Reluctant populists: Learning populism in Thailand

Abstract

Almost all popular and academic assessments of Thaksin Shinawatra label him a populist, with his time in power characterized by populism. Through an assessment of conceptual accounts of populism and a discussion of Thaksin’s political campaigning and his prime ministership, it is argued that this characterization is inaccurate. While electorally popular, Thaksin’s populism was slow to develop. Thaksin’s emergence as a populist reflected a configuration of political circumstances that forced him to rely increasingly on the support of an electoral base made up of the relatively less well-off. In failing to account for the development of Thaksin as a populist, an important element of Thaksin’s politics and of populism as a form of politics is missed. Thaksin was made a populist by elite opposition, military coup and the political demands by the red shirt mass movement wanting social and economic equality underpinned by electoral representation.