The Reproduction Process of Political Inequality and Thai Democratic Regime

Authors

  • Worachet Tho-un, Piyaluk Potiwan, Pattakorn Sasanasupin

Abstract

This article needs to reflect the reproduction process of political inequality and the Thai democratic regime through concepts of inequality, equality, liberalism, and democratic concepts as the main framework of analysis together with the actual phenomenon of democracy in Thailand.  By collecting data from 25 politicians consisting of 1) national politicians, 2) local politicians, 3) political experts, and 4) independent academics by using qualitative research methodology.The data synthesis results showed; that the dimension of political inequality continues to be produced repeatedly because of unequal power in Thai society, especially the use of the power of military leaders in the coup, creating new laws that benefit their groups, providing benefits for millionaire and the lack of political ethics. The reproduction process of political inequality will continue in various dimensions with the process of creating an offense to be justified, passing laws in multiple forms, using populist policies and immoral benefits for their groups. Also, political inequality causes many people to lose economic, social, and access to national resources, including unfairness of rights and bargaining power of particular groups of people and affecting income-seeking for careers. Which can be summarized as three forms of inequality in general as follows: 1) wealth & income inequality resulting from unbalanced or clustered development in certain areas or some production fields as a result, the benefits arising from the development are not widely distributed in both spatial and individual groups, 2) opportunity inequality opportunities for access to quality infrastructure and public services both education access to social welfare and access to capital sources or production factors and 3) power inequality, both political rights and bargaining power in access to resources and participation in policy formulation and development direction both at the national and local levels as a result, resource allocation is uneven. There may be discrimination against groups with less power in society.

Published

2020-02-29

Issue

Section

Articles