Thammasat University students interested in political science, Thailand, ASEAN studies, history, law, communications, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 19 March Zoom webinar on Thai Foreign Policy Under Srettha Thavisin: Continuity, Change and Challenges.

The event, on Tuesday, 19 March 2024 at 2pm Bangkok time, is presented by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

The TU Library collection includes many books about different aspects of foreign policy in Thailand.

Students are invited to register at this link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8217097892203/WN_-nizwYY_Rn-EBxOg_geIHg#/registration

The event webpage explains:

About the Webinar

This webinar examines the evolving dynamics of Thailand’s foreign policy under the leadership of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and the Pheu Thai coalition government. Now in its seventh month in power, the 11-party coalition confronts the challenge of balancing between maintaining policy continuity and introducing changes in response to current geopolitical shifts. The discussion will probe the nature of continuity and change in Thailand’s international relations, focusing on policies affecting the country’s strategic positioning against the backdrop of major power rivalries and regional challenges, specifically the crisis in Myanmar. The webinar will also address domestic challenges that could potentially disrupt or shape the trajectory of Thailand’s foreign policy, underscoring the impact of internal political dynamics, economic pressures, and societal expectations on the country’s international stance.

About the Speakers

Pinitbhand Paribatra is Associate Professor and the head of the International Affairs Department at the Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University.

Chanintira na Thalang is Associate Professor at the .

The TU Library collection also includes published research by Aj. Pinitbhand and Aj. Chanintira.

An example of a publication by Aj. Pinitbhand, from The Pacific Review Volume 35, 2022 is “Myanmar’s struggle for survival: vying for autonomy and agency.”

The article’s abstract:

Despite terminological variations used to characterize Myanmar’s foreign policy within the extant literature, in practice Myanmar has adopted a foreign policy of neutrality and non-alignment since independence to avoid being drawn into global and regional post-World War II power struggles. As realist perspectives suggest, Myanmar’s behavior is a rational choice derived from inherent limitations that a typical weaker state must inevitably conform to the systemic pressures and changes. However, as the discussion illustrates, a weaker state can also be relatively autonomous and possess the ability to pursue independent foreign policies in relation to more powerful states at the international level while dealing with unit-level domestic security problems and challenges. Meanwhile, it is essential not to treat the state as a cohesive unit, as commonly done within existing IR theories based on the experiences of the West. Rather, the state should be treated as a fragmented unit in which its segments possess varying degrees of agency to interact and leverage with other actors at both the international and domestic levels. In order to understand Myanmar’s foreign policy behavior, this article examines how the country has actualized its avenue of agency in coping with both the fluidity of international order and the multidimensional internal instability.

In Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 44, No. 2, Special Issue: Southeast Asia in Global IR: A Reflexive Stocktaking in Research and Teaching (August 2022), Aj. Chanintira published Advancing Global IR from a Thai Perspective: Opportunities for Pre-theorization and Conceptualization.

The article’s conclusion:

Based on a survey distributed within the Thai IR academic community, this article examined the status of IR as a discipline in Thailand in three aspects: teaching, research and theory application. In general, the results reflect more challenges than opportunities for advancing new concepts and theories based on local knowledge and indigenous experiences.

The survey results show that most teaching programmes and assigned readings have tried to strike a balance between the discipline of IR and the empirics of contemporary world events. In this regard, IR in Thailand has developed significantly from when it was first established in the late 1940s with the aim of training personnel for the Thai bureaucracy, though there is much room for improvement. Currently, teaching IR in Thailand is still heavily influenced by Western concepts, theories and reading material authored by Western scholars. Works of non-Western academics are still underrepresented in the reading lists at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Hence, if IR is to become a more global discipline, it is crucial that students are also encouraged to debate and discuss readings inspired by non-Western scholars.

The most significant challenge to research is that universities attach more importance to teaching than to research. The top three obstacles to research are onerous teaching and administrative duties, a lack of funding opportunities and, to a lesser extent, the current political atmosphere which places limits on critical expression. In addition, more than half of the respondents did not feel any pressure to publish regularly, and some types of non-research activities may count as workload or personal achievements, including translation work and writing policy reports for ministries or media outlets.

More importantly, a significant number of the respondents who publish in English did not feel that publishing in international peer-reviewed journals would increase their chances of promotion.

Though publishing in Thai increases access to new knowledge and ideas among the Thai-speaking population, it poses an obstacle to exporting local ideas, arguments and research.

The results of the survey are also in line with past studies that found realism to be the dominant theory used by Thai scholars. However, although Thai IR scholars have used a greater diversity of theories in their work than previously assumed, they generally pursue policy or empirical studies rather than theory-oriented research. While these various challenges remain, this does not mean that the Thai IR scholarly community is an entirely lost cause.

There are still opportunities to contribute to the advancement of Global IR from a Thai perspective. However, this depends on how Thai academics make use of the research networks dedicated to the study of Thailand’s economic and security relations with its neighbours, as they provide countless opportunities for theorizing and conceptualization based on inductive reasoning. Furthermore, while the majority still have the propensity to use mainstream IR theories, thinking critically about the suitability of these theories in different contexts outside the West may provide opportunities for theory refinement and construction. Equally important is whether Thai IR scholars realize the potential for policy-oriented research to lead to pre-theorization. However, whatever is inferred from these local experiences must have useful implications for the  global contexts.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)