Comment on “Siamese Twin Failures: Structural and Regulatory Transformations in Unequal Thailand”

Abstract

Kanchoochat (2023) provides a useful, multi-level approach to accounting for Thailand's inequality problem, a problem that has persisted despite overall economic growth. Kanchoochat not only rightly links the problem to the country's weak structural transformation, that is, its persistently high agricultural employment and low agricultural productivity, but also highlights the supply-side of the picture by outlining the negative impact of Thai governmental institutions, especially the nonelected oversight bodies, agencies whose theoretical function is to monitor and discipline elected politicians and parties, but actually undermine political accountability and reinforce the weakness of the party system. Equally important, it recognizes the demand-side by describing the impact of precarious, unstable nature of off-farm work and the marginality of on-farm work. Further, it does an excellent job of linking all of these, including informality, to phenomena such as Thailand's weak tax collection.

I also think the article suggests the utility of three additional, complementary avenues of analysis.

First, given Kanchoochat's emphasis on the “stickiness” of on-farm employment, it would be useful to devote more attention to what Rigg et al. (2018) label the “classically precarious” nature of nonfarm occupations. Most critically, why has the manufacturing sector not absorbed surplus agricultural labor? Why has Thailand not experienced a “Lewis Turning Point”? This requires some attention to the role of multinational corporations who dominate the more export-oriented sectors of Thai industry. Addressing this issue would not only link the paper to Rodrik's (2016) argument about “premature de-industrialization,” but also suggest the relationship of that phenomenon to socio-economic inequality.

In addition, it would suggest the need to explore the policy impacts of multinationals who, although they dominate the “commanding heights” of Thai industry and whose interests are clearly part of the policy equation, have little impact on party politics. Indeed, one might argue that their absence from the political realm, along with the weakness of smaller, Thai-owned firms, impedes the development of a more cohesive, programmatic party system that might promote productivity-enhancing policies. All of this could link Kanchoochat's analysis to Thailand's inability to move out of the “middle-income trap” (Doner & Schneider, 2017).

Second, Kanchoochat's analysis could be further deepened by more attention to the ways in which relatively easily accessible revenues have enabled the weak institutions so thoughtfully described in this article. Thailand has, over the decades, benefited from an extensive land frontier, US military spending, robust and diversified agricultural exports, migrant labor, and various forms of foreign direct investment. These revenues have, as suggested by Carroll (2020), allowed countries such as Thailand to combine illiberal, oligarchic interests with more open-economy, export promotion policies, all resulting in weak policies and institutions related to agricultural development.

Finally, Kanchoochat sets the stage for a more explicit causal account of how these institutional pathologies, and their underlying structural factors, actually translate into weak agricultural policies. How, for example, do the “reign seekers” occupying the nonelected oversight bodies actually impede measures and institutions (such as more programmatic parties) that might promote policies that promoted the kinds of economic adjustments that improved the core focus of the article: inequality.