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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Political Theory

Singapore Management University

Series

Thailand

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Agents, Principals, Or Something In Between? Bureaucrats And Policy Control In Thailand, Jacob Ricks Jul 2018

Agents, Principals, Or Something In Between? Bureaucrats And Policy Control In Thailand, Jacob Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the aftermath of the 2006 and 2014 Thai coups,observers declared the resurrection of the bureaucratic polity. Bureaucrats,though, remained influential even during the period of 1992-2006, when electedpoliticians were thought to command the Thai state. Bureaucratic involvement inpolitics poses a challenge for dominant political science theories ofpolitician-bureaucrat relationships, which draw heavily from principal-agentframeworks. I apply agency theory to Thailand, testing three differenthypotheses derived from the theory. Examining legislative productivity andcontrol over bureaucratic career trajectories, I find that elected politiciansincreasingly acted as principals of the Thai state from 1992 through 2006, andto a lesser degree from 2008 to 2013. Thai bureaucrats, …


Is All Politics Local? Determinants Of Local And National Election Campaigns, Colm A. Fox May 2018

Is All Politics Local? Determinants Of Local And National Election Campaigns, Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In recent decades election campaigns have shifted their focus from the local to the national level, increasingly featuring party leaders, labels, and national platforms. Despite this trend, there remains significant variation in the local/national orientation of campaigns across countries and parties. This article tests several propositions on why campaigns adopt a local or national orientation by analyzing a unique collection of more than 12,000 geocoded Thai election posters. Specialized software was used to measure the spatial proportions of visual and textual content on each poster. Using Thailand’s mixed electoral system to enable a controlled comparison of electoral rules, I demonstrate …