Isan NGO workers’ Perceptions of Democracy from 2006 to 2016

Abstract

This paper scrutinizes the views on ‘democracy’ of NGO employees who work in Thailand’s Northeast Region (Isan), and explores the conditions under which those views were shaped. The period from 2006 to 2016 is selected because during that time Thailand was witnessing a series of internal political conflicts and two coups. Significant to our study is the fact that during that time, NGO workers in Thailand were expressing their political views overtly, not to mention playing important parts in major political movements. Their political stances can be related to diverse interpretations of ‘democracy’. Based on in-depth interviews, this paper argues that when discussing democracy, the ‘Isan’ NGO workers associated the term with prevailing understanding of concepts such as “rights”, “freedom”, “equality” and “majority rule”. However, the Isan NGO workers of various groups under scrutiny perceived each concept differently. Some advocated liberal democracy while others adopted a populist view. And there are groups that expressed discontent against representative democracy, proposing instead people’s ‘direct democracy’ in the form of social movements. Five factors – life experiences, age, media consumption, learning, and interpersonal relations – influenced the perceptions on democracy of the Isan NGO workers under study.