Thailand’s ideological struggle: towards the possibility of depolarizing Thailand’s polarized politics

ABSTRACT Seemingly intractable social-political divisions involving a range of actors and interests with zero-sum propensities continue to haunt Thailand. This article argues that unmasking the contingent nature of Thailand’s polarized politics helps vindicate the possibility of depolarization in societies steeped in polarization. It proceeds by sketching the development of the so-called ‘Yellow-Red’ divide, identifying it with the hard-edged, ideological bifurcation of ‘right’, i.e. liberalism/conservatism, and ‘left’, i.e. egalitarianism, respectively. The article then demonstrates that while ideologically polarized configurations such as illiberal democracy and undemocratic liberalism/conservatism necessarily sustain the resilience of Yellow and Red, they may be surplus to the range of ideological configurations with which disputants first and foremost identify. The theoretical argument is that holding different ideological viewpoints do not necessitate polarization. Deep polarization is contingent and this is connected to Michael Freeden’s morphological account of ideology. Depolarization reflects less of a rejection and more of a restructuring of the right-left binary along the lines of a continuum running from right to left. To elaborate, by the same logic that structured antagonisms may be superimposed over varied ideologies, thereby triggering ideological mutation, they are also liable to dislodgement .