Alternative Development Concepts and Their Political Embedding: The Case of Sufficiency Economy in Thailand

Abstract

Sufficiency Economy is a local Thai alternative development paradigm, which has been enshrined in the Thai constitutions since 2006 and plays a central role in Thai political discourse since the Asian Crisis in 1997. However, the conflict between different visions of development was drawn into an intra-elite struggle, in the course of which formerly emancipatory development alternatives were co-opted into a highly authoritarian project. Today, it serves as one of the ideological foundations of the military regime, which came to power in a coup d’état in 2014. The character of this regime, however, goes beyond what Ziai (2004) calls ‘enlightened authoritarianism’. It is reminiscent of fascist regimes in Europe in the 1930s. Rather than treating the concept of Sufficiency Economy as such as an authoritarian or suppressive concept, it will be argued that the authoritarian character is a result of a three-step process of politicisation which has unfolded during the last two decades.

Keywords:

• Sufficiency Economy
• Thailand
• development alternative
• post-development
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• authoritarianism
• fascism

Notes on contributor

Wolfram Schaffar is professor for development studies and political science at the Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna. Prior to this position he has been working at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of Bonn, the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, as well as at the Department of International Relations, Yangon University, Myanmar. His focus of research is on the state and state theory in the South, human rights and development, processes of democratisation as well as new authoritarianism.

Notes

1 Brass (1995) discusses Old Farmers’ Movements with union-style organisational structures against the background of the rise of New Farmers’ Movements in India and beyond. Indigenous movements in Latin America – which Veltmeyer (1997) and Brass (2005) see as New Farmers’ Movements in this debate – were seen as problematic.

2 Chakravartin King is a Hinduist-Buddhist syncretic concept of kingship, which defines the moral and military expectations for the monarch (Tambiah, 1976).

3 See Pagorn (2017) for a different assessment of the processes which Walker (2008b) and Heis (2013) analyse as co-option and ‘backdating’.

4 ‘Austerity’ – as much as ‘neo-liberalism’ – is a complex and inherently contradictory concept. Following the common understanding, neo-liberalism advocates a lean state which does not interfere with the economy. However, many neo-liberal regimes actually led to an expansion of the security apparatus and the military. In the same way, austerity in Portugal first and foremost meant cutting welfare provisions, but came along with huge spending for the internal security sector as well as for the colonial army.

5 Despite its rhetoric of austerity in its campaign against Yingluck, the royalist-conservative military government later took up the high-speed railway project and invested large sums in infrastructure. This constitutes an open contradiction between the regime’s rhetoric and its actual policy. It is argued that this mirrors the contradictory character of concepts like ‘austerity’ and ‘neo-liberalism’.