Abstract:
This thesis is aimed at studying the significant relations between Thai political parties and local politics in respect of local politics as the essential source of benefits and power base of political parties. In this regard, political parties exploit various factors in the political system that render conveniences and opportunities for their influences over local politics. The methods used her are documentary research and in-depth interviews who are believed to have sufficient information for this study. The result of the study indicates that the Thai political parties and local politics are strongly related. Politicians affiliated with various political parties are the ones who tie this relationship. Local politics comprises important political resources for political parties in gaining political power, which, in turn, results in many benefits. The linkage between the Thai political parties and local politics is in the form of influence over the locals by political parties in accordance with bureaucracy, local government apparatus, and party representative as the agents who co-ordinate and manipulate the local people. In this regard, exploiting the mechanism of the patron-client relationship in the Thai society in accordance with the political ignorance of the people in the passive political culture, the political parties are able to take local politics as their essential power base in order to achieve political power and then unlimittedly exploit their possession of such power. The allocation of interests for the locals by the poiltical parties is a kind of the maintenance and securing of their power base.