doesn't really feel like Southeast Asia. There's no villages. You can drink the water right out of the tap. The subway is clean and organized and goes wherever you need to go, and moreover, it interacts seamlessly with the bus. Something like 1/3 of all residents of Singapore are foreigners…probably more if you count the many domestic workers. Basically everyone you meet speaks English.

    But there's something more than that. Rather than just indifference–sort of like what China scholars think about Hong Kong, which is quite similar–I detect an active disdain for Singapore among many SE Asianists. Many resist coming here, or complain about it in non-specific terms as a place that they "don't like." I've never shared that sentiment myself. I've always found Singapore to be interesting. It's not an old country, as independence from Malaysia came in 1965. When independence came, no one thought it was a viable political entity, a tiny, largely Chinese, English speaking island sandwiched between two really big non-Chinese neighbors. But it's worked out well for Singapore. And for someone like me who wonders how in the world some countries get to be prosperous while others don't, Singapore's amazing success over the past 40 years can't help but seem interesting.

    I thought about this as I rode across the island/country today on my way to the think tank where I'm based. It reinforced to me just how small the country is. Its land area is only 700 square kilometers total. At the widest part it's maybe 20 miles or so wide. Despite that, it has to have all the things that a regular country has, like for instance a training ground for its very large military. (From my hotel room I've been enjoying watching the Singaporean Air Force F15s practice their maneuvers.) Gazing out the window of the bus, I had to think, what were the Singaporeans thinking when they became independent? Sure, they had a better go of it than most newly independent countries, being located at a vital trade route, having had good institutions built under the British, and being small enough to govern pretty easily. But still, all that can give you some economic advantages, but doesn't build a state for you. And my impression is that the independence generation here had a laser-sharp focus on making sure that Singapore would be able to fend for itself as a country. These guys woke up every morning, went downstairs, and built a modern state. That's pretty cool to think about–and that's obviously flipping hard, given that few others newly independent states were anywhere near as successful, and a good number of them failed spectacularly.

    So given that Singapore was successful at the very thing that its leaders and its people feared the most, and at creating the type of prosperity that so many other Southeast Asians dream about, why the disdain for Singapore among my colleagues? I have a couple of ideas, but nothing conclusive. One is that Singapore is actually a relatively conservative place, both socially conservative and also quite materialist and certainly constructed to appeal to your average Australian or British tourist. Related to that, perhaps its fact that the ruling People's Action Party–formerly an explicitly socialist opposition party–morphed into a party of big business and single party, pro-establishment politics. Perhaps its the explicit classism that is rather evident at times (the people at ISEAS where shocked that I took the bus there). Perhaps its a romanticized version of what Asia is "really" supposed to be like, that is to say, exotic and strange, not comfortable and familiar. I'm not sure what it is. But even if you don't like Singapore because it reminds you of any other generic cookie-cutter modern megacity, I think it's unquestionably important to think about how Singapore got this way.