Thailand’s Party Financing Regulation
A U-Turn to Patronage System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/arv.2025.3Keywords:
party finance, political parties, Thai politics, Election Commission, ElectionAbstract
Money is important for the development of political parties. To support the development of parties along with preventing overt corporate influence over parties, the Thai state allocates subsidies from the Political Party Development Fund (PPDF) to eligible party organizations. Beyond the limited PPDF budget, political parties are also allowed to seek their own revenues from other sources such as merchandise sales, fundraisers, and private donations with the maximum of 10 million baht per donor. Based on the qualitative analysis, a series of six focus groups were conducted with party branch members, party MPs, candidates, party staff and ECT officers in the following provinces: Bangkok, Trang, Phuket, Udon-thani, Khon Kaen and Nan. Interviews were conducted with multiple politicians, electoral candidates, party staff, scholars, and ECT officers regarding their views on the pros and cons of current regulations on party finance and PPDF. The result show that many restrictions in party law regulations create an environment where parties often turn to business conglomerates and private donors that can then influence party organizations which runs counter to the original intent of the 2017 law designed to prevent parties from falling subject to patronage. In addition, party reliance on private contributions may lead to compliance mistakes, resulting in punishments such as party dissolution as seen in the case of the disbanding of the Future Forward Party in 2020.
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