Although the campaign season for Thailand's much-anticipated election has only just begun, populism has already become the runaway winner. All of the contesting parties have come up with a plethora of populist pledges to woo voters. That populism has triumphed in Thai politics bears multiple longer-term implications.
To be sure, Thailand is not alone in seeing the rise, spread and consolidation of populism. The basic logic and premise of populism is to pander to the masses against elite interests. In the United States and certain European and Latin American countries, the populist challenge has been to undercut rules and norms that have favoured established centres of power among policymaking elites, political parties, the media, think-tanks, campaign donors, and business interests that all feed into a self-perpetuating political machinery which runs a given country.
