The 'networks of influence' of local politicians

General News - Wednesday December 19, 2007

FOCUS / THAI POLITICS

The 'networks of influence' of local politicians

Policy platforms and individual charisma may serve as the deciding factors in national politics, but at the local level it is the 'network of influence' that counts

By VIENGRAT NETHIPO

Politics at the local level have long been manipulated by informal networks loosely organised around influential individuals. While these networks may be concentrated in a particular area, they also extend to local administration and national politics. These influential networks are present in every part of the political process: manipulating the mass electorate, organising political campaigns, and utilising political positions for private interest, all in an effort to allocate benefits among its members and keep them from their competitors. These networks are sustained by manipulating a centralised but inefficient state authority as well as that of the voting majority who are mostly underprivileged.

The question is, how have the structural changes in the national political system _ particularly the decentralisation process under the 1997 Constitution and the rise of the Thai Rak Thai party _ affected these influential networks?

To see how these structural changes have affected local politics, this article surveys politics in a province located in the northeastern region of Thailand, where the Thai Rak Thai party was popular. The survey shows that after decentralisation, local political campaigns became more competitive because the budgets allocated to local governments increased dramatically. Local leaders were able to compete for and win political positions as political participation became more active and was no longer limited to the electoral campaign for members of parliament (MPs).

The influential networks that controlled the various informal and indecent businesses shifted their focus to utilising the local government budget, which opened them to manipulation by the Thai Rak Thai party.

From that time on, the influential networks became more stable as they became more concerned with the public budget, which is not as risky as their illegal businesses. As these networks stabilised, the violence and murders committed by their leaders also became rarer.

Finally, competition among influential individuals shifted to electoral campaigns for both local and national governments.

In short, the pattern of influential networks was transformed into ones that saw MPs (of Thai Rak Thai) as their centre, establishing and maintaining power by distributing benefits to local politicians.

Decentralisation under the 1997 Constitution

According to Article 78 of the Directive Principles of Fundamental State Policies under the provisions of the 1997 Constitution (later abruptly repealed due to the coup d'etat on Sept 19, 2006), it was ordered that the decentralisation be carried out to the local level so as to bring about self-reliance and public participation in local administration.

It was the first time since the establishment of the modern Thai state in the 19th century that state domination shifted from centralising power to decentralising power.

In succession to the 1997 Constitution, the Plan and Procedure for Decentralisation Act of 1999 was passed to make concrete the process of decentralisation. Its main provisions included the formation of local administrations at every level according to different local circumstances, the expedition of mission transferred to local administration, and the delineation of responsibilities between state and local administration and among the latter itself.

Perhaps the most important provision concerned the allocation of the budget. It was stipulated that the income of the local administrative body in 2006 had to be no less than 35% of the total central government revenue.

Local administration has gradually changed and its power augmented since the implementation of the Plan and Procedure for Decentralisation Act of 1999. At present, local administration throughout the country is organised into Municipality, Provincial Administrative Organisation (PAO), Tambon (Sub-district) Administrative Organisation (TAO), and Special Administrative Organisation.

In considering fiscal administration, it can be seen that the budgets of big municipalities increased rapidly. Strikingly, the budget of Chiang Mai City Municipality was augmented from a few hundred million baht to more than a billion baht at present, while that of the case study province was also tremendously raised from less than a hundred million baht before 1997, to 548 million baht in 2007.

In brief, the decentralisation process has substantially transformed politics at the local level.

First, the democratic administration through elections all over the country helped expand electoral politics into grassroots politics. The people, both in urban and rural areas, got involved and participated more in elections, thereby synchronously providing opportunities for local leaders at every level, even at the grassroots level, through democratic competition as never before.

Second, the centralising authority in the central government was transferred more to the local administrative organisations. That is to say, local politicians came into play as the holders of state power, instead of the centralised bureaucrats who had held authority for a century. Even though most local politicians were major capitalists, other minor local leaders or capitalists could compete for power due to the decentralisation.

Third, the surge in the pubic budget turned the political arena, especially urban politics, into a source of interest which in turn spurred competition for positions in local administrative organisations.

The Strength of the Thai Rak Thai party and its Connection with Local Politicians

Apart from decentralisation, the rise of the Thai Rak Thai party and its capability to connect itself with local elections was an essential factor for the change in politics at the local level. Normally, rival groups running for municipal elections in the past had their roots in independent groups at the local level. Though those groups had connections with the national politicians to a certain extent, their linkage was not as obvious as with the Thai Rak Thai party.

The Thai Rak Thai party was founded and registered in July 1999, after the 1997 Constitution which originally designated the election system for empowering political parties. Prior to the general election in 2001, the Thai Rak Thai party adeptly implemented a market strategy for its political campaign that familiarised voting constituents with the party. In January 2001, the party won an overwhelming majority and was thus given the legitimacy to form the government in which Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister.

Thai Rak Thai began playing an important role in supporting local elections in northern Thailand since its establishment. As can be seen in the politics of Chiang Mai City Municipality, Thai Rak Thai provided support for the dominant group of municipal politics, Chiang Mai Kunnatham, and maintained good relations with faction leaders. The party's role in municipal politics in Chiang Mai was prominent until 2007.

The supporting role of the Thai Rak Thai for politics at the municipal level emerged in concert with increased competition in municipal elections. In particular, the augmented budget of the City Municipality caused money to be the key factor for the electoral campaign because old forms of managing massive electorates, as well as the bonds of cronyism/nepotism, became dysfunctional and ineffective.

In this case, factions that were endorsed by Thai Rak Thai often gained victory in major municipalities. During the elections for the Municipality of Chiang Mai in 2000 and 2004, for example, groups supported by Thai Rak Thai had their slogans printed on huge placards, their strategies were clearly announced, and local people were made continuously involved with their activities such as the six-month-long pre-election campaign through various methods.

Under the Thaksin government, in May 2003 the announcement of a policy to suppress influential individuals and ''mafia'' types further affected local politics. This initiative was aimed at building the legitimacy of the Thaksin regime and at the same time to pressure influential individuals who disobeyed or did not cooperate with the Thai Rak Thai party. To do so, Mr Thaksin ordered both provincial governors and chiefs of provincial police in every province to make lists of influential individuals. This process showed how well Mr Thaksin understood the inseparable connection between the network of the influential groups and the bureaucratic system, notably the Ministry of Interior bureaucrats and police officers. In so doing, the Thaksin government could identify who were on the lists of the networks, no matter if the recorded names realistically represented ''the influential people'' or not.

Interestingly, the names of influential people under the umbrella of the Thai Rak Thai party were crossed out from the lists. Aside from the making of name lists of influential individuals, the Thaksin government audaciously eradicated drug trafficking networks by use of violence, and cut the throats of underground lottery masters by legalising the underground lottery.

As indicated by these policies, the Thaksin government can be seen as having understood the roots of the networks of influential people.

Influential Networks: Pattern of Politics of Influential Networks in the Past

In the past, influential networks played a significant role in every political process at the local level. The politics of influential networks was essential as it was the only channel for most people to share a role in politics or to believe they shared a role in politics.

The influential networks which played an important role in Thai local politics during the decades of the '80s-'90s, did not strictly engage with any particular political party or other formal political groups; instead, their structure was a loosely formed ''network'' based on personal patronage, which could be seen horizontally in the exchange of mutual interests between influential persons in the same group and in competition between rivals, and vertically from influential persons down to villagers.

Regarding relationships inside the network, the leader of the network, or the so-called ''influential person'', was the one capable of acquiring connections with state authority and utilising them as a primary resource of patronage for his subordinates and to generate benefits to himself and his network.

He maintained his power in his network by mastering fear, exercising violence, or exhibiting the readiness to do so.

In elections, informal networks functioned as a political machine similar to American bossism between the 19th and early 20th centuries; but the network in the Thai case could be characterised as loosely organised, and did not directly link up with any particular political party or other formal political group as in America's bossism politics. The influential persons and their groups attached their support in electoral campaigns to individual candidates rather than a party. They therefore shifted their support or stance from one party to others and from one individual candidate to another depending on the circumstances.

In previous studies on influential networks, I argued that the most significant factor sustaining the networks was a structural one: the inefficiency of the state's centralised bureaucratic system.

This inefficiency creates opportunities for influential persons to utilise their connections with high-ranking officials to achieve their own vested interests. Also, given a social structure where the majority of the population lacks access to public resources, the important role of the existing patronage system, and the status of the influential networks, the co-existence of state power and powerful groups in society perpetuated the traditional pattern of Thai politics.

However, the political decentralisation process after 1997 was a real change in the structure of the state's power that reduced the power of the government at the capital. It decreased the significance of connections between influential persons and powerful state officials, while the grassroots would earn more power from this change.

Together with political decentralisation, the new political process led by the Thai Rak Thai party through its populist policies created new forms of connections between the state and rural populations that directly gave material benefits to the villagers.

All theses changes affected the influential networks that had existed and forced them to adjust to the new political realities. To understand this adjustment, a case study of politics in a northeastern province will be discussed.

Viengrat Nethipo is with the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. This article is excerpted from a research paper done under the faculty's Thailand Democracy Watch project. The second part of the article, on the case study of local politics in a northeastern province, will run tomorrow.

Bangkok Post