The influence of Thailand’s social movements on policy analysis

Abstract

This chapter explores how social movements have a considerable impact on the analysis of Thailand’s public policies. The focus is on how social movements placed their programmes on the political agenda, aided the agenda’s passage into policy and supported the enforcement, and influenced the policy process from within. It explores why some social movements succeeded in pushing for new and alternative policies, but others did not. Delving into the interplay between political and social changes and movements’ strategies, this chapter reveals how employing confrontation or collaboration strategy had different impacts on government responses at the policy level. It also teases out the context of political polarisation and the processes within which collaboration became co-optation, and how co-optation derailed the policy changes that social movements pursued. Further, this chapter offers an analysis of how the colour-coded politics, the 2014 coup and the 2019 election remarkably shaped the movements’ strategies for policy engagement.