SOSS - SEA Seminar | The Real Deal? Results versus outcome in Thailand's 2023 elections

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The Real Deal? Results versus outcome in Thailand’s 2023 elections

This paper draws on fieldwork data collected through interviews and observations in Bangkok plus 11 provinces during April and May 2023, and weaves this material into an argument about why in an election where all the initiative lay with opposition parties, the ‘winning’ Move Forward was unable to form a government. Instead, runner-up Pheu Thai became embroiled in messy deal-making, apparently driven by key figures in the ruling post-junta government, in order to form a new coalition. Thailand’s 2023 election marked a new low in terms of elite machinations and external meddling, resulting in a particularly curious form of promiscuous power-sharing.

	8 September 2023 Friday 3.45pm - 5.15pm		School of Social Sciences & College of Integrative Studies Seminar Room 1-1, Level 1 10 Canning Rise Singapore 179873

SPEAKER

Duncan McCargo
Professor of Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, NTU

Duncan McCargo is a professor in the public policy and global affairs programme at Nanyang Technological University. Duncan has published widely on Thai politics, including co-authoring books on former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and on the now dissolved Future Forward Party. His Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008) won the inaugural Bernard Schwartz Prize from Asia Society in 2009. He previously held professorial positions at the University of Leeds, Columbia University and the University of Copenhagen.

MODERATOR

Jacob Ricks
Associate Professor of Political Science, SMU
Associate Dean (Research)

Dr Jacob Ricks joined SMU in 2013. He finished his PhD at Emory University, his MA at Northern Illinois University, and his BA at Utah State University. His research focuses on ethnic and national identities as well as the political economy of development in Southeast Asia, with a special emphasis on Thailand. He is co-author of Ethnicity and Politics in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press 2022) as well as articles in outlets such as World Politics, Political Behaviour, World Development, and Pacific Affairs, among others.