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Thailand: Economy and Politics. By PASUK PHONGPAICHIT and CHRIS BAKER. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995. xvii, 449 pp. $59.00.
In the past three decades, a momentous transformation has occurred in the scholarship on Thai politics and economics. Formerly, the most analytical work was carried out by Western (mostly American) scholars using ethnocentric frameworks to explain Thai society. As Thai scholars increasingly studied abroad, particularly in graduate programs in the United States, and as Thai universities placed more (albeit still minute) emphasis on research priorities, Western scholarship became more peripheral, and indigenous works became preeminent. By the 1990s, Thai scholars were producing the best social science. However, the degree of empirical work was still negligible.
Pasuk Phongpaichit (senior author) and Chris Baker have produced the quintessential Thai-authored book on the politics and economy of Thailand. Drawing from the vast literature in Thai and English, they have written a splendid descriptive, nonquantitative account of Thailand during the second half of the twentieth century, showing the transition from a traditional rice economy to an industrial power, and from rule by absolute monarchs to one of Asia's more open semidemocracies. Their product is a thorough and balanced...