"Thaksin’s Legacy: Thaksinomics and Its Impacts on Thailand’s National Innovation System and Industrial Upgrading"[Special Seminar](2009/04/21)
Date: April 21 (Tue.), 2009 12:00-13:30
Place: Room 330, 3rd floor of Inamori Foundation Memorial Hall
Topic: "Thaksin’s Legacy: Thaksinomics and Its Impacts on
Thailand’s National Innovation System and Industrial Upgrading"
Speaker: Dr. Patarapong Intarakumnerd (Visiting Fellow at CSEAS and
Adjunct Professor, College of Innovation, Thammasat University)
Abstract：
Thaksin Shinawatra was one of the most powerful prime ministers of
Thailand. With a set of new policies under Thaksinomics, great and
sustained power, his CEO style of management, and his intention to make
Thailand a developed country, his administration could have been a
formidable force transforming Thailand’s weak and fragmented innovation
system to a stronger and more coherent one, and laid out a long-lasting
foundation for the country’s technological and industrial upgrading, as
experienced in Japan and East Asian NIEs. Thaksin administration paid
much more attention to the neglected meso and micro foundations of
country’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. The
Thaksin government also induced changes in the roles and behaviours
other actors in the Thai NIS. Nonetheless Thaksin 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) the
deficiencies of Thaksin policies and implementation of those policies
themselves, and b) the resistance of changes by other actors in the
national innovation system.
Coodinator: Kaoru Sugihara(CSEAS)