News from Southeast Asia

The programme promotes analysis of and scholarship on contemporary Thailand. Its goal is to develop understanding of the country among the full range of parties concerned with its mid-term and long-term future: governments, the media, journalists, international organizations, civil society, the private sector and scholars. The foci of the programme are three-fold — on political dynamics, social change, and cultural trends. In its attention to politics, the concerns of the programme include party and electoral politics, Thailand’s place in regional politics and geopolitics, regionalism and decentralization, the state of Thai institutions, constitutionalism and royalism, and the impact of politics on economic competitiveness and the investment climate. Social issues that fall within the programme’s purview are migration and demographic change, religion, ethnicity, the Thai education system, the relationship between urban and rural Thailand, the middle classes, and sectorial industries like tourism. In the area of cultural trends, the arts and literature, the media and mass consumption patterns number among topics of interest. The programme seeks to build institutional links to scholars, analysts and centres involved in the study of modern Thailand, not least those in Thailand itself. The co-coordinators of the Thailand Studies Programme are Michael Montesano (michaelmontesano@iseas.edu.sg) and Benjamin Loh (benloh@iseas.edu.sg). Please contact the co-coordinators for further information on the programme.

Reactions to the Thai royal transition
By Benjamin Loh
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Thai media accounts of the accession of Rama X to the throne
By Peter A. Jackson
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What is holding Thailand back from becoming a high-income country?
By Nipit Wongpunya
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Indigenous Peoples’ shifting engagements with the Thai state
By Micah F. Morton
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China’s ‘shame offensive’ directed at Thailand?
By Pongphisoot Busbarat
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