Phak or Phuak? The Questionable Development of Partisan Identity in Thailand

Something certainly appears to have changed in Thai politics. The country once noted for its contented citizenry and “politically inert social groups” (Anek 1988) is awash in a sea of red and yellow shirts, and teetering, many fear, on the brink of civil war. Since the end of 2005 Thailand has been the poster-child for political instability, with 4 elections (with a fifth likely by year’s end), 3 constitutions, 4 forced party dissolutions (with a fifth threatening), and 6 different heads of government. Explanations of the recent turmoil tend to emphasize the effect of new levels of mass mobilization, the gap between rich and poor, urban and rural, the changing nature of the monarchy, or personality conflicts. These all play a role, to be sure. However, the catalyst that has turned long-simmering tensions into an increasingly intractable political conflict is a change to the Thai party system. Specifically, in contrast to the partisan dealignment or realignment in much of the world, we have witnessed the nascent development of partisan identities among Thai voters over the past decade. This mass partisan alignment, as much as anything, has upset the equilibrium of Thai politics — transforming what was once an inefficient but modest-stakes game of political horse-trading into a zero sum game with extremely high stakes.Demonstrating that Thai voters have indeed begun to develop these new partisan attachments is challenging. First, public opinion surveys are a relatively new phenomenon in Thailand so we lack the data to be able to track individual reports of party attachment over time. In fact, those political surveys we do have that reach back into the 1990s rarely, if ever, bothered to ask about voter’s attitudes towards political parties — a fact noteworthy in itself. Second, Thai politics and the Thai party system is admittedly a moving target (not the least because of the constitutional revisions and the fact that the courts keep disbanding the largest political parties) so drawing conclusions is risky business. Nevertheless, the purpose of his paper is to make the case that a significant change in the way voters relate to parties has occurred in Thailand, and then to briefly explore the potential consequences of this change for Thai politics generally if this change takes root. To do this I examine what public opinion data there is available on citizen attitudes towards parties, but find that the inferences we can draw from those data are limited due to the paucity of comparable data, and the mixed results from the data we do have. To supplement public opinion data I leverage features of Thailand’s last 3 electoral systems that provide clues as to what motivates voters when they enter the ballot box — party label (phak), or connections to individuals or groups/factions (phuak) below the level of the party. I demonstrate that electoral patterns are consistent with the nascent development of stronger party labels among voters in the populous North and Northeast. In fact, understanding the changes to the nature of party identity helps resolve an empirical and theoretical puzzle — namely, why the reversion to key features of the pre-1997 electoral system after the 2006 coup failed produce greater party system fragmentation. I also weigh the two most compelling competing explanations for the electoral patterns we observe (polarization, and personality) and discuss the observable implications of each.