Academic literature on the topic 'Oligarchy – Thailand'

A modern conception of oligarchy, which can be housed under an authoritarian regime as easily as it can under a liberal democratic one, can affect our understanding of the potential national political repercussions of extreme inequalities of wealth. This article has two goals: (1) to conceptually analyse the meaning of oligarchy; and (2) to make a descriptive case for its use in the Thai context. The test case of contemporary Thailand shows what exactly an oligarch or oligarchy means under a military regime and the potential effects for national politics of an oligarchy based on material wealth. Utilizing Jeffrey A. Winters’ Aristotelian-grounded conception of oligarchy for the contemporary world, this article argues that some political outcomes in Thailand are inexplicable without recourse to a modern variant of oligarchic theory and analysis.

This paper analyzes the Islam Nusantara program of the Islamic Studies Institute of Nahdlatul Ulama (STAINU) and then of the Nahdlatul Ulama University of Indonesia (UNUSIA) that started in 2013. The largest Islamic social organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) has emphasized the moderateness and tolerance of Islam in Indonesia and conceptualized its Islam as Islam Nusantara and started to disseminate this concept to stem the deepening conservative turn of Islam especially after the democratization in 1998. In order to disseminate Islam Nusantara more effectively, the NU-affiliated college (STAINU), later its university (UNUSIA) started the graduate program for Islam Nusantara. After elucidating the Islamic conservative turn and the propagation of Islam Nusantara both by NU and the state, this paper analyzes the theses and their abstracts and the biodata of authors of theses and sees how Islam Nusantara has been producing the proponents of Islam Nusantara. The paper finds that the authors of the theses are young and many of the theses analyze the harmonious Islamic adaptation to local cultures. The authors are male dominant and Java-born-dominant with the focus on their own birthplace. The paper concludes with the importance of more comparativeand critical analysis on local variations of Islam Nusantara in the future theses and dissertations so that the program can critically and objectively analyze the Islam Nusantara concept itself. Keyword: Islam Nusantara, Nahdlatul Ulama, UNUSIA Jakarta REFERENCE: Abdul Mun’im DZ. Mengukuhkan Jangkar Islam Nusantara, Tashwirul Afkar no.26, 2008. Abdurrahman Wahid. “Pribumisasi Islam.” Dalam Muntaha Azhari and Abdul Mun’im Saleh, eds. Islam Indonesia Menatap Masa Depan. Jakarta: P3M, 1989. Abdurrahman Wahid. “Melindungi dan Menyantuni Semua Paham.” Dalam Yenny Zannuba Wahid, Ahmad Suaedy et al., eds. Ragam Ekspresi Islam Nusantara. Jakarta: The Wahid Institute, 2008: h. xi-xii. Ahmad Najib Burhani. Islam Nusantara as a Promising Response to Religious Intolerance and Radicalism, Trends in Southeast Asia, 2018. No.21. Ahmad Suaedy. Islam, Minorities and Identity in Southeast Asia. Yogyakarta and Jakarta: inklusif and ISAIs UIN Yogya, 2018. Akhmad Sahal. “Prolog: Kenapa Islam Nusantara?” Dalam Akhmad Sahal dan Munawir Aziz eds. Islam Nusantara dari Ushul Fiqh hingga Paham Kebangsaan. Bandung: Mizan Pustaka, 2015. Akhmad Sahal dan Munawir Aziz eds. Islam Nusantara dari Ushul Fiqh hingga Paham Kebangsaan. Bandung: Mizan Pustaka, 2015. Anderson, Benedict. A Life Beyond Boundaries. Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2016. Azymardi Azra. Islam Nusantara: Jaringan Global dan Lokal. Bandung: Mizan, 2002. Dawam Multazam. “Islam Nusantara, Dari NU untuk Dunia” (artikel diakses pada 10 January 2015 dari http://www.nu.or.id/post/read/60706/islam-nusantara-dari-nu-untuk-dunia). Fealy, Greg. “Nahdlatul Ulama and the Politics Trap.” New Mandala. (diakses pada 12 November 2019 pada https://www.newmandala.org/nahdlatul-ulama-politics-trap/), 2018. Fogg, Kavin W. “The Fate of Muslim Nationalism in Independent Indonesia.” PhD dissertation (Yale University), 2012. Formichi, Chiara. Islam and the Making of the Nation: Kartosuwiryo and Political Islam in 20th Century Indonesia. Leiden and Manoa: KITLV and Hawai’i University Press, 2011. Hefner, Robert W. “Islamic Schools, Social Movements, and Democracy in Indonesia.” Dalam Robert W. Hefner ed. Making Modern Muslim: the Politics of Islamic Education in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009: h. 55-105. Hefner, Robert. W. What Happened to Civil Islam? Islam and Democratisation in Indonesia, 20 Years On. Asian Studies Review. Vol.43. No.3, 2019: h. 375-396. Hoesterey, James Bourk. Public Diplomacy and the Global Dissemination of “Moderate Islam” Dalam Robert W. Hefner ed. Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia. London: Routledge, 2018: h. 406-416. IPAC (Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict). After Ahok: The Islamist Agenda in Indonesia. IPCA Report No.44, 2018. Jadul Maula. Orientasi “Islam Nusantara”: Melahirkan “Insan (Kamil) Nusantara”. Tashwirul Afkar No. 13, 2006. Laffan, Michael, The Makings of Indonesian Islam: Orientalism and the Narration of a Sufi Past. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011. Menchik, Jeremy. Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Nor Huda. Islam Nusantara: Sejarah Sosial Intelektual Islam di Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Ar-Ruzz Media, 2008. Pepinsky, Thomas B., Liddle, William R. and Saiful Mujani. Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Power, Thomas P. Jokowi’s Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia’s Democratic Decline. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 53(3), 2018: h. 307-338. Robison, Richard and Hadiz, Vedi R. Reorganizing Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in An Age of Markets．London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004. Yenny Zannuba Wahid, Ahmad Suaedy et al. eds. Ragam Ekspresi Islam Nusantara. Jakarta: The Wahid Institute, 2015. Syafiq Hasyim. Islam Nusantara dalam Konteks: Dari Multikultralisma hingga Radkikalisme. Yogyakarta: Gading, 2018. van Bruinessen, Martin ed. Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam: Explaining the "Conservative Turn". Singapore: ISEAS, 2013. van Bruinessen, Martin. Introduction: Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam and the “Conservative Turn” of the Early Twenty-First Century. Dalam van Bruinessen, Martin ed. Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam: Explaining the "Conservative Turn". Singapore: ISEAS, 2013: h.1-20. van Bruinessen, Martin. Indonesian Muslim in a Globalising World: Westernization, Arabisation, and Indigenising Responses. RSIS Working Paper No. 311. Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2018. William Putra Utomo and others. Indonesia Millennial Report 2019. Jakarta: IDN Research Institute, 2019. News: 2013/2/25: STAINU Jakarta Kumpulkan Tim Pakar PPM Islam Nusantara. (diakses pada 10 November 2019 pada https://www.nu.or.id/post/read/43199/stainu-jakarta-kumpulkan-tim-pakar-ppm-islam-nusantara) 2013/7/3: STAINU Jakarta Luncurkan Pascasarjana Islam Nusantara. (diakses pada 10 November 2019 pada https://www.nu.or.id/post/read/45577/stainu-jakarta-luncurkan-pascasarjana-islam-nusantara) 2013/7/4: Islam Nusantara Diharapkan Jadi Solusi Kasus Intoleransi. (diakses pada 13 Desember 2019 pada https://www.merdeka.com/peristiwa/islam-nusantara-diharapkan-jadi-solusi-kasus-intoleransi.html) 2013/7/4: Mahasiswa Thailand Minati Studi Islam Nusantara Indonesia. (diakses pada 11 November 2019 pada https://news.okezone.com/read/2013/07/04/373/831915/mahasiswa-thailand-minati-studi-islam-nusantara-indonesia) 2015/4/14: Imam Aziz: Dunia Butuh NU (diakses pada 11 November 2019 pada https://www.nu.or.id/post/read/58831/imam-aziz-dunia-butuh-nu) 2015/10/9: Pascasarjana Islam Nusantara STAINU Jakarta Mulai Kuliah Perdana Hari Ini. (diakses pada 11 November 2019 pada https://www.nu.or.id/post/read/62673/pascasarjana-islam-nusantara-stainu-jakarta-mulai-kuliah-perdana-hari-ini) 2016/9/3: Siapakah Ahlussunnah Wal Jamaah. (diakses pada 11 November 2019 pada https://www.nu.or.id/post/read/70944/siapakah-ahlussunnah-wal-jamaah)

AbstractPrevious decades' celebrations of the triumph of democracy were frequently based on mainstream analyses that displayed two major theoretical problems. First, conceptualisations of democracy based on ‘minimal pre-conditions’ commonly conflated the formal establishment ofdemocratic structureswith the far more complex and historically challenging creation ofsubstantive democracy. Second, a deductive and generally ahistorical model asserting fixed stages of ‘democratic transition’ diverted attention from deeper and more substantive examination ofstruggles for power among social forces within specific historical contexts. By adhering to minimalist conceptions of democracy and simplistic models of democratic change, mainstream analysts quite often chose to overlook many underlying limitations and shortcomings of the democratic structures they were so keen to celebrate. Given more recent concerns over ‘authoritarian undertow’, those with the normative goal of deepening democracy must begin by deepening scholarly conceptualisations of the complex nature of democratic change. This analysis urges attention to the ‘source’ and ‘purpose’ of democracy. What were the goals of those who established democratic structures, and to what extent did these goals correspond to the ideals of democracy? In many cases throughout the world, ‘democracy’ has been used as a convenient and very effective means for both cloaking and legitimising a broad set of political, social, and economic inequalities. The need for deeper analysis is highlighted through attention to the historical character of democratic structures in the Philippines and Thailand, with particular attention to the sources and purposes of ‘democracy’ amid on-going struggles for power among social forces. In both countries, albeit coming forth from very different historical circumstances, democratic structures have been continually undermined by those with little commitment to the democratic ideal: oligarchic dominance in the Philippines, and military/bureaucratic/monarchic dominance in Thailand. Each country possesses its own set of challenges and opportunities for genuine democratic change, as those who seek to undermine elite hegemony and promote popular accountability operate in very different socio-economic and institutional contexts. Efforts to promote substantive democracy in each setting, therefore, must begin with careful historical analysis of the particular challenges that need to be addressed.

Abstract Growing rapidly before the early 2000s, literature on provincial Thai politics has dwindled in recent years. This article makes a small attempt to redress this trend by highlighting one distinctive yet understudied emerging electoral dynamics in provincial Thailand. Specifically, drawing mainly on Thai-language primary sources, this paper shows that in the majority of Thailand's provinces, the Provincial Administrative Organisation, an electoral institution that has received an unprecedented amount of state funding in the post-1997 age of decentralisation, has enabled influential political families to retain and even increase their power. As political and economic power has been decentralised from Bangkok, it has ironically been centralised in the hands of a limited number of oligarchic provincial elites. This phenomenon is not an historical aberration; rather, it should be viewed as one manifestation or product of Thailand's enduring patrimonial culture, in which public officeholders’ positions are regarded as an extension of their personal or familial property. I conclude by discussing the Thai case theoretically and comparatively.

Defence date: 7 April 2017
Examining Board: Professor Christian Reus-Smit, formerly EUI/University of Queensland, Supervisor; Professor Philippe Schmitter, European University Institute (Emeritus); Professor Laurence Whitehead, University of Oxford; Professor Ayşe Zarakol, University of Cambridge
This dissertation takes as its focus the emergence of guardian political order – a hybrid political system in which elected officials must contend with non-elected ‘reserved domains’ dominated by state elites that exercise a ‘tutelary’ or ‘guardian’ function in relation to the overall polity – in modern Turkey and Thailand in the second half of the twentieth century. Its central objective is to explain how guardian regimes emerge and consolidate, and why they assume their distinctive regime morphology – a hybrid constitutional structure bifurcated between elected institutions and unelected tutelary ones. This broad inquiry into puzzling ‘regime outcomes’ entails a subsidiary set of questions. Given that hybrid regimes generally tend to follow in the wake of authoritarian ones, what would induce authoritarian incumbent elites to cede their monopoly of power to a political system bifurcated in this way? How do we explain the substantial variation in the institutional design of guardian structures in different cases when they first come to life? Why have guardian hybrid regimes proved so durable and long-lasting? Finally, how can we account for distinctive regime trajectories – the patterns of ideological–institutional reconfiguration that guardian hybrid regimes undergo over time? This dissertation advances a novel theory of how guardian hybrid regimes come about, the shape they take when they are born, how they reproduce (institutionally speaking) over time, and also how they adapt or change over time both institutionally and ideologically. It argues that guardian hybrid regimes emerge as contingent outcomes of intra-elite conflict during historical breakpoints in national political development. During these ‘critical junctures’ traditional state elites engage in intense factional contestation over the task of fashioning a new, post-authoritarian political system. Deep, longstanding socio-political cleavages in the body politic and the particular quality of the domestic and international security environment condition elite conflict and elite choices over regime structure during the critical juncture and shape the eventual ‘architecture’ of the new political system. This explains the distinctive institutional morphology of guardian hybrid regimes – a bifurcation of the overall framework of political authority within the state between elected institutions (the ‘political realm’) and guardian tutelary ones (the ‘deep state’). Once established, guardian hybrid regimes are sustained and reproduced by institutional complexes of socially-embedded notions of legitimate political authority and strategic bureaucratic incumbency. These complexes consist in three mutually reinforcing elements that generate mechanisms of inherent institutional reproduction: a hegemonic state ideology (HSI); a ‘monist’ public sphere, and; periodic ‘strategic’ interventions by guardian actors to ‘discipline’ the political realm. Guardian hybrid regimes are also adaptive. In the wake of guardian settlements, processes of reaction and counterreaction to those settlements produce transitions through different institutional–ideological configurations as different guardian actors jockey for primacy within the deep state in response to varying challenges from the political firmament. I develop this argument and ground these claims through a critical juncture-path dependence analytical framework. Path-dependent explanations in comparative-historical analysis unfold through a sequence of analytical elements or components – critical junctures and antecedent conditions, institutional reproduction, reactive sequences and final outcomes – that work together to provide robust explanations of institutional outcomes, including patterns of regime development.