Abstract
In Thailand in the early 1990s, several new organizations appeared to represent rural demands. Their emergence reflected a relaxation of Cold War era repression, but also a transformation in the rural political economy which brought village and city closer together, and which created new groups and leaders with a rural base but with exposure to the urban economy and culture. In 1995, this movement split. Groups of more secure farmers joined lobby-style organizations which exploited opportunities opening up in parliamentary politics. Groups of less secure farmers networked together as the Assembly of the Poor under a strategy of mass agitation. The Assembly's campaigns took place not only in the village and on the street but in the public space created by the media and public debate. In 1997, the Assembly's 99-day protest in Bangkok won unprecedented concessions. Subsequently, the urban-biased Democrat Party government reversed these concessions, provoking a new debate on rural strategy. This article sets the Assembly in the debate on rural popular movements.
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