Suchergebnisse

An old debate that pits democratic values against Asian traditions of strongman rule and preferences for economic progress over political reform still resonates in the region.

Although the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party was favored to win Thailand's parliamentary elections in July, the party's 53% majority gave it a mandate that was stronger than expected. However, two months into her administration, the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was challenged by Thailand's worst floods in half a century. The crisis initially exacerbated the partisan political divide and gave a new twist to the urban-rural tensions that fueled Thailand's five-year political crisis.

In the first half of 2010, political tensions in Thailand rose steadily until they literally burst into flames as anti-government protesters set a commercial district on fire in response to the government's crackdown to reclaim the area. The country's other internal conflict, communal violence in the Muslim-majority provinces of the South, was all but ignored in the broader political emergency.

Thailand runs the risk that future protest, a right and a mainstay of liberal democracy, will escalate quickly into violence and eventually be constricted as a matter of course.

Amitai Etzioni's recommendation to U.S. policy makers to abandon democracy promotion in volatile Muslim societies and embrace moderate Muslims who may not support democracy but adhere to basic human rights standards may be applicable to certain Middle Eastern states. It parallels U.S. policy in the cold war, in which the criteria for regime support was anticommunism rather than democracy. However, Catharin Dalpino argues that this paradigm may not apply to Southeast Asia and that Etzioni's policy recommendations may indeed backfire in countries such as Indonesia. In that Muslim-majority country, the democratization process has provided leaders with mechanisms to curb the rise of political Islam. Recent studies show that this approach may be working, as Indonesian voters are moving away from religious identification as a determinant in voting behavior.

The challenges facing the interim administration create a difficult environment in which to undertake constitutional reform. …