In the summer of 1997, in the afermath of the most severe financial crisis in Thai
history, the IMF-derived term “Good Governance” was hastily reincarnated in the Thai
language as the word thammarat. Though obviously prompted by the impending diktat
of the global financial regime, its Thai inventor, Professor Chaiwat Satha-anand of the
Faculty of Political Science at Thammasat University, and its chief public advocate,
Thirayuth Boonmi, a lecturer in the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, explicitly
stated that the intention behind the Thai coinage was to create a space for the
interpretation of Good Governance in Thai cultural politics which was relatively
autonomous from IMF meanings and policy imperatives.
Here I follow the reception of the word thammarat among different political
groups in the Thai polity, including the authoritarian military establishment, the liberal
corporate elite, and communitarian public intellectuals and activists. My intention is to
highlight the ways in which debates about the meaning of “Good Governance” did indeed
provide a space for different groups to negotiate with one another about the proper nature
of the state, the market, and society more generally, at a time when these concepts were
being called into question. In fact, different political actors on the Thai scene staged
debates through IMF language that went far beyond the wildest dreams of any IMF