Thaksin the Populist?

Abstract

Purpose To evaluate the accuracy of the populist label applied to former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra by both political opponents and past scholarly observers. Methods We distinguish more colloquial uses of the term that refer to a leader's policies or political strategies and instead turn to an ideational definition of populism. We then use content analysis, an empirical methodology used extensively in cross-national work on populism, to identify populist discourse in Thaksin's speeches across his two terms. Results We find that Thaksin has very low levels of populism in his first, but that this jumps to just below the middle of the scale in his second term. We then compare Thaksin's discourse to various other leaders from around the world. His trajectory is most similar to that of Recep Erdogan of Turkey, and we compare the two leaders to highlight both the similarities and differences in policies, ideology, and authoritarian tendencies in order to emphasize the populist parts of their leadership as a distinct concept. Conclusion Using an ideational approach and a systematic empirical strategy, we are able to divorce our evaluation of Thaksin's populism from normative agendas and colloquial uses, which enables us to better understand Thaksin's leadership tenure.

The political struggle for ‘the people’: populist discourse in the 2019 South African elections

“…A counter perspective, much more positivist in nature, recognises the importance of empirical examination. Adherents (Hawkins, 2009;Hawkins & Selway, 2017) contend that populist ideas should be defined and measured, allowing scholars to compare across politicians, locations, and time.…”

“…This 'classical' approach has been found to be more valid and reliable than computerised word analysis (Rooduijn & Pauwels, 2011). It is used to score different types of sourcesincluding manifestos (Rooduijn & Akkerman, 2017;Rooduijn & Pauwels, 2011), newspaper articles (Rooduijn, 2014), televised political party broadcasts (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007), and leaders' speeches (Cranmer, 2011;Hawkins, 2009;Hawkins & Selway, 2017). I score four speeches for each actor.…”

“…However, there is, to the best of my knowledge, no study that systematically examines African leaders' populist discourse. 1 Empirical research on populist rhetoric has proliferated among scholars examining Latin American (Hawkins & Kaltwasser, 2017), North American (Bonikowski & Gidron, 2016;, European (Cranmer, 2011), and Asian cases (Hawkins & Selway, 2017). This paper seeks to partly fill this geographical gap in the literature.…”

Populism in the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election

“…Thaksin in Thailand and Koizumi in Japan popularized themselves and his ideas by using television. (Hawkins and Selway, 2017) Estrada in the Philippines was building image as a defender of the poor with action films (Mizuno and Pongpaichit, 2009). Currently, information and ideas promote populism are disseminated using the internet, especially social media.…”

Populism in Search of its Model

“…In some cases, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand, populism becomes the ideological vehicle through which a charismatic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated support from large numbers of mostly followers (Hawkins and Selway 2017). Within the model of populism the theory that looks at populism as political strategy focuses on shifts in the role of individuals in mobilizing and structuring populist movements.…”