Bosses, bullets and ballots : electoral violence and democracy in Thailand, 1975-2011

Abstract

My research examines the relationship between political violence and democratic structures in Thailand since 1975. To examine this relationship, I focus specifically on violence in Thai electoral politics. The main objective of my research is to identify the primary factors and processes that enable or foment violence in elections and to explain the variation in Thai electoral violence across time and space. Since democratization began in the mid-1970s, electoral processes in Thailand have been tainted with various forms of violence. Apart from targeted assassinations, other forms of election-related violence include attacking polling stations on election day, bombing candidates' and vote canvassers' houses, threatening election-related personnel, burning of political parties' headquarters, and post-election mass protests. In the last fourteen national general elections from January 1975 to July 2011, including several local ones within the same period, hundreds of people have died or been injured as a result of election-related violence. Arising from this are two important elements of variation that call for investigation. First, the patterns and degrees of violence have shifted over time. Election-related violence first manifested itself in the 1975 and 1976 elections. The intensity and degree of violence increased in the 1980s and remained relatively constant until the late 1990s. Thai society then observed a sharp rise in violence in the 2001 and 2005 elections. Despite predictions that the deep political polarization which occurred after the 2006 military coup would intensify electoral competition and produce higher levels of bloodshed during polling, electoral violence declined in 2007 and 2011. In explaining the changes in forms and patterns of violence over time, I focus on the patrimonial characteristics of the state, the changes in electoral and party systems, the impact of decentralization, and the relative importance of ideological politics. These factors help to explain cross-temporal variation in electoral violence nationwide. Second, electoral violence in Thailand is unevenly distributed in spatial terms. National-level factors cannot account for the very substantial geographical variation in levels of violence across the country, as data show that some provinces are more violent than others. Since electoral violence in Thailand is province-specific, my research focuses specifically on the local factors that promote violent conflict. In short, rather than merely examining the macro-political picture at the national level, this research explores micro-political-economic conditions and micro-power structure at the provincial level of Thai politics, and the way in which national and local power interact. I compare three provinces harboring chronic electoral violence, namely Phrae, Nakhon Sawan, and Nakhon Si Thammarat, with three provinces that are relatively peaceful: Phetchaburi, Buriram, and Sa Kaeo. Each case represents different regional locations, socio-economic conditions, and political environments of provincial politics in Thailand. Collectively, they illuminate the dynamics of political contestation and violence in other provinces throughout the country.