Civil Society and Good Governance: A New Chapter in Thailand’s Political Reform?

Abstract

The Asian economic crisis of the 1990s raised some fundamental questions about the future of politics and economic development of the region. Much of the analysis in the past had pointed to the fact that although Southeast Asia had achieved high levels of economic growth, political development had lagged far behind economic success. The so-called East Asian development model claimed a clear link between economic growth and semi-authoritarianism, which contradicted the Western neo-liberal notion of compatibility between economic development and political democratization. These differences in views are also reflected in the contradictory analyses of how the crisis emerged. Neo-liberal analysts claim that the failure to introduce pro-market reforms strengthened prevailing cronyism, which eventually led to the economic crisis. A vast majority of Asian academics believe, however, that too much and too rapid liberalization, resulting in a highly speculative and irrational market, contributed to the collapse of the financial institutions in the region. Some of them also claim that the current process of political liberalization played a role in deepening the crisis. In much of Southeast Asia rapid democratization, which took power away from the state, made government institutions incapable of changing the direction of the economy (Lim 1998; MacDonald 1998).