own terms, it can claim considerable success in the short term. The recovery from the crisis, reaching 6.7 percent GDP growth in 2003 , exceeded almost everyone's expectations. Most people had more money in their pockets. Thousands of businesses revived. The stock market soared.
Although Thaksin paid lip service to the ideas of sufficiency and self-reliance, his economic policies and his true feelings were clearly diametrically opposed:
Today the world is very interconnected. We are one part of the world, and we cannot close the country and stand alone having nothing to do with anybody—just living off fishing and harvesting rice. No way. To have concrete buildings, to have anything, we had to grow through interconnection with the outside world. (Pran
2004a, 204)
Thaksinomics approaches the national economy as a bundle of resources to be "managed" to deliver a higher "profit." The keys to raising profit are better skills and better infrastructure but, especially, more entrepreneurship to exploit the potential of the resources available. Government has a "developmentalist" role to encourage and nurture entrepreneurship, from the biggest conglomerate to the grassroots. The main two developmentalist strategies are directing capital and providing packages of assistance to priority sectors, projects, and firms. Resources that are currently partially or fully outside the mainstream economy—including semisubsistence peasants, the disabled poor, and the criminal underground—have to be brought within the system. More regional cooperation can help in two ways: first by breaking down barriers to widen the market and the scope of resources available; second, by providing more protection against international instability.
Thaksin's "dual track" is an attempt to apportion the spheres of capital. Thailand's manufacturing has become integrated into global production chains. It will grow only if Thailand is more attractive as a site for investment than alternatives. But senrice industries are still protected by legal barriers, and grassroots enterprises are