Scholarship on Thailand suffers from an enduring paradox. While political scientists (e.g. Girling 1981; Morell and Chai-Anan 1981) decry a rent-seeking feudalization of administration in both the old bureaucratic polity and the new semi-democracy, economists (e.g. World Bank 1993; Muscat 1994) herald pragmatism and conservatism in economic policy. Where one saw patron–client ties, lack of interest in developmental outcomes, incessant struggles for control over the machinery for extraction of rents, and a congenital inability to make hard decisions, the other saw sound macroeconomic management, limited intervention in markets, an ability to avoid making major mistakes and impressive successes in family planning, public health and education.

Prior to the financial and currency crises of 1997, it was difficult to disagree with the economists. Between 1955 and 1988, per capita economic growth in Thailand averaged 3.9 per cent per year (Christensen et al. 1993: 2). Only four countries – Brazil, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea – grew faster. High economic growth was accompanied by a rapid decline in the incidence of poverty and substantial exports of manufactures. An export and foreign investment boom after 1988 contributed to an even faster rate of growth (6.4 per cent per capita per year between 1989 and 1992). This long-term development performance has made Thailand one of the development success stories since 1960. Not surprisingly, the World Bank (1993) included it among the high-performing Asian economies in its East Asian Miracle study.