International "Decentering" and Democratization: The Case of Thailand

Democratization is an international process resulting from the socialization of state-society units into the modern global culture which originated some two centuries ago in the West. Contrary to the assumptions of world-polity and some democratization theorists, however, state socialization to democracy as a constitutive norm is far from assured, and in particular, some states (guardians) resist socialization fiercely while others (gatekeepers) embrace it. Guardian states such as China and Burma developed their traditions of resistance as a result of being unable to resolve the “tiyong crisis” in a way that would finesse geopolitical and geo-symbolic decentering. In contrast, gatekeeper states such as Thailand and Taiwan have never evinced concern for decentering. Elites in the pre-modern Siamese state resolved their tiyong crisis by re-imagining the Thai national essence as consistent with modernity's basic presuppositions—a development that eventually helped facilitate Thailand's democratization. Once transformed in the 1990s, the Thai state became an agent of socialization by proselytizing for democracy within ASEAN.