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Civil Society and Democratization: Social Movements in NortheastThailand (review)

This book presents a progressive scholarship pertinent to contemporary Thai politics. It de-centres modern politics in Thailand as a field of studies by putting civil social movements first. It also reveals the true face of Thai democracy beyond its ailing parliamentary system. Casting ballots and institutionalized politics are real for some, but the most meaningful measurement of Thailand’s democratic progress is the activist battles on the street and down to the village heartland. Drawing on key theoretical approaches concerning civil society and democratization, the book challenges both a conventional paradigm emphasizing the elite-centred process of democratization and overwhelming scholarly attention paid to the elite as well as urban-based middle class as the powerful negotiators and makers of Thailand’s “minimal democracy”. It further interprets the political activism from the periphery, as a grass-root struggle for citizenship rights, which are the most fundamental ingredient for accountable and transparent democracy. Altogether, the book strongly contributes to both critically grounded political science and the studies of civic social movements at the turn of twenty-first century Thailand. Somchai Phatharathananuth (2006) argues that while Thai politics is dominated by money and the exclusive influence of the self-interest ruling elite, there is a glimmer of hope for civic democracy in a number of politically active social movements beyond Bangkok. In the relatively open and transitory period of Thai politics between post-May 1992 and the birth of “elected capitalist absolutism” (Chaiwat Satha-Anand 2004) led by Thaksin Shinnawatra in early 2000s, the struggles of “the right to have rights” (p. 1) as demonstrated by the Small-Scale Farmers’ Assembly of Isan (SSFAI) and the Assembly of the Poor (AOP) are his showcases. With insight from his long experience working as an academic activist with