IT was in the 1990s that the ‘Asian Tigers’ emerged as the poster-children of global capitalism. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong took on and improved upon the statist, export-oriented Japanese growth model. Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam soon graduated into the rapidly expanding ranks. Today it is India and China that are said to lead Asia’s challenge to the hegemony of Western capitalist powers.

Yet, in contrast to the narrative that persisted throughout the 1990s, today it’s not possible to ignore the deepening contradictions of ‘Asian capitalism’. Since the East Asian financial crisis of 1997 that paralysed the economies of Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand, the cracks have grown. Last year in China alone it was reported that 180,000 ‘mass incidents’ — a euphemism for protests — took place.

Those who follow world affairs know that Thailand is the most recent ‘Tiger’ to be gripped by political unrest. Over the past decade or so the country’s politics has been broadly divided into two camps — the ‘Red Shirts’ and the ‘Yellow Shirts’. Given that Thailand, like Pakistan, has been dominated by a praetorian military, there’s comparative significance in studying recent political and economic developments in that country.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1997 crisis, inequality and unemployment in Thailand increased, with rural areas bearing the brunt of the rollbacks. The growing social polarisation created space for the populist former business tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra to come to power in 2001 on a pro-poor platform.

Shinawatra’s popularity increased spectacularly as he redirected not unsubstantial government funds towards rural areas, whilst also initiating a quasi-universal healthcare programme. This was not structural reform, but a watered-down version of neo-liberalism. It garnered Shinawatra a popular base but far from resolved the growing contradictions of (Thai-style) Asian capitalism.

The propertied and urban middle classes were not impressed. Thus emerged the ‘Yellow Shirts’, a street movement that barely disguised its loyalty to the Thai monarchy and the latter’s military guardian. The men in uniform promptly ousted Shinawatra in a bloodless coup in 2006, claiming that the prime minister and his associates were guilty of massive corruption, eventually banning him from politics and sentencing him to prison.

Shinawatra fled the country, returning briefly after the victory of his new party in elections which were eventually held in 2008. He left soon after, as the tug-of-war between the pro-establishment Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts became more confrontational. He has not returned since, but his sister, Yingluck was elected prime minister after her party — the successor to her brother’s banned outfit — swept general elections called in 2011.

This followed almost two years of political stalemate spawned by the refusal of the military-monarchy-judiciary triumvirate to allow the government elected in 2008 to function independently.

In recent days the Yellow Shirts have been back out on the streets following Yingluck’s announcement of snap elections. In response the Red Shirts have warned they will also take to the streets if yet another democratic mandate is threatened even before it has materialised.

Thailand’s unique and unstable political calculus is a warning to all neo-liberal ideologues who insist that rabid free-market policies and technocratic rule are the two main ingredients of successful statecraft in the contemporary period.

In fact, the combination has left Thai society smouldering as relatively privileged classes stand in unison with unelected state institutions willing and able to thwart democratic processes and those who crave to join the ranks of the privileged respond in kind by supporting rank populists.

There’s no question of mapping the Thai situation onto this country, but the similarity of mainstream politics being based around two competing poles — far apart from each other — is difficult to ignore. Here too one pole is occupied by relatively affluent segments who tend to be wary of politics and loyal to state institutions, while on the other pole are less affluent segments that want to be integrated into the structures of power via elections but are still viewed suspiciously by the state.

On the sixth death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto, it’s worth considering the hypothesis that Pakistani politics — at least of the mainstream variety — still revolves around pro- and anti-Bhutto camps. Things have changed considerably in the last decade or so, especially with the emergence of right populism to largely replace the left populism associated with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his progeny. Yet there is still great polarisation along pro- and anti-Bhutto lines, both in terms of access to state power and sources of wealth.

Crucially, neither pro- nor anti-Bhutto camps represent an alternative to neo-liberal policies. That they appear poles apart has much to do with the absence of a genuine alternative to status quo. It is only when this alternative emerges that this country’s people will break free both of state domination and the populist spell.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.