Contemporary Political-Economic Machine in Thailand’s Local Politics: Construction, Operation, and Local Election in the 2020 Election of Samut Prakan Provincial Administrative Organization

Abstract

The election of provincial administrative organizations (PAOs) on December 20, 2020 was the first set of local elections since the coup d'etat council ordered suspension of all elections in 2014. During that time, regulations and practices for political campaigning and local elections were amended. Does the 2020 local election create changes in local electoral politics? If so, how do the changes happen? To answer these questions, this article reworks the idea of political machine to analyze the election of the Samut Prakan PAO’s council members and chief executive.  

The election of Samut Prakan PAO cannot be understood simply through the idea that the local election relies solely on simple clientelism, i.e., the relationship between leaders (influential bosses or political dynasties), canvasser networks, and ordinary people. This local election reflects the collaboration of all power networks as an organization: a so-called “political-economic machine”. This machine is a loosely-structured organization whose members become partners with the aim of accumulating political and economic power. Beyond the mobilization of political support and votes to sustain the political-economic machine, the machine also transfers wealth between the machine’s members. Moreover, the political-economic machine that gains the power to control the Samut Prakan PAO employs the area-based development budget to bargain with the local administrative organizations in the lower tier to attract the lower tier to be the machine’s members.        

The findings presented in this article illustrate that decentralization and consolidated elections could not eliminate the political-economic machine. On the contrary, the political-economic machine grows and expands hand-in-hand with local decentralization and consolidated elections.