在《王朝的民主》一书中，Nishizaki Yoshinori 表明泰国存在政治家族，而且它们非常重要。

摘要

在《王朝的民主》一书中，Nishizaki Yoshinori 表明泰国存在政治家族，而且它们非常重要。作者将 "政治家族 "定义为

(1) 自 1933 年举行第一次议会选举以来，至少产生过两名国会议员的家族；或 (2) 自 1933 年以来，（仅）产生过一名国会议员，但与同期产生过一名或多名国会议员的另一个家族有直接姻亲关系的家族。(p. 4)

Nishizaki 承认，这一定义是对大多数学者所使用的定义的扩展，后者仅将至少有两名国会议员的家族视为政治家族（第 5 页）。

Nishizaki 将政治家族分为两类：与王室相关的 "王室或官僚家族"--取决于其政治和家谱渊源；以及 "资本家-平民家族"。第 4 章和第 5 章论述了 "两派之间的冲突"，反映了泰国长期以来面临的混乱局面。可以认为，作者的主要论点是：泰国民主的命运已经掌握在这两派手中；民主要么不完整，要么被暂时抹杀。

从某种意义上可以说，西崎直截了当地坚持了泰国政治 "基于机构的解释 "以及承载这些机构的网络政治的重要性。此外，西崎在论证时所依据的基本假设是，网络或王朝（政治家族）对民主不利。因此，如果他能证明网络或王朝（政治家族）仍然存在，并且有很大的影响力--他确实做到了--那么适当的民主制度就还没有建立起来。

这种说法让我想起了 20 世纪 90 年代末和 21 世纪初有关泰国政治的大量文献，尤其是在他信首次担任总理期间和之后。无论是保守派学者阿尼克-劳塔玛塔斯（Anek Laothammatas，1995 年），还是进步派学者巴苏克-蓬派吉（Pasuk Phongpaichit）和克里斯-贝克（Chris Baker，2004 年）以及卡西安-德加皮拉（Kasian Tejapira，2006 年），都对所谓的政治家族、王朝和政治家持有类似的观点。

在上述主张的基础上，西崎提出了他的另一个主要论点：不是泰国政治孕育了政治王朝或政治家族，而是根深蒂固的政治家族孕育了泰国民主的现状，即不完整和腐朽。这一论点与许多研究泰国政治的学者的观点背道而驰，他们倾向于认为是泰国的政治结构和生态系统为政治王朝的兴盛创造了条件。西崎几乎是在说，正是这些政治家族的行为才是

结构 "本身，并孕育了泰国政治格局的整个生态系统。

西崎对泰国政治观察家詹姆斯-奥基（James Ockey，2015 年）和普拉贾克-孔吉拉提（Prajak Kongkirati，2016 年）的反驳表明，这些政治家族出现于 1932 年泰国民主的黎明，而非大多数人所认为的 1973 年，由此可见西崎所论证的政治家族的持久性。当然，从 1932 年开始，人们就有了政治家族的意识，但大多数学者声称这些家族主要在曼谷或中原地区，而不是在全国范围内（例如，见 Prajak，2016 年）。西崎的观点与此不同，他认为这些家族长期以来一直是全国性网络的一部分。

好

这部作品最明显也是最无可争议的贡献是它提供的信息。它清楚地展示了西崎在信息收集和综合方面的神奇能力。从火葬卷到资产负债申报账目等，这部作品收集的信息来源之多、信息量之大是难以想象的。作者似乎也意识到了这一点，因为他提到，由于资料过多，这本书可能会非常枯燥乏味。从他的角度来看，这一点可以说既是这部作品的缺点，也是它的优点。我同意西崎的观点，这是他作品的顶峰，但它所造成的无聊远不是本书最糟糕的弱点，这一点将在后面讨论。数据的广泛性很容易使这本书在未来许多年里成为该主题的学术参考书。这些数据不仅在原始形式上很好，而且还为西崎的论点提供了重要的阐述力。西崎在这部著作中的目标之一是确认政治家族的影响力是塑造泰国政治格局的核心因素。这一观点与最近关于泰国选举政治的传统学术观点背道而驰，后者认为泰国选举政治的基础是说服选民的方式发生了结构性变化--从 "魅力型 "转变为 "纲领型"，这一点可以通过客户关系来研究（Viengrat，2022 年；2023 年）。Nishizaki 虽然不否认这种变化（第 xv 页），但他提出了一种基于代理的主张，即政治家族和网络政治仍发挥着更大的作用，在某种程度上，广为接受的 "客户关系 "只是 "客户关系 "的一个子项。

在某种程度上，广为接受的 "僚属关系 "只是这种王朝生态系统的一个子集（第 xvi 页）。

为了支持这种说法，必须提供大量信息来证明政治家族的 "客观和不可否认的影响力"，而作者做到了这一点。从这个意义上说，西崎所收集的有关泰国议会历史上 3454 名议员的信息将成为一堵无法逾越的证据墙，证明泰国的政治家族在泰国的民主发展中发挥了重要作用。在泰国现代政治史上，他们在议会席位中所占的比例不容小觑。Nishizaki 证明，近年来政治家族（以及相关的基于代理的论证）被过分淡化了。

西崎著作中政治家族的结构稳定性将迫使大多数泰国政治观察家，尤其是进步阵营，重新考虑他们对泰国选举结构变化和动态的主张。我相信这一点，再加上作者煞费苦心收集的信息力量，是对学术界的巨大贡献。

坏

如上所述，虽然《王朝民主》极大地促进了我们对泰国研究的了解，但它并非完美无瑕。实际上，它远非如此。它主要在四个方面存在不足。首先，它没有提出太多原创性论点。其次，作者过于执着于 "王朝家族 "的特征，似乎忽略了实际影响和改变这些王朝的因素。第三，作品缺乏适当的标准来支持其关于政治家族在泰国政治中的重要性的说法。最后，该著作将 "王朝民主 "与民主的衰落等同起来，非黑即白，过于简单化。

西崎的论点在一定程度上有所贡献，但充其量也只是毫无新意，与作者本人精心收集和呈现的大量信息毫不相干。西崎只是用他收集的数据告诉我们，政治家族确实存在，但他并没有详细阐述其意义。他提到王朝对民主不利，并提出了为什么王公贵族和官僚家族针对资本主义平民的行为发动政变的原因--尽管并不详细。该书缺乏对原则和概念标准的讨论，无法解释政治家族为何不好或其存在为何重要。作品只是简单地描绘了政治家族作为历史背景下的人物所扮演的角色和所处的位置，却几乎没有阐述它们为何重要。拥有这样的家庭意味着什么？因此，所提出的论点在概念上几乎与令人印象深刻的数据无关。

没有适当的概念框架，这部著作就无法说明政治家族的重要性。以维贾吉瓦家族为例。众所周知，阿披实-维乍集瓦和苏拉南-维乍集瓦同姓，因此属于本著作定义的同一个 "政治家族"，但他们的政治选择和政治道路却完全不同。相比之下，已解散的未来前进党（FFP）的许多成员都转投了前进党（MFP），该党是以塔纳通-朱安隆鲁昂吉（Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit）为中心的 "死党 "政治集团。前进党和自由党的领导成员并不同姓，甚至没有婚姻关系，但他们的关系结构甚至政治功能却与西崎提到的一些政治家族如出一辙。因此，读完这本书后，我并没有看到一般政治家族相对于政治宗族的重要性。仅从这一点论证，我不能说这部著作达到了目的。

其次，作者过于执着于王朝这个 "容器 "本身，几乎忽略了所有其他相关因素。直截了当地说，这是一部研究王朝家族的著作，对家族内部的变化及其功能视而不见。西崎执着于他所定义的容器的形式。这一点与前一个缺点密切相关。正是因为作者只关注容器的形式，读者最终会怀疑政治家族为何如此重要。在这一点上，我们只知道存在由血缘或婚姻组成的政治家族，而且数量相当可观。这就是这部作品所传达的全部信息。

事实上，政治家族依然存在。任何理智的泰国政治观察家都会同意这一说法。但是，那些形式不变的政治家族确实会改变自己的角色。Illan Nam 和 Viengrat Nethipo（2022 年）研究了泰国的 "政治家族大党"--泰爱泰党（TRT）的形成和功能。然而，泰爱泰党所扮演的角色与 Nishizaki 所认为的自 1973 年以来似乎被冻结的角色截然不同。Nam 和 Viengrat（2022 年）证明，即使政治家族的容器形式保持不变，其功能却不会改变。家族必须根据 1997 年宪法带来的结构性变化而改变，并变得更具纲领性。西那瓦家族可能会传承其权力并在某种程度上拥有 TRT，但这不再是简单地通过买选票和利用每位议员的魅力来获得支持。这就是政治家族的活力所在，而西崎却因为痴迷于政治家族的静态形式而忽略了这一点。

这就引出了第三个问题。这项工作的目的是描绘源自政治家族的 "重要影响力"。西崎选择的方法是客观地显示这些政治家族在议会中所占的席位比例。就方法论而言，这是一种合理的方法。但它缺乏适当的概念标准来区分哪些是有影响力的，哪些是没有影响力的。例如，西崎（Nishizaki）试图（第 7 页）与 1973 年以后的传统知识相比，证明政治家族自 1932 年以来的长期影响力。他首先声称，政治家族赢得的国会议员席位的平均比例为 41%。然后，他认为政治家族在议会中的影响力始于泰国民主的初期，在 1932-71 年间，24% 的议员来自政治家族。这些数字低于平均比例（41%），而且没有标准来确定他们的影响力。作者没有从概念上阐述为什么我们会认为某件事或某组信息具有影响力，比如 "从获得 20% 的席位开始"。这几乎就像是西崎要求读者自己去理解他的标准是什么，就像是在说："如果这个数字对我来说足够好，那么对你来说也应该足够好，你应该明白我的观点。"由于 41% 和 24% 相差悬殊，如果没有正确的概念标准，对影响的衡量就显得过于薄弱。

最后一点与前几点有关。西崎不仅过于执着于他所定义的政治家族的内涵，而且只关注政治家族的形式和延续，而忽视了其他相关问题。这一点从书的开头到结尾都可以看出，作者将 "王朝民主 "等同于 "民主的衰落"。这是对现实的简单化、非黑即白的描述。Nishizaki 甚至认为，政治家族只追求个人利益，很可能以牺牲他人利益为代价。这在历史上的某个时期可能是对的，但现在情况已经发生了很大变化，尤其是从 1997 年开始。正是西崎本人（第 7 页）分享了一个令人惊讶的事实：从 1988 年到 2020 年，议会中的政治家族比以往任何时候都要多：他们占据了总席位的 46.2%。然而，泰国不正是在这一时期经历了一波又一波最进步的民主进程吗？如果政治家族真的会让民主变得更糟，那么在此期间，泰国就应该回到子宫里去。

无论如何，政治进步性并没有减弱。这是因为政治家族是随着历史的动态发展而演变的。它们并不像 Nishizaki 所描述的那样一成不变。Viengrat Nethipo》（2023 年）捕捉并清晰地描绘了这种动态。当然，政治家族可能会在某些时候甚至大多数时候谋取私利，但这并不一定意味着多数派和民主的衰落。我持保留意见，认为这一假设存在根本性缺陷。如果有人说，TRT（俗称 "大家族党"）的工作和遗产对推进民主没有任何贡献，任何理智的泰国政治观察家都不会同意，甚至会认为这种说法是疯狂的。然而，从西崎的基本逻辑和假设来看，他并没有提出相反的论点。因此，我认为他的论证存在缺陷。

丑陋

继 "丑陋 "之后，还有一点值得关注。这就是西崎试图提出自 1932 年起全国范围内就存在政治家族，这有悖于常规的理解。原则上，笔者赞同这一说法，并对作者的尝试表示赞赏。然而，作者得出这一结论的出发点是有问题的，尤其是他在这场辩论中单单挑出了 Prajak（2016 年）。首先，包括 Prajak 在内的大多数相关著作都承认 1932-73 年间存在政治家族，但他们认为这些家族大多是中央集权的。西崎（Nishizaki）用他的大量资料证明了这一点是错误的，他声称这些家族不仅存在于中央，而且遍布全国各地。

然而，我们看到他对政治家族的定义与前人不同，因为他在其中加入了婚姻关系。这意味着，他比前人进一步扩大了他所称的政治家庭的范围。随着

有鉴于此，他发现自泰国民主制度诞生以来，政治家族确实如雨后春笋般涌现，其中许多关系似乎来自于旧精英政治家族与新出现的政治家族之间的通婚（第 2 章）。他甚至认为这是导致 1932 年民主革命结局不佳的原因，因为精英阶层的瓦解会给与精英阶层有姻亲关系的推动者带来利益冲突。这本身就是一个惊人而伟大的发现。但将其作为反驳之前发现的论据则相当丑陋，因为之前的著作，包括普拉亚克的著作，都是基于与西崎完全不同的定义来进行论证的。他们的定义中并不包括通婚关系，而西崎也很清楚这一点，因为他在书中已经指出了这一点。对我来说，这种反驳是毫无道理的，甚至是不公平的。

无论如何，我最终还是推荐这本书，因为它的优点大于缺点。光是收集资料的艰辛工作就足以称得上是作者毕生的成就。在未来的许多年甚至几十年里，它都将是泰国议会政治的百科全书。

TITLE:

<Book Reviews>Yoshinori Nishizaki. Dynastic Democracy: Political Families in Thailand. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022.

AUTHOR(S):

Kritdikorn Wongswangpanich

CITATION:

Kritdikorn Wongswangpanich. <Book Reviews>Yoshinori Nishizaki. Dynastic Democracy: Political Families in Thailand. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022.. Southeast Asian Studies 2023, 12(2): 373-378

ISSUE DATE:

2023-08

URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/2433/284900

RIGHT:

©Copyright 2023 Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University

Dynastic Democracy: Political Families in Thailand

YOSHINORI NISHIZAKI

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022.

Summary

In Dynastic Democracy, Nishizaki Yoshinori shows that political families exist in Thailand and that they are important. The author defines a “political family” as

(1) a family that has produced at least two MPs since the first parliamentary election was held in 1933, or (2) a family that has produced (only) one MP since 1933 yet is directly related by marriage to another family that has produced one or more MPs during the same period. (p. 4)

This definition, as acknowledged by Nishizaki, is an expansion of the one used by most scholars, who only count a family with at least two MPs as a political family (p. 5).

Nishizaki categorizes political families into two groups: royally related “princely or bureau- cratic families”—depending on their political and genealogical roots—and “capitalist-commoner families.” Chapters 4 and 5 argue about “the clash between the 2 factions,” reflecting the chaos that Thailand has long been facing. It may be concluded that the author’s main argument is that the fate of Thai democracy has fallen into the hands of these two factions; democracy is either incomplete or temporarily wiped away.

In a sense, it may be said that Nishizaki straightforwardly insists on the significance of the “agency-based explanation” of Thai politics as well as the network politics that host these agencies. Furthermore, the foundational hypothesis that Nishizaki builds his argument on is simply that networks or dynasties (political families) are bad for democracy. Therefore, if he can prove that they still exist and have a significant presence—which he does—then a proper democratic regime is not yet in place.

Such a claim reminds me of the abundant literature on Thai politics during the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly during and after Thaksin’s first term as prime minister. Both conservative scholars like Anek Laothammatas (1995) and progressive scholars like Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (2004) and Kasian Tejapira (2006) have a similar perspective on so-called political families, dynasties, and politicians.

Building on the aforementioned claim, Nishizaki arrives at another point in his main argument: it is not Thai politics that has bred political dynasties or families, but the long-rooted political families that have bred the current state of Thai democracy, which is incomplete and decayed. This argument runs counter to the observations of many scholars of Thai politics, who tend to claim that it is the Thai political structure and ecosystem that have produced the conditions for political dynasties to flourish. Nishizaki is almost claiming that it is these political families that behave as

the “structure” itself and have bred the whole ecosystem of the Thai political landscape.

The endurance of political families, as argued by Nishizaki, may be seen from his counterargu- ment against Thai political observers such as James Ockey (2015) and Prajak Kongkirati (2016) that these families emerged at the dawn of Thai democracy in 1932—not in 1973, as most people believe. Of course, there was an awareness of political families from 1932, but most scholars claim that these families are based predominantly in Bangkok or the central plain and not nationwide (see, for example, Prajak 2016). Nishizaki argues otherwise, claiming that these families have long been part of a nationwide network.

The Good

This work’s most obvious and probably unarguable contribution is the information it provides. It clearly illustrates Nishizaki’s information-gathering and synthetization capabilities at a magical level. The number of sources and amount of information—from the cremation volumes to the Assets and Liabilities Declaration Accounts and so forth—that this work has collected is unimag- inable. The author seems to be cognizant of this, since he mentions that the book may be extremely boring due to the data overload. This point may be considered both the weakness and the strength of this work from his point of view. I concur with Nishizaki that this is the pinnacle of his work, but the boredom it creates is far from being the book’s worst weakness, as will be discussed later on. The extensiveness of its data will easily make this book a scholarly reference on the topic for many years to come. The data is not only good in its raw form, but it also provides significant elaborative power for Nishizaki’s argument. One of Nishizaki’s objectives in this work is to confirm the influence of political families as the core factor in shaping Thailand’s political landscape. This is a claim that goes against the recent conventional scholastic opinion on Thai electoral politics, which is founded on a structural change in the way of convincing voters—from charismatic to programmatic, as studied via the clientelistic relationship (Viengrat 2022; 2023). Nishizaki, though he does not deny such a change (p. xv), has made the agency-based claim that political families and network politics still play a much greater role and that, to a certain degree, the widely accepted

clientelistic relationship is simply a subset of this dynastic ecosystem (p. xvi).

In order to back such a claim, a tremendous amount of information has to be provided to show the “objective and somewhat undeniable influence” of political families; and the author has achieved this feat. In this sense, the information about the 3,454 MPs throughout Thai parliamentary history that Nishizaki has collected will act as an unsurpassable wall of evidence that political families in Thailand have played a significant role in the development of Thai democracy. Their percentage in the share of parliamentary seats throughout Thai modern political history is not to be scoffed at. Nishizaki has proven that political families (and, by association, agency-based arguments) have been downplayed too much in recent years.

The structural stability of political families in Nishizaki’s work would force most observers of Thai politics, particularly the progressive camp, to reconsider their claim on the structural change and dynamic in Thai elections. I believe that this, together with the power of information the author has painstakingly collected, is a huge contribution to academia.

The Bad

Although Dynastic Democracy has greatly contributed to our understanding of Thai studies, as mentioned above, it is not flawless. It is actually far from being so. It falls short in four main areas. First, it does not offer much of an original argument. Second, the author is so obsessed with the character of “dynastic families” that he seems to overlook the factors that actually affect and change these dynasties. Third, the work lacks proper criteria to support its claim that political families are significant in Thai politics. And lastly, the work equates “dynastic democracy” with the decay of democracy in a black-and-white manner that is too simplistic.

Nishizaki’s arguments make a contribution to some extent, but they are at best unoriginal and borderline irrelevant to the mountain of information that the author himself has meticulously collected and presented. Nishizaki simply tells us, using the data he collected, that political families do exist—but he does not elaborate on their significance. He mentions that dynasties are bad for democracy, and he proposes—albeit not in much detail—reasons for why princely and bureaucratic families carried out coups against the behavior of capitalist-commoners. The volume lacks a discussion of principles and conceptual criteria to explain why political families are bad or why their existence matters. The work simply portrays the role and location of political families as characters in a historical context but barely elaborates on why they matter. What does it mean to have such families? Hence, the arguments made are almost conceptually irrelevant to the impressive data.

Without a proper conceptual framework, this work falls short of demonstrating the importance of political families. Take the Vejjajiva family as an example. It is commonly known that Abhisit Vejjajiva and Suranand Vejjajiva share the same family name and are therefore in the same “political family” as defined in this work—but their political choices and paths have been entirely different. In contrast, the Future Forward Party (FFP), which was dissolved and many of whose members moved over to the Move Forward Party (MFP), was a political cluster of “diehard friends” centered around Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. Leading members of the FFP and MFP did not share a family name and were not even linked by marriage, but their relationship structure and even political function were like a carbon copy of some political families that Nishizaki refers to. As a result, after reading this book, I do not see the importance of political families in general, as opposed to political clans. From this point alone, argument-wise, I cannot say this work has achieved its goal.

Second, the author is so obsessed with the “vessel” of the dynasty itself that he is almost blinded by all other related factors. To put it bluntly, this is a study of dynastic families that turns a blind eye to changes within the families and their function. Nishizaki is obsessively focused on just the form of the vessel that he has defined. This point is strongly related to the previous shortcoming. It is because the author focuses solely on the form of the vessel that the reader eventually comes to doubt why political families even matter. At this point, we are only told that there are political families formed by blood or marriage, and their number is quite significant. That is all this work conveys.

Indeed, political families still exist. Any sane observer of Thai politics would agree with this claim. But political families that have the unchanged form of a vessel do change their roles. Illan Nam and Viengrat Nethipo (2022) studied the formation and function of the Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), which is commonly known as the “big political family party” in Thailand. However, the roles that TRT performed were strikingly different from the roles that seem to have been frozen since 1973 as Nishizaki argues. Nam and Viengrat (2022) proved that even though the form of the vessels of political families remains the same, their function does not. Families have to change according to the structural changes brought about by the 1997 constitution and become more programmatic. The Shinawatra family may pass on their power and somewhat own TRT, but this is no longer simply through vote buying and using the charismatic charm of each MP to gain popularity. This is the dynamic of political families that Nishizaki has missed due to his obsession with the static form of political families.

This leads to the third problem. The aim of this work is to portray the “significance of the influence” that stems from political families. The way in which Nishizaki has chosen to do this is by objectively displaying the proportion of seats that these political families share in parliament. This is a sound approach in terms of methodology. But it lacks proper conceptual criteria to distinguish what would be considered influential and what would not be. Take, for example, Nishizaki’s attempt (p. 7) to demonstrate the long-term influence of political families since 1932 in comparison to conventional knowledge, which dates from 1973 onward. He first claims that the average proportion of MP seats won by political families is 41 percent. He then argues that political families have been influential in parliament from the infancy of Thai democracy, when 24 percent of the MPs came from political families during the years 1932–71. These numbers are lower than the average proportion (41%), and there are no criteria to identify what makes them influential. The author does not conceptually elaborate on why we would consider something or some set of information influential, something like “from 20% of the seats acquired onwards.” This is almost like Nishizaki asking readers to understand for themselves what his criteria are, like saying, “If this number is good enough for me, then it should be good enough for you to see my point.” Since 41 percent and 24 percent differ by a significant margin, the measurement of influ- ence is far too weak without proper conceptual criteria.

The last point relates to the previous ones. Not only is Nishizaki too obsessive with the ves- sel of what he defines as a political family, but he focuses only on the form and continuation of such families without looking at other related issues. This can be seen from early on in the book to the very end, where the author equates “dynastic democracy” with the “decay of democracy.” This is a simplified, black-and-white version of reality. Nishizaki goes so far as to argue that political families seek only personal gain, probably at a cost to others. This might have been true at some point in history, but things have changed a lot, particularly from 1997 onward. It is Nishizaki himself (p. 7) who shares the surprising fact that from 1988 to 2020, political families in parliament were more prolific than ever before: they occupied 46.2 percent of the total seats. But was it not during this very period that Thailand experienced wave after wave of the most progressive move- ments for better democracy? If political families truly make things worse democratically, then during this period Thailand should have gone back to its womb.

In any case, political progressiveness is not waning. This is because political families have evolved alongside the dynamic developments in history. They are not static in the way Nishizaki has portrayed them. Viengrat Nethipo (2023) captures and clearly depicts the dynamics. Of course, political families might seek personal gain at some points—or even most points—in time, but this does not necessarily mean the decay of the majority and democracy. I would stay on the fence and say that this hypothesis is fundamentally flawed. If someone were to argue that the works and legacies of TRT, commonly known as the big family party, did not contribute anything to the advancement of democracy, any sane observer of Thai politics would disagree or even consider the statement insane. Nevertheless, Nishizaki’s fundamental logic and hypothesis show that he does not argue otherwise. This is why I claim his argument to be flawed.

The Ugly

Following “The Bad,” there is one remaining point of concern. This is Nishizaki’s attempt to propose that political families have existed nationwide since 1932, which goes against the conven- tional understanding. In principle, I agree with the claim and would like to praise the author’s attempt. However, the starting point that allows him to reach this conclusion is problematic, especially since he singles out Prajak (2016) in this debate. First, most works on this topic— including Prajak’s—acknowledge the existence of political families during the period 1932–73, but they believe that such families were mostly centralized. Nishizaki—with his enormous set of information—has proven this point to be wrong, claiming that these families were not only in the center but across the nation.

However, we see that his definition of a political family is different from that of those who came before, since he has added a marriage relationship into the mix. This means that he has expanded the scope of the entity he would call a political family further than his predecessors. With

this in mind, he has discovered that indeed political families have proliferated since the dawn of Thai democracy, and many of these relationships seem to come from intermarriage between the old elite’s political families and the newly emergent ones (Chapter 2). He has even argued this to be the cause for the 1932 democratic revolution not ending well, since the demolition of the elites would cause a conflict of interest for the promoters, who had marriage ties with the elites as well. This is a stunning and great finding on its own. But to deploy it as a counterargument against previous discoveries is rather ugly since previous works, including Prajak’s, based their arguments on a totally different definition from Nishizaki’s. They did not include an intermarriage relationship in the definition, and Nishizaki knows this well since he has made this point in the book. For me, this counterargument is uncalled for or even unfair.

In any case, I ultimately recommend this book because its positives outweigh its negatives. The hard work of collecting the data alone is worthy of being called the author’s lifetime achieve- ment. It will be an encyclopedia on Thai parliamentary politics for many years and decades to come.

Kritdikorn Wongswangpanich กฤดิิกร วงศ์ส์ วางพานิิช

Science Technology and Innovation Policy Institute (STIPI), King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2321-7944

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[Clientelism for whom? Thai electoral