We may compare our siamese people to children. The government will have to urge them forward by means of authority applied directly or indirectly to get them to co-operate in any kind of economic endeavour 53
It was around these interrelated ideas of the nation, economic development and modernization that state democratic discourse emerged Democracy was seen as just one more component in the package of modernity towards which the new elite aspired, and would in turn involve the formulation of projects for its realization. Another significant change involved the more effective use of the state apparatuses, separated from monarchical caprice and extravagance, which put in place the long-term conditions for effective practices of specific