UPDATE: I have just formally resigned from Reuters to publish my story on the U.S. embassy cables on Thailand. They refused to run it, because of the risks. Story is still being finished and will be published freely to everybody next week. Follow my Twitter feed @zenjournalist for more updates. Best wishes.
Mihnea, you sure do get around. Great interview, and I hope to see some more contributions of fiction from Thailand at New Asian writing. Anything related to the political situation at the moment would be very interesting.
The party list system of Germany, at least, is tied to the constituency voting system and party-list candidates are elected in direct proportion to the number of constituency seats won by each party. I’d imagine other countries are the same. There’s a paper at the Prajadipok Institute by a German explaining the un-relation of the Thai and German systems.
That still doesn’t speak to the choice of who is on the “party lists’, but at least it unifies the election process. The “new, improved!” Thai system is like have two parallel elections with two separate constituencies drawn from the electorate.
One election is for “party insiders” and the other for “the people”. I’d imagine that, to the extent that a vote can be bought, it’s easier to buy a “party-list” vote than a constituency vote. And that can have disastrous consequences.
I think there is much too much attention paid to parties. I think they should certainly be allowed to arise if they have constituencies, but I think penciling their existence in to the design of a parliamentary system brings about an unwarranted break in symmetry. Why?
Why have parties… other than to have a system like we have now?
Yes, this is true. This is what I was told by founders of New Mandala.
However, I support Andrew’s urge. Although I wont be there at the Thai studies conference in Melbourne, I’d like to recommend scholars to submit their proposals.
#6
I guess that you would also call the election systems of Germany, New-Zealand, Japan, South Korea etc. “inherently undemocratic.” There really is much more to be said if you want to do justice to the principal issue of democratic representation, in particular regarding the difference between majoritarian and proportional concepts of representation. This includes the mixed-member options of mixed-member majoritarian (Thailand, Japan), and mixed-member proportional (Germany, NZ) systems.
The path may be “well worn and argumentative”. That’s the point. Repeated and sustained criticism at every opportunity is a very deliberate and effective tactic over time. If you’re tired of hearing it, imagine how the other side is feeling. It works. When it doesn’t, violence often follows. So it’s better to do a thorough job with the criticism first.
While I admire Natthawud’s patience (we’re a trying bunch to be sure), the efforts of commentators here restored some balance to this conference by putting its backers firmly on notice. Just as you will be very very careful about what you write in your submission, they will now be a lot more careful about what they censor. This is an improvement to the previous situation where you would have been very very careful about what you write in your submission …full stop.
It takes genius or an artistic sensibility to be able to label a junta as a junta. Doctor Dubious of Dubai’s finest hour might well be the time he first noticed that there was a junta living next door and figured they might give him some business if he first crossed their palms with other people’s gold.
Most of us have so long tacitly accepted that we lived in a region beset by backstabbing juntas that we plain forgot to actually call a spade a spade. Not that it would have ultimately mattered in the slightest whether we called them juntas or geniuses. Regardless of the depth of their ‘sin’, they are all capable of being pardoned or amnestied if they make the requisite ‘payments’. Keep drinking the Dumex geniuses!
I have, somewhat reluctantly, approved several new comments on this post. I was reluctant because I don’t want this thread to go down the same well-worn and argumentative path as the other thread where this conference was discussed. Of course it is entirely reasonable for the involvement of the Embassy to raise some concerns (see Pavin’s article referred to above). But the organisers have made it clear that abstracts/papers will be considered on their merits and that the Embassy will not be involved in the selection process. As for the risks involved in speaking publically about the royal family – that is an issue anywhere, not just at the Melbourne conference. The organisers cannot do anything about that. So, again, I encourage people to submit proposals to the conference on a diverse range of topics. I certainly plan to be there. It should be fun. AW
This party list system, totally de-coupled from constituency voting and any popular choice of candidates, is inherently undemocratic, coming unsurprisingly, from the inherently undemocratic Democrat party.
And yet Thailand has a mix of both proportional and constituency voting which it seems to me is far more democratic than say the UK where a move to Australian style alternative vote failed to win the electorate in the recent referendum.
Founders of New Mandala said in the interview: “The embassy indicated to some members of the ANU community that they should not expect cooperation from Thai government agencies or officials in Thailand, given that they are from the ANU. Thai students, both at ANU and elsewhere, have been warned not to have contact with New Mandala. Those associated with New Mandala are not welcome in Thailand. It has also been reported that the ANU was offered Thai government funding for a Thai studies centre, on the unstated but obvious condition that New Mandala’s critical activities cease. The ANU declined the offer and, as reported, the financial support went to Melbourne University instead.”
I’ve been using that since the coup, so does a lot of guys around here. Junta is the proper word.
Perhaps you are right. Maybe I haven’t heard enough of Thaksin’s English recently. It’s just I can’t remember him using it before and during the interview he used it like a word he had just learned.
It probably does have a more emotive effect on the international audience than just using the usual coup leaders or whatever. I will still put it down as a sign of Amsterdam’s input for now although I’m quite prepared to be corrected.
How about his reaction to human rights abuses when he was prime minister? Did you feel he stumbled also?
This party list system, totally de-coupled from constituency voting and any popular choice of candidates, is inherently undemocratic, coming unsurprisingly, from the inherently undemocratic Democrat party.
The defects of the one-vote, winner-take all system are described as Duverger’s “Law”, and can most-easily be remedied by having run-off elections.
Getting rid of party-lists of candidates chosen by party elites in smoke-filled backrooms and instituting run-off elections are two easy steps to take that will allow real peoples’ parties and candidates to emerge.
LesAbbey #2, how is it clever? I’ve been using that since the coup, so does a lot of guys around here. Junta is the proper word. Unless you want to pronounce it fully as in ‘Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy’, which is an earful, not to mention full of baloney.
Top that!, I thought. This is a superb review and commentary on area studies. Where do we go from here? One side concerns what people want to learn about SEAsia, and it seems to me that some discussion can come out of Montesano’s review of Race’s War Comes to Long An and the interview with Race. At the time of the VN war, the potential audience was more keen on the alternative positions of Popkin and Scott about the peasantry. Now we have Scott on the region as a contest between highland freedom and lowland subjugation, that people seem quite keen on.
To me, the most intriguing and stimulating recent work on the Greater Middle Mekong is by linguist Nick Enfield, for instance that Lao, Khmer, and Cham languages have more in common with each other than they do with their supposed and separate linguistic relatives. Coming to a sense of that takes time, regional grounding, luck, and possibly requires that one lose one’s academic bearings because it is so counterintuitive (given what we imagine about language families). “getting lost” is not the kind of advise that a scholar is looking for, on the way to an understanding of SEAsia (or anywhere).
Within area studies, says O’Connor, we are in the same room but not on the same page. I was looking at some of the scholarship on Laos in the 1950s through 70s, and it seemed obvious that French, Japanese, and American scholarship was asking very different questions, each side in some ways prospecting for a sense of themselves in the world, even if writing on the Tai Dam, Yao, Hmong, and so on. So, I think, the emphasis on fieldwork, comparisons, and a regional view is well justified, but we also should be doing fieldwork and comparisons on the scholarship, and perhaps accentuate that with some sense of what audiences are interested in reading — in Thailand, France, Japan, Australia, the US, and so on. That is, looking at SEAsia (or its parts) is only one part of where we may want to go. Some area studies may have shown that “unilateral military intervention is impractical, implausible, and even mad” but this only matters if we see ourselves in that same world. But I think that O’Connor is right to insist that we ought to be looking for what brings SEAsians together in something constructive — what makes even enemies collaborate, say — which requires a shift in scholarly priorities from smart to useful and even caring. Who’ll buy that?
My congratulations to Natthawud (or someone else) for finally doing what should have been done from the outset and providing a comprehensible account of the upcoming conference in legible English.
The inclusion of Pasuk is a clever PR move no doubt adding the veneer of credibility to the venture. She (and her erstwhile partner), whilst a fine academic, is however notoriously anti-Thaksin, and therefore fails to mute the thrust of the criticisms in the previous post-ing.
I wonder also if the Chula reresentative is in the mould of the despicable Panitan or those who stabbed Ji in the back… Questions remain…
Yes, but still no guarantees from the Thai Embassy or Thai government that people attending the conference who happen to write, discuss or comment on the everyday and constant involvement of the Thai Royal Family and monarchy in Thai politics and the present situation in Thailand, will not be recorded, noted and later subjected to arrest should they visit Thailand under the draconian Lese Majeste and Computer Crimes laws in place and being harshly enforced in present-day Thailand.
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Thai monarchy and Wikileaks
UPDATE: I have just formally resigned from Reuters to publish my story on the U.S. embassy cables on Thailand. They refused to run it, because of the risks. Story is still being finished and will be published freely to everybody next week. Follow my Twitter feed @zenjournalist for more updates. Best wishes.
New Asian writing
Mihnea, you sure do get around. Great interview, and I hope to see some more contributions of fiction from Thailand at New Asian writing. Anything related to the political situation at the moment would be very interesting.
Thailand’s electoral rules
The party list system of Germany, at least, is tied to the constituency voting system and party-list candidates are elected in direct proportion to the number of constituency seats won by each party. I’d imagine other countries are the same. There’s a paper at the Prajadipok Institute by a German explaining the un-relation of the Thai and German systems.
That still doesn’t speak to the choice of who is on the “party lists’, but at least it unifies the election process. The “new, improved!” Thai system is like have two parallel elections with two separate constituencies drawn from the electorate.
One election is for “party insiders” and the other for “the people”. I’d imagine that, to the extent that a vote can be bought, it’s easier to buy a “party-list” vote than a constituency vote. And that can have disastrous consequences.
I think there is much too much attention paid to parties. I think they should certainly be allowed to arise if they have constituencies, but I think penciling their existence in to the design of a parliamentary system brings about an unwarranted break in symmetry. Why?
Why have parties… other than to have a system like we have now?
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
Thailand at the Crossroads. Interesting title..
This indicates to me a recognition of a juncture in a journey at which choices have to be made as to which direction should be taken.
Is this really up for discussion for the Thai polity? Who actually chooses the path?
I am strangely reminded of the mythical deal that Blues Guitarist Robert Johnson made with the devil at the crossroads on Highway 66.
He could sho’ play the blues tho.
New Mandala, Thaksin and The Drum
Am I correct in saying that junta should be pronounced as a hispanic “hoonta”?
Then again I have problems with Wip-a-wadi Rangsit and Sue Wannaboom.
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
Tarrin
Yes, this is true. This is what I was told by founders of New Mandala.
However, I support Andrew’s urge. Although I wont be there at the Thai studies conference in Melbourne, I’d like to recommend scholars to submit their proposals.
Pavin
Thailand’s electoral rules
#6
I guess that you would also call the election systems of Germany, New-Zealand, Japan, South Korea etc. “inherently undemocratic.” There really is much more to be said if you want to do justice to the principal issue of democratic representation, in particular regarding the difference between majoritarian and proportional concepts of representation. This includes the mixed-member options of mixed-member majoritarian (Thailand, Japan), and mixed-member proportional (Germany, NZ) systems.
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
Andrew
The path may be “well worn and argumentative”. That’s the point. Repeated and sustained criticism at every opportunity is a very deliberate and effective tactic over time. If you’re tired of hearing it, imagine how the other side is feeling. It works. When it doesn’t, violence often follows. So it’s better to do a thorough job with the criticism first.
While I admire Natthawud’s patience (we’re a trying bunch to be sure), the efforts of commentators here restored some balance to this conference by putting its backers firmly on notice. Just as you will be very very careful about what you write in your submission, they will now be a lot more careful about what they censor. This is an improvement to the previous situation where you would have been very very careful about what you write in your submission …full stop.
New Mandala, Thaksin and The Drum
It takes genius or an artistic sensibility to be able to label a junta as a junta. Doctor Dubious of Dubai’s finest hour might well be the time he first noticed that there was a junta living next door and figured they might give him some business if he first crossed their palms with other people’s gold.
Most of us have so long tacitly accepted that we lived in a region beset by backstabbing juntas that we plain forgot to actually call a spade a spade. Not that it would have ultimately mattered in the slightest whether we called them juntas or geniuses. Regardless of the depth of their ‘sin’, they are all capable of being pardoned or amnestied if they make the requisite ‘payments’. Keep drinking the Dumex geniuses!
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
I have, somewhat reluctantly, approved several new comments on this post. I was reluctant because I don’t want this thread to go down the same well-worn and argumentative path as the other thread where this conference was discussed. Of course it is entirely reasonable for the involvement of the Embassy to raise some concerns (see Pavin’s article referred to above). But the organisers have made it clear that abstracts/papers will be considered on their merits and that the Embassy will not be involved in the selection process. As for the risks involved in speaking publically about the royal family – that is an issue anywhere, not just at the Melbourne conference. The organisers cannot do anything about that. So, again, I encourage people to submit proposals to the conference on a diverse range of topics. I certainly plan to be there. It should be fun. AW
Thailand’s electoral rules
John Francis Lee – 6
This party list system, totally de-coupled from constituency voting and any popular choice of candidates, is inherently undemocratic, coming unsurprisingly, from the inherently undemocratic Democrat party.
And yet Thailand has a mix of both proportional and constituency voting which it seems to me is far more democratic than say the UK where a move to Australian style alternative vote failed to win the electorate in the recent referendum.
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
I just came across article by Pavin Chachavalpol
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2011/05/25/opinion/Thai-authorities-continue-their-attack-on-freedom–30156118.html
Founders of New Mandala said in the interview: “The embassy indicated to some members of the ANU community that they should not expect cooperation from Thai government agencies or officials in Thailand, given that they are from the ANU. Thai students, both at ANU and elsewhere, have been warned not to have contact with New Mandala. Those associated with New Mandala are not welcome in Thailand. It has also been reported that the ANU was offered Thai government funding for a Thai studies centre, on the unstated but obvious condition that New Mandala’s critical activities cease. The ANU declined the offer and, as reported, the financial support went to Melbourne University instead.”
Is that true ?
New Mandala, Thaksin and The Drum
leeyiankun – 4
I’ve been using that since the coup, so does a lot of guys around here. Junta is the proper word.
Perhaps you are right. Maybe I haven’t heard enough of Thaksin’s English recently. It’s just I can’t remember him using it before and during the interview he used it like a word he had just learned.
It probably does have a more emotive effect on the international audience than just using the usual coup leaders or whatever. I will still put it down as a sign of Amsterdam’s input for now although I’m quite prepared to be corrected.
How about his reaction to human rights abuses when he was prime minister? Did you feel he stumbled also?
Thailand’s electoral rules
This party list system, totally de-coupled from constituency voting and any popular choice of candidates, is inherently undemocratic, coming unsurprisingly, from the inherently undemocratic Democrat party.
The defects of the one-vote, winner-take all system are described as Duverger’s “Law”, and can most-easily be remedied by having run-off elections.
Getting rid of party-lists of candidates chosen by party elites in smoke-filled backrooms and instituting run-off elections are two easy steps to take that will allow real peoples’ parties and candidates to emerge.
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
They’ve listened to their critics and included the following item on the agenda:
A) Politics and Governance in Thailand
So good on them.
I hope criticism of the monarchy, corruption and neoptism among the ruling party will be allowed, as well as pro-red shirt sentiments.
Let’s wait and see.
New Mandala, Thaksin and The Drum
LesAbbey #2, how is it clever? I’ve been using that since the coup, so does a lot of guys around here. Junta is the proper word. Unless you want to pronounce it fully as in ‘Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy’, which is an earful, not to mention full of baloney.
Review of The Middle Mekong River Basin
Top that!, I thought. This is a superb review and commentary on area studies. Where do we go from here? One side concerns what people want to learn about SEAsia, and it seems to me that some discussion can come out of Montesano’s review of Race’s War Comes to Long An and the interview with Race. At the time of the VN war, the potential audience was more keen on the alternative positions of Popkin and Scott about the peasantry. Now we have Scott on the region as a contest between highland freedom and lowland subjugation, that people seem quite keen on.
To me, the most intriguing and stimulating recent work on the Greater Middle Mekong is by linguist Nick Enfield, for instance that Lao, Khmer, and Cham languages have more in common with each other than they do with their supposed and separate linguistic relatives. Coming to a sense of that takes time, regional grounding, luck, and possibly requires that one lose one’s academic bearings because it is so counterintuitive (given what we imagine about language families). “getting lost” is not the kind of advise that a scholar is looking for, on the way to an understanding of SEAsia (or anywhere).
Within area studies, says O’Connor, we are in the same room but not on the same page. I was looking at some of the scholarship on Laos in the 1950s through 70s, and it seemed obvious that French, Japanese, and American scholarship was asking very different questions, each side in some ways prospecting for a sense of themselves in the world, even if writing on the Tai Dam, Yao, Hmong, and so on. So, I think, the emphasis on fieldwork, comparisons, and a regional view is well justified, but we also should be doing fieldwork and comparisons on the scholarship, and perhaps accentuate that with some sense of what audiences are interested in reading — in Thailand, France, Japan, Australia, the US, and so on. That is, looking at SEAsia (or its parts) is only one part of where we may want to go. Some area studies may have shown that “unilateral military intervention is impractical, implausible, and even mad” but this only matters if we see ourselves in that same world. But I think that O’Connor is right to insist that we ought to be looking for what brings SEAsians together in something constructive — what makes even enemies collaborate, say — which requires a shift in scholarly priorities from smart to useful and even caring. Who’ll buy that?
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
My congratulations to Natthawud (or someone else) for finally doing what should have been done from the outset and providing a comprehensible account of the upcoming conference in legible English.
The inclusion of Pasuk is a clever PR move no doubt adding the veneer of credibility to the venture. She (and her erstwhile partner), whilst a fine academic, is however notoriously anti-Thaksin, and therefore fails to mute the thrust of the criticisms in the previous post-ing.
I wonder also if the Chula reresentative is in the mould of the despicable Panitan or those who stabbed Ji in the back… Questions remain…
Thailand’s electoral rules
The Constitutional Amendments with all the details outlined above can be found here (in Thai only):
http://www.ect.go.th/newweb/upload/cms10/download/2319-2556-0.pdf
Thai Studies conference in Melbourne, redux
Yes, but still no guarantees from the Thai Embassy or Thai government that people attending the conference who happen to write, discuss or comment on the everyday and constant involvement of the Thai Royal Family and monarchy in Thai politics and the present situation in Thailand, will not be recorded, noted and later subjected to arrest should they visit Thailand under the draconian Lese Majeste and Computer Crimes laws in place and being harshly enforced in present-day Thailand.