Non-governmental development organizations (NGDOs) and democracy in Thailand: The 1992 Bangkok uprising

This thesis examines the role of non-governmental developmental organizations (NGDOs) in the democratization of Thailand during the 1980s and early 1990s. NGDOs are part of the Non-governmental Organization (NGOs) movement, but they distinguish themselves from the other NGOs in adopting a mobilization strategy seeking to change social relationship.;Several theories are popular in explaining the transition of Thailand from "half-democracy" to full democracy. They are the Bourgeois Revolution, the Modernization and the New Social Movement Theories. This thesis argues that none of them satisfactorily accounts for the democratic dynamics in Thailand. The Thai bourgeois class and the provincial elite (the jao phors) were interested in semi-authoritarianism, not democracy. The Modernization theorists single-mindedly focus on the middle classes, thus emasculating the contributions of peasants and workers, who spearhead the democratic struggle in Thailand. The NSM theorists ignore the "modernist" commitments of Thai NGOs, namely democracy, justice and equality, and inadvertently espouse a totality of non-violence actions to be the form of democratic struggle in postmodernity.;This thesis maintains that the rise of the NGDOs is closely linked to the political economy of Thailand. The student uprisings and the communist insurgency in the 1970s have forced the ruling elite to articulate a hegemony based on parliamentary election and development. NGDOs pursued a populist coalition politics that managed to generate enough political pressure to reverse a number of government policies by the late 1980s. Taking advantage of this wave of social mobilization, politicians asserted their independence vis-a-vis the military, and postured themselves as the true representatives of the people.;The origin of the February 1991 coup has to be traced to the ascendancy of these forces from below, which forced the military elite to intervene in order to abort the democratic trend and to prevent the marginalization of their interests. Not surprisingly, shortly after the military elite seized power, it took actions to undermine the organizational bases of labour and peasants. The success of the May 1992 uprising lies in the efforts of the NGDOs in linking the resistance of the lower classes with that of the urban middle classes, who have been deeply disillusioned and offended by the unfulfilled promises of the military elite to clean up corruption and vote-buying. The failure of the military leaders to rebuild their hegemony left open a glaring gap of promise and reality which prompted the masses to rise up to make the ideological claims authentic.