The King and the Making of Modern Thailand by Antonio L. Rappa

Author:Antonio L. Rappa [Rappa, Antonio L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, Asian & Asian American, History, Asia, Southeast Asia, Political Science, World, Asian, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General
ISBN: 9781315411323
Google: wUMlDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-04-21T04:31:49+00:00

Nepotism in Thailand today

It was part of ancient Siamese culture to mix business with family. ‘Mixing’ is defined as providing opportunities, giving personal wealth and sharing business networks exclusively with immediate family members and relatives. In an antagonistic and combative universe, family businesses represent an important part of crony capitalism when their firms are taken as a whole with the rest of the economy. In an optimistic universe, family businesses are a key legal and economic ingredient for successful small business enterprises. Regardless of the universe in which one prefers to live, family businesses are about hiring kith and kin. The appointment of family members to positions in political, social, cultural and business organizations feeds into nepotism. Crony capitalism is a social situation in which political leaders appoint their own family members to higher-echelon state-owned investment companies, state-funded enterprises and government-linked companies.

Crony capitalism is deeply tied to nepotism and kinship ties.40 Wade, for example, wrote in 1998 that authoritarian ‘Asian values’ and good governance explained the Asian economic miracle. But rather than actually making life better for its people, the public protests in Kuala Lumpur and Krung Thep between 2005 and 2014 clearly demonstrate that not all governance is good. But there are also public protests in China, Europe and Africa. Authoritarianism and its effects are not an Asian ‘value’. More importantly, the danger of crony capitalism weakens financial structures and processes. Crony capitalism creates structural situations that wreak havoc during financial crises; the financial institutions of illiberal Southeast Asian democracies naturally become exposed to the greatest negative impacts.41 Therefore there are no ‘Asian’, ‘Western’, ‘African’, ‘Latin’ or ‘Pacific’ values, only human values. Unfortunately, those human values include corruption, cronyism and nepotism.42

Kinship is king in guanxi (relationship) networks. Therefore family business ties and networks have emerged as the single most important means of business development for the modern Thai. The concept of guanxi is a critical part of Thai culture, even though it was imported from China by the earliest Chinese settlers.43 Naturally, the value placed on guanxi and Chinese business networks worked its way into the militaristic Siamese and the later Thai political culture. In 2005, for example, William A. Callahan argued that ‘the military benefits from this discourse of vote-buying [jao pho] since it shifts criticism from the widespread corruption and nepotism of the military and instead targets civilian politicians’.44 Jao pho or vote-buying became commonplace from the first elections up until 2001 when new and more sophisticated forms of gaining voter support arose, as exemplified in Thaksin’s 110-baht TRT memberships and million-baht villages.

Administratively, the civil servants were supposed to be loyal and remain loyal to the king regardless of whether they were part of the old Monthon system of concentric administrative circles or the newer Pa’ak system, which consisted of nine regions that were broken into 71 provinces (initially) and later 76 (including Krung Thep) today. When we transpose the political institutions of power onto Thailand’s economic map we can understand how nepotism flourishes in the kingdom.

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