Variations on a Theme

Abstract

Lipset and Rokkan argued that in the West the societal cleavages that developed out of the national revolution and the industrial revolution created tensions that shaped party systems. They also argued that the critical moment for the establishment of party systems came before mass mobilization; after that time, even changes to election laws had little effect. In applying these hypotheses to the multiple transitions to democracy in Thailand, I find that despite a lack of continuity of specific political parties there was remarkable continuity of the political tendencies created by social cleavages manifest in various short-lived parties. However, in the late 1970s, constitutional engineering and harsh suppression did shift the Thai party system out of the patterns that had survived multiple coups and transitions in the past. More recently there are signs of a return to the political tendencies created by the two revolutions.