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This article aims to examine the factors that lead to the government's resource transfer to (or from) agriculture in Thailand. It argues that coordination of an agricultural industry and the unity of rural farmers are likely to lead to the government's revenue transfer to the agricultural sector. Using a case study of the politics of sugar policy in Thailand, this article shows that a highly coordinated sugar industry and highly united sugarcane growers can lead to the government's revenue transfer to the sugar sector. It also finds that the more democratic the country becomes, the more likely the government is to reduce the revenue transferred to the sector. According to extreme bounds analysis (EBA), coordination of the sugar industry is, nonetheless, the only factor that shows consistently the expected results. This implies that a highly coordinated industry is able to influence the government's policy, while rural farmers struggle to influence the government's policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While whether economic development determines transition to democracy has been studied and retested several times, the relationship of economic development and semi-democracies has been understudied. Does economic development and semi-democracies have any relationship? Why have they not been fully democratized while their economies have performed well? This paper studies whether economic development has an impact on semi-democracies in terms of whether economic development has a significant impact on semi-democratic regimes and how semi-democracies are related to economic development. It hopes to find the answer of whether economic development can lead to transition to full democracies in semi-democratic regimes. To examine whether there is a significant relationship between economic development and semi-democracies, it uses the economic development and political regimes of Malaysia and Singapore as the case study. The finding is that economic development does not have significant impact on semi-democracies and there seems to be no significant between economic development and semi-democratic regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the economy explain the long-term trend of party membership? This paper will examine the long-term relationship between the economic conditions and the party membership trends of British Labour Party and German Social Democratic Party,1950-1994. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can political leaders of developing countries create political alliance and limit the power of their opponents by using agricultural policy? How do they use agricultural policies to strengthen their alliance whereas limit the power of their opponents? Why do the political incumbents choose to ally with particular groups of agro-industries and farmers whereas they try to limit other groups of agro-industries and farmers? Some scholars (Bates 1995, 1998; Hawes 1987; Shafer 1992; Varshney 1998) argue that political incumbents use agricultural policies for allocating public resource to their political bases and extracting wealth from the opponents. On the other hand, other (Kasara 2007) disagrees that the leaders use agricultural policies for controlling their political supporters.  Using the case study of rice policy in Thailand (1988-2008), I argue that political incumbents generate agricultural policies in order to expand their political bases and limit the political bases of the opponents. The incumbents generate 'populist' policies (rice pledging and price guarantee) in order to persuade rice farmers, leaders of farmers' associations, and local politicians to become their political bases. On the other hand, the incumbents use 'custodian' policies (rice concession) for controlling agro-industries (i.e. rice exporters) not to support their political opponents. Instead of stabilizing their regime, I argue that the implementation of 'custodian-populist' policies results in policy conflict among state agencies and political conflict among political incumbents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the economy explain the long-term trend of party membership? Do positive economic conditions encourage the increase of party memberships? On the other hand, does negative economic condition lead to the decline in party memberships? Political scientists have studied what factors have an impact on party membership trend, and how the parties respond to the change of party membership trend (Dalton, Wattenberg 2000; Duverger 1954; Katz, Mair 1995; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1988; Rokkan 1960; Scarrow 1996). Studying industrialized democracy political parties, they have examined whether external factors such the economic transformation or political dealignment cause the decline of the party membership trends. However, political scientists have not considered whether economic factors, such as economic growth (GDP) or unemployment rate, can cause the increase or decrease of party memberships. Using Vector Autoregression (VAR) approach, in this paper I will examine the long-term relationship between the economic conditions and the party membership trends of the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1945 to 1994. I hypothesize that in the long run, positive economic conditions are likely to encourage the increase of the party memberships whereas negative economic conditions are likely to discourage the increase of the memberships. By looking at the trend of party memberships, this paper aims to find the long-term relationship between economic conditions and people's political participation in political parties in terms of whether positive economic conditions encourage people to join the parties, and whether negative economic conditions discourage people to join the parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]