Abstract
For students of democracy, Thailand is a paradox. With no history of colonial rule, a booming economy, and politically active middle class, Thailand seems better positioned for democracy than many of its neighbours. Yet, as the authors of this volume remind us, Thailand has a monarchy that exercises real influence, “has experienced more military coups and drafted more constitutions than any other country,” and since 2006 has experienced two coups, two new constitutions, seven prime ministers, and seen “nine political parties […] dissolved by the courts […].” (p. 2). The subject of this volume is the brief but spectacular career of the latest victim of court-ordered party dissolution, Future Forward, which came a surprisingly strong third in the 2019 election shortly after its founding, only to be banned a year later. Organised into three main chapters on “Leaders,” “Voters,” and “Party,” the book combines interviews – with party leaders, voters, and MPs (including some who later defected) – with detailed analysis of election returns and party materials, to offer a nuanced and insightful look into the party’s formation, functioning, success, and demise. However, the authors aim to do more than chronicle the history of one political party. They aspire to use Future Forward to illustrate larger patterns in Thai politics. In this, they largely succeed. Where they fall short is in addressing the implications of the continuing strength of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party.
The familiar themes of Duncan McCargo’s work run through the book. McCargo is best known for his “network monarchy” model (p. 3), which views the monarchy as exerting profound influence over Thai politics through a network of sympathetic officials and intellectuals. However, this study draws more on an older theme in McCargo’s work – the Janus-faced nature of Thai political reformism. The corruption and particularistic agendas of elected Thai politicians have provided the pretext for military interventions since 1957 and fodder for reformist proposals from both monarchist intellectuals and grassroots activists since the 1980s. On the electoral plane, too, as the authors note (p. 108), Future Forward is successor to two previous attempts to build “transformational” political parties that overcome this particularism – Palang Dharma in the 1980s and Thai Rak Thai, Thaksin Shinawatra’s first party in the early 2000s. However, even though its support base overlaps with Thaksin’s current vehicle, Pheu Thai, programmatically Future Forward more closely resembles reformist thought of the 1990s, which McCargo aptly critiqued for placing its faith in an apolitical leadership of virtue. While Future Forward conceives of virtue very differently from the technocratic vision of some reformers, its focus on political process over concrete policies sets it apart from Thai Rak Thai and Pheu Thai.
The spectre of Thaksin haunts the work. Thaksin’s rise to power on the strength of a populist platform in the wake of the 1997 reform constitution, the durability of his appeal, and the threat he posed to the royalist establishment constitute the essential background for understanding Future Forward. The authors cover much of this ground in an admirably concise introduction.
Chapter One, “Leaders,” tells the story of Future Forward’s founding through biographical sketches of the principal leaders. The most important is the party’s founder, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a wealthy young industrialist with a history of student activism. Thanathorn largely bankrolled the party through personal loans – which was eventually the pretext for disbanding it – and recruited many of its leading figures, often friends from his university days. Thanathorn is presented as a “hyperleader,” a charismatic figure who establishes a personal connection with the electorate, particularly with youth, who began a digital fan club around Thanathorn complete with adoring memes. He recruited Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, a progressive law professor from Thammasat, and Pannika Wanich, a TV news anchor with a master’s in global politics from the London School of Economics and the most prominent female presence in the party. Together, these three formed a triumvirate projected as the party’s collective leadership until they were all suspended from politics. The fourth leader featured in the chapter, Pita Limjaroenrat, took over as leader of Move Forward, the successor party.
Connections to Thaksin run through the sketches. Thanathorn has several business and personal connections to the Shinawatra family (pp. 22–23). Pannika worked for a TV station partly owned by Thaksin’s son (pp. 32–33). Pita came from a political family closely associated with Thaksin’s government (pp. 42–43). These ties are not surprising given the centrality of the Shinawatras to twenty-first-century Thai politics, and quite a few of the connections have jumped the Shinawatra ship. Nonetheless, as the authors note, the connection was “something of an Achilles heel” for the party, and deciding on Future Forward’s relationship to Pheu Thai was the principal strategic decision they faced (p. 23).
As it happened, Thaksin-affiliated forces played a crucial role in boosting Future Forward in the elections. The turning point, as the book emphasises repeatedly, was the effect on Pheu Thai of the mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system, adopted in the (military-inspired) 2016 constitution for precisely this purpose. Since Pheu Thai usually won an overwhelming majority of seats in the north and northeast, it tended to be overrepresented in the parliament relative to its vote share and was the party most likely to be penalised in the party list seats by the compensatory mechanism of the MMP system. To avoid this, Thaksin created a second party, Thai Raksa Chart, to run outside the party’s main strongholds, winning votes that would qualify for party list seats (pp. 8–9). This backfired when Thai Raksa Chart chose the new King’s older sister, Ubolratna Mahidol, as their prime ministerial candidate, which attracted the ire of the Palace and caused Thai Raksa Chart to be banned two weeks before the election, leaving Thaksinite forces with no representation in most southern districts. This vacuum was filled by Future Forward.
The second chapter, “Voters,” contains detailed analysis of the 2019 election returns, profiles of individual voters, and descriptions of the party’s campaign efforts including rallies and digital media outreach. Future Forward’s strength among young and first-time voters is demonstrated in many ways, from the party’s overwhelming presence on social media despite a thin membership base – Thanathorn had over a million followers (pp. 92–93) – to opinion polls establishing Future Forward’s dominance among voters under forty compared to Pheu Thai and the new pro-military party, Palang Pracharat (p. 99). The authors show persuasively that the party’s support came from “first-time voters, urban lower middle-class voters and urbanised villagers” – the last consisting of town dwellers who continued to vote in their rural constituencies but were independent of the traditional rural vote canvassers whom Future Forward avoided (pp. 62–63). For all that support, however, the authors make clear that Thaksin-affiliated vote canvassers put Future Forward over the top in many constituencies that Pheu Thai did not contest (pp. 69–70, 105).
The importance of Thaksin-affiliated vote canvassers to Future Forward’s success highlights the tenuous connection between Future Forward’s platform and its support. Indeed, it appears difficult even to say what its platform was. Deciding on a platform was viewed as akin to “content creation” for a website: the platform or in this case the party “brand” took precedence (p. 82). Thanathorn himself estimated that at most “a fifth of Future Forward voters really understood the party’s policies and values” (p. 83). The party stood in general terms for democratising and decentralising the Thai state. Its most concrete policies concerned reducing the power of the military by abolishing conscription and reducing the military budget to pay for unspecified social welfare measures (pp. 81–83). Future Forward’s timidity on socioeconomic issues may have reflected Thanathorn’s business background – he also opposed progressive taxes and a minimum wage (p. 16) – but were not out of step with the lower middle-class Piyabutr, who in his zeal to reduce transactional voting, wanted to abolish constituency funds, recognised by experienced politicians as important for delivering tangible benefits to voters (p. 98). In the end, the most enduring – and endearing – legacy of Future Forward’s “brand” may have been its social and cultural stances. It stood for diversity and inclusion – prominently displaying minority voices including LGBTQ activists at rallies (p. 89) – and against traditional Thai habits of deference to elders and social superiors (pp. 113–115).
The third chapter, “Party,” fleshes out the idea that the Future Forward’s “brand” – its general unconventionality, heavy reliance on digital media, and penchant for performative events that highlighted critical issues but did little to build coalitions – was central to its appeal as well as its weakness. This chapter covers the widest terrain, from candidate selection procedures to parliamentary performance and even extra-parliamentary mobilisation after the party was disbanded. Candidate selection processes revealed the party’s organisational weakness: Future Forward opted to select constituency candidates through an online primary that was vulnerable to manipulation by politicians recruiting their followers as members to boost their chances (pp. 120–121). On the other hand, party leaders – and especially Pannika – showed a flair for staging public events like a mock no-confidence vote, streamed over the internet that kept the party’s visibility up after the top leaders were expelled (pp. 139–141). Ultimately, however, what stands out about Future Forward’s parliamentary performance was its inability to make common cause with other opposition parties, especially Pheu Thai, who were wary of antagonising the government (p. 142).
The concluding chapter, “Future,” traces the aftermath of Future Forward’s dissolution. Thanathorn and other banned leaders have left party politics to the Move Forward leadership – who retain a rump of their original parliamentary strength (pp. 158–161) – launching the Progressive Movement, an effort to promote their ideas through civil society. The movement continues to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of an organisational model that relies heavily on digital media. On the one hand, they marked their arrival with a spectacular guerrilla laser show across Bangkok, projecting anti-government slogans commemorating the anniversary of the violent 2010 crackdown on massive demonstrations by pro-Thaksin Red Shirts (p. 164). On the other, the movement’s official online launch was low key (p. 162), while its reliance on digital media meant it could not launch the kinds of street protests that could truly threaten the establishment (pp. 157–158).
The authors conclude by sketching four possible futures, acknowledging that other scenarios are possible. This is the weakest part of the book. The scenarios are given self-explanatory labels – Pax Thanathorn, Status Quo Continues, Pax Establishment, and Perfect Storm – but the brief descriptions offer no sense of how any of them might transpire and contain no acknowledgement of the continued strength and relevance of Thaksinism. Neither do the scenarios – or the book itself – explore why in the 2019 elections Palang Pracharath, which overtly sought to co-opt Pheu Thai’s populist positioning with its own welfare policies, emerged as the principal conservative voice. The success of both Pheu Thai and Palang Pracharath points to the continued salience of populist welfare policies and other bread-and-butter issues. The evidence does not support a view that digitally mobilised urban youth motivated by abstract ideas will become the dominant opposition force in Thai politics. Rather, it suggests that, as in most democracies, economic issues will continue to dominate.
Then again, the authors might have been prescient. At the time of this writing, Thailand has been rocked for months by student protests, involving students as young as high school age, calling for everything from a less authoritarian atmosphere in school to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha’s resignation and even restrictions on the power of the monarchy. While McCargo and Chattharakul do not directly address the new student movement, their book provides the best available window into what might be motivating the protesters. For that reason, as well as for the sheer detail and sophistication of their analysis, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in Thai politics, and it is highly valuable to scholars of emerging democracies.