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Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Professor and Director of Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok. He is also a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.
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  • A Thai Spring?

    Series: The World in Words
    2011-07-06
    The results of Thailand’s recent general election will seem familiar to anyone attuned to the political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa. As in those countries, new information technology, demographic shifts, rising expectations, and the obsolescence of Cold War exigencies have placed an entrenched regime under unprecedented pressure.... read
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  • The Battle of the Temples

    Series: The Asian Century
    2011-05-06
    The deadly military skirmishes between Thailand and Cambodia since February are primarily attributable to domestic politics in both countries. A secure peace will depend mainly on how Thailand’s domestic endgame plays out in the coming months – and on Cambodia’s willingness to stay out of it.... read
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  • Thailand in Yellow and Red

    Series: The Asian Century
    2011-03-18
    After three consecutive years of deadly street protests, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has pledged to call early polls after a parliamentary no-confidence debate is held. But without serious compromise on both sides, Thailand’s increasingly dangerous political impasse will continue.... read
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  • Thailand’s Endless Endgame

    Series: The Asian Century
    2009-11-02
    The hospitalization of King Bhumibol Adulyadej has brought Thailand’s most daunting question to the fore. The country’s wrenching political struggle over the past several years has, at bottom, concerned what will happen after the ailing 81-year-old king’s reign, now at 63 years, comes to an end. ... read
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  • The Crisis of Thai Democracy

    Series: The Asian Century
    2006-03-14
    One year after he was re-elected in a landslide, Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been forced to dissolve the National Assembly and call a snap election. Although his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party commands a 75% majority in the assembly, Thaksin is embattled. He remains immensely popular with rural voters and the urban poor, who comprise more than 60% of Thailand’s electorate, but he has been battling a fervent Bangkok-based insurrection against his rule by the intelligentsia and middle classes.... read
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  • Asia’s Age of Thaksin?

    Series: The Asian Century
    2005-04-11
    The retirements from frontline politics of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamed have deprived Southeast Asia of its senior leaders. Can Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra fill the regional leadership vacuum? ... read
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