Transitional democracies and the shift to export-led industrialization: Lessons from Thailand

The third wave of democratization sweeping the developing world has occurred in tandem with market and export-oriented shifts in economic policy. This article assesses the prospects for the success of this double transition in Thailand. Some have suggested that the political prerequisites of the shift from import substitution industrialization to export-led industrialization are quite narrow. In this view, newly democratic governments are likely to lack sufficient autonomy from distributional coalitions to impose the losses on those organized groups to sustain a successful economic transition. Analysis of the Thai case suggests that such a shift in economic strategy can be politically manageable while providing for the emergence of a democratically based export-led coalition if inherited economic distortions are mild, political mobilization associated with the democratic transition is low, liberalization, of the trade regime is statist, and if the countries’ export markets are strong. This suggests that the political prerequisites of export-led industrialization may be wider than previously thought.