Thaksin’s Legacy: Thaksinomics and Its Impact on Thailand’s National Innovation System and Industrial Upgrading

Thaksin Shinawatra was one of the most powerful prime ministers of Thailand. Undergirded by a set of new policies termed Thaksinomics, great political power, his CEO style of management, and his intention to make Thailand a developed country, his administration could have been a formidable force in transforming Thailand’s weak and fragmented innovation system into a stronger and more coherent one and in laying a long-lasting foundation for the country’s technological and industrial upgrading, as experienced in Japan and the East Asian NIEs. Thaksin’s administration paid much attention to the neglected meso and micro foundations of Thailand’s competiveness. For the first time, Thailand had explicit vertical industrial policies that were tailored to specific sectors and geographical clusters. These policies pushed existing central and regional government agencies to adjust themselves accordingly. Thaksin’s government also induced changes in the roles and behaviours of other actors in the country’s national innovation system. Nonetheless the government, to a large extent, failed to make an enduring impact on industrial and technology upgrading. There are two key factors underlying this failure: (a) deficiencies of Thaksin’s policies and implementation of those policies themselves and (b) resistance to changes by other actors in the national innovation system.