For Pita Limjaroenrat, Thailand’s liberal icon and “almost prime minister,” the experience of being banned from politics following his decisive 2023 general election win has only strengthened the calling to fight for democracy in his country.

Thailand’s distinctive power structure – an entrenched alliance among the monarchy, the military, and economic monopolies – has repeatedly undermined and dismantled democratic forces’ attempts to challenge the dominance of unelected institutions. “This is a systematic issue that if I don't stand up for, then it's going to happen to my daughter's generation and my granddaughter's generation,” Pita says.

Joining APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui on the latest episode of the APARC Briefing video series, Pita reflects on his journey, shares lessons in leadership and resilience, and discusses the forward-looking vision that continues to define his commitment to contribute to the conversation on Thailand’s future.

The APARC Briefing interview followed a fireside chat with Pita, Thailand at a Crossroads, hosted by APARC’s Southeast Asia Program, where he examined Thai politics and Southeast Asian regional dynamics.

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The People’s Mandate

In May 2023, Pita led the Move Forward Party (MFP) to win the most seats in Thailand’s general election on a platform of progressive reform. He was poised to lead the country, but a court injunction and parliamentary maneuvering halted his path to the prime ministership. In August 2024, the Thai Constitutional Court disbanded the MFP and banned Pita from politics for ten years. He may still face a lifetime ban. Rather than retreating, however, Pita has reframed his political setback as a summons to a larger mission.

To compartmentalize, find purpose in adversity, and manage anxiety, Pita proactively maps out worst-case scenarios, he revealed. “Once I have that down on paper, I stop worrying,” he said. Having anticipated the possibility of being blocked from power, the event, when it happened, was not a personal shock but the activation of a pre-analyzed outcome. This mindset allows him to see his ban from office as a reversible obstacle in a long-term struggle, citing the comebacks of leaders like Brazil’s President Lula da Silva. 

Politics is a ball that could turn either way, Pita believes. “If there's enough mandate, if there's enough calling from the people that they want me to govern and they want me to run again, whatever legal procedure that is done to me can be reversed. A pathway to power is always there as long as you still have that fire in you and people give you the mandate,” he argues.

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The Art of the Middle Way

Pita’s leadership philosophy is rooted in a life spent bridging divides. Describing himself as a “jack of all trades,” he recalled how, as a child, he moved easily between being a bookworm and taking on leadership roles in school and basketball. He traces this identity back to his upbringing, which included a middle-class childhood in Bangkok, formative years at an all-boys school in rural New Zealand, and an education and professional experiences in both the public and private sectors, with degrees earned from Harvard’s Kennedy School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

“That became who I am,” he stated, outlining his unique proposition to Thai voters. “Someone who understands international markets and rural areas. Someone who's middle class, who understands people who are well off and people who are struggling [...] Someone who understands both the private side and public side because he prepared himself that way.”

This dual expertise, he argued, is crucial for effective governance. He noted the fundamental difference in objectives between the two sectors. “The goal of public service is service. The goal of the private sector is profitability,” he said. “Just because you're a successful businessman doesn't make you a successful politician.”

He recounted how his political calling was ignited in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when, as a management consultant, he worked on a tourism recovery strategy for Thailand. The intellectual challenge of balancing complex public needs, like national energy security, sparked a passion that private-sector work couldn't match.

From Campaign to Campus

Now a Senior Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Pita channels his experiences into mentoring a new generation of leaders. He teaches a class on running for public office in developing countries, hosts workshops, and holds “private office hours” for students committed to entering public service, helping them craft their first campaign strategies. It is a way of “turning reality into a textbook” for others.

He also remains a keen observer of global affairs, characterizing the current U.S.-China relationship as a “managed rivalry” or “competitive coexistence,” where deep distrust is checked by the understanding that a full-fledged decoupling would be “economic suicide” for both sides. He sees Southeast Asia as a central and crucial bloc of “swing states” that must leverage its position to determine its own future without being forced to choose sides in the competition between the world’s two greatest powers.

When asked for his message to young people, Pita’s advice is a blend of passion and pragmatism. “Always follow your heart, but take your brain with you,” he urged. For those with aspirations to tackle the world’s crises and pressing social challenges, he stressed the importance of pairing that fire with a concrete plan.

“It's up to you whether you find your North Star, improve your skills to have a plan to get there,” he concluded.

Pita clearly articulates what he wants: a more just and democratic Thailand. Even from outside the halls of political power, he is methodically working on his plan to get there. “I can wait for my time, and I will come back stronger, more vigorous, more capable, and more relevant.”

Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is delighted to welcome a new cohort of fellows joining us starting in summer 2026.

APARC offers multiple prestigious fellowship opportunities for Stanford doctoral students, emerging scholars of exceptional promise, and accomplished faculty and mid-career experts researching contemporary Asia topics. Supported by these fellowships, our incoming fellows will complete dissertation research, work on book manuscripts, undertake new research projects, and engage with the center's scholarly community.

Meet the Fellows

Herbert Chang is an assistant professor of quantitative social science at Dartmouth College and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Science for his work on network science and offshore finance. His research examines how emerging technologies reshape democratic behavior, including recent work on AI and misinformation in the 2024 Taiwan and U.S. presidential elections. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Scientific American, and has informed both academic and policy debates.

Chang will use his time at APARC to write a monograph on the interdependence of AI infrastructure and information ecosystems, with Taiwan and the United States as central empirical sites. He will also collaborate with SNAPL to quantify its talent-portfolio theory and empirically model how Asian Pacific nations cultivate and retain scientific expertise. 

Alicia R. Chen is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. She studies international relations and political economy, with a focus on China. Her dissertation examines the domestic political economy of China's international aid and finance, revealing how domestic politics and institutions shape its overseas economic activities.

Her research is published in the British Journal of Political Science and has been generously supported by Stanford’s King Center on Global Development, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, among others.

Before her doctoral studies, Chen was a research specialist with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project at Princeton University. She holds a master's degree in international policy from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Southern California. 

Dr. Sheikh Jamal Hossain is a researcher and academic specializing in child development, maternal mental health, health promotion, and health economics. His professional interests center on advancing evidence-based interventions through rigorous research, teaching, and capacity strengthening, with a commitment to translating scientific evidence into policies and programs that improve the lives of women and children globally.

With over two decades of experience spanning academia, public health research, and international development, Dr. Hossain has led and contributed to large-scale randomized controlled trials, implementation research, and economic evaluations addressing early childhood development, nutrition, maternal mental health, and health system strengthening. He has successfully secured and managed research grants from international donors, including Grand Challenges Canada, UNICEF, FCDO, and Sida.

Dr. Hossain has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications, including 13 as first author, in leading international journals such as The Lancet Regional Health, Pediatrics, Social Science & Medicine, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and BMJ Global Health. He currently mentors multidisciplinary research teams and supervises early-career researchers and graduate students.

He earned his doctorate in women’s and children’s health from Uppsala University, with research focused on the effects of parenting interventions integrated with social protection programs on child development and maternal well-being in Bangladesh. He also holds master's degrees in public health and in health economics from the University of Dhaka.  

Angela Ju is an associate professor of international affairs and political science at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. She uses mixed-methods approaches to study race/ethnicity, gender, international migration, social determinants of health, the nonprofit sector, and urban politics in North America, Latin America, Europe, and East Asia. Her first book, Identities Matter: The Politics of Immigration and Incorporation (Oxford University Press), was published last year. 

While at APARC, Angela will be working on her second monograph, Taiwan's Migration Diplomacy Towards Mainland Chinese Migrants and Refugees. In this book, she will examine why Taiwan has not formed consistent immigration policies for migrants from Mainland China.

Using textual analysis of Taiwanese government legislation and publications, the book's primary argument is that Taiwan uses its migration policies to manage its foreign relations with Mainland China. It also argues that one way in which Taiwan pursues international participation, despite lacking international recognition as a state, is through its migration diplomacy.

Siyu Liang is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research lies at the intersection of political communication, public opinion, and computational social science, focusing on how media and information environments shape political attitudes in both democratic and authoritarian contexts.

Her dissertation examines the role of media in shaping perceptions of China in contemporary U.S.-China relations. In particular, she studies foreign influencer propaganda and the downstream effects of U.S.-China competition on public opinion and intergroup relations. As a computational social scientist, she develops and applies natural language processing and machine learning methods to study political communication and international politics, with particular interests in stance detection, transfer learning, and soft-label modeling.

At the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, she will expand this research agenda by examining how digital media and geopolitical conflict shape public opinion and social exclusion, with a particular focus on U.S.-Asia relations. She will also pursue projects on nationalism and racism in East Asia. Together, these projects seek to advance a more global understanding of how international politics shapes social inclusion and group relations across the Asia-Pacific region.

Siyu received master's degrees in statistics and political science from UCLA and holds bachelor's degrees in political science and statistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Deepika Padmanabhan is a political scientist whose research examines nationalism, language politics, and self-determination, with a regional focus on South Asia. 

Her book project explores how nation-building unfolds not only through grand policies and formal institutions, but also from the ground up, in everyday life. It examines how states promote national languages through routine, informal interactions with citizens, a process she terms the Everyday Imposition of language.

More broadly, her research explores how everyday practices shape political identities and collective belonging. In related projects, she examines the politics of language, food, film, and symbolic rituals as sites through which nationalism is cultivated, contested, and reproduced in daily life.

At APARC, Deepika will revise her book manuscript and develop additional projects on nationalism and political behavior. 

She received her doctorate in political science from Yale University in 2025. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and master’s degrees from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the Department of Politics at New York University.

Grace Zeng is a political scientist specializing in international political economy, with a focus on China's use of trade and investment to influence global regulatory governance. Her research examines how states leverage economic tools to shape international rules and institutions. Her work on China's trade practices shows how China uses seemingly technical health and safety regulations to exert pressure on other nations, systematically increasing import restrictions in response to political tensions.

At APARC, she will pursue projects that extend this research agenda by examining China's growing influence in global governance. One project investigates whether China strategically uses infrastructure investment and foreign subsidiaries to shape international environmental standards. Another examines China’s information control system through the lens of its WTO commitments and the global governance of cyberspace.

Before joining Stanford, Grace was a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her doctorate in politics from Princeton University. She also holds a master's degree in the social sciences (MAPSS) from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Hong Kong.

Semiconductors: The Limits of Containment?
The conference returned repeatedly to America’s use of export controls—and whether they are working. The verdict was nuanced. Philip Wong, the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford, argued that in the semiconductor space the strategy has plainly backfired. By cutting China’s firms off from American chip-making equipment and advanced logic chips, the controls created a large captive domestic market for China’s equipment suppliers who previously had no customers. “It basically enabled the indigenous supply chains to have a wonderful set of customers within China,” Wong said, “and so they were able to climb up the learning curve really quickly, much more quickly than before.” Other speakers suggested that may be a tolerable cost as long as export controls allow the US to reach certain frontier capabilities first—as has been the case with Anthropic’s Mythos model.

Wong pushed back on both alarmism and dismissiveness about China's broader technological rise. China, he argued, has genuine world-class talent and infrastructure across multiple sectors—a peer competitor, not a pretender. "If you are among the best athletes, sometimes you win, sometimes other people win. That happens all the time." To treat any given Chinese breakthrough as proof of American collapse, or to wave it away as a fluke, both miss the point: China is, in his words, "a bona fide good athlete."

Wong’s recommended alternative to export controls was direct: rather than trying to slow a competitor, the United States should focus on “how do we make ourselves run faster.” That sentiment echoed throughout the day, particularly after he noted that the National Science Board had recently been dismissed and that American R&D funding continues to be primarily focused on defense-oriented research. 

Biotech: From Follower to Leading Force
Physician-scientist Chenjian Li, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, offered striking data on China’s advancement in biotech. In the active pharmaceutical ingredients that form the basis of medicines taken by hundreds of millions of Americans daily, China has achieved near-total global dominance—some categories are 100% Chinese-sourced. “Medicine, be it advanced experimental drugs, high-end prescriptions or just daily over-the-counter pills, are actually much more impactful than weapons of mass destruction,” Li said, “because they affect 80% of the United States and global population.”

At the cutting edge of drug discovery, the picture is more nuanced but equally notable. Chinese biotech startups are increasingly producing competitive "me-too, me-better" drugs that improve on existing treatments, and pushing into "first-in-class" drugs—the crown jewels of pharmaceutical innovation. Major multinational corporations (MNCs) are paying billions to acquire them. The fact that Pfizer, Merck, and Eli Lilly are spending at this scale, Li argued, says something important: “The MNCs buy those new therapeutic assets because they are solid and unique, and because the MNCs don’t think that they can be as fast and as good in those lines.”

Economist Ruixue Jia of UC San Diego connected this pharmaceutical surge to China’s education system, which has spent decades steering enormous numbers of students toward engineering and STEM fields, including biology and life sciences. The founder of one of last year’s biggest biotech deals—a $5.6 billion transaction—fit a pattern Jia’s research keeps finding: educated in China, PhD in Canada, postdoc in the United States, returned to China in 2008. “It’s not just a success story of Chinese education,” she noted. “It’s also a success story of North American education.”

Fragmentation and the AI Race
A central tension runs through the broader debate: what do the world’s two largest economies actually gain or lose from their escalating technological confrontation?

Tsinghua economist Hong Ma argued that, measured by its own goals, the American trade war has largely failed. US import dependence on Chinese value-added has remained roughly constant despite years of tariffs, as goods simply reroute through third countries. Beyond tariffs, he warned of a longer-term cost: fragmentation into two separate innovation ecosystems, neither large enough to fully benefit from the other. The US would lose access to the Chinese market, Chinese engineering feedback, and the scale that sustains rapid innovation. “On both sides,” he said, “this is not the optimal equilibrium.”

Panelists pointed to China’s open-weight AI models as evidence of a different kind of competition playing out below the frontier. China’s models from Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and others are being used across the globe—often simply because they are cheaper and good enough for most applications. In this way, big US labs may be ahead on raw benchmarks, but that advantage does not automatically translate into leading global adoption.

Impressive Achievements, Costly Failures
Another useful synthesis came from Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Kennedy’s “bumpy success” framework holds that China’s innovation trajectory is clearly positive—it now ranks tenth globally on the Innovation Index, ahead of Japan in the Asia-Pacific—but deeply uneven across sectors. He described China as a “slow tech dragon”: vast misallocation of resources produces genuine breakthroughs alongside enormous waste, and that waste is a real drag on the broader economy. Commercial aviation was one such example—despite being a signature priority for China’s leadership and the single largest recipient of state investment, the result is, in Kennedy’s words, “an American plane with Chinese paint.” The lesson is not that China cannot innovate, but that state-directed industrial policy produces highly variable results.

That framework—impressive achievements, structural waste, uneven outcomes—runs as a quiet undercurrent through the broader debate. Structural challenges remain: a domestic market that cannot yet absorb the premium prices of cutting-edge drugs; an education system optimized for solving known problems rather than identifying unknown ones; and an economy in which the benefits of technological investment are not yet reaching ordinary households.

The picture that emerges resists easy predictions, but carries a clear message: the old frameworks—China as technological follower, export controls as sufficient means to maintain America’s remaining technological edge, global supply chains as something susceptible to political redirection—often no longer fit the evidence. The task now is building better ones.
 

Discover more from the 2026 SCCEI China Conference. 
 

In May 2023, Thai pro-democracy reformer and lawmaker Pita Limjaroenrat led Thailand’s Move Forward Party to a stunning victory in the general election on a platform of progressive change. The party won a clear mandate from over 14 million voters, but conservative powers and military-appointed senators blocked Pita’s path to the prime ministership. Fifteen months later, Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved the Move Forward Party – the same fate its predecessor, the Future Forward Party, met in 2020. The court also barred Pita from politics for a decade.

It is a story he recounts in his political memoir, The Almost Prime Minister, and one he discussed at a February 2025 fireside chat hosted by APARC’s Southeast Asia Program. In his current role as a Senior Democracy Fellow back at his alma mater, the Harvard Kennedy School, Pita continues to champion transparent and equitable governance, coaches a new generation of political leaders, and strategizes a democratic path forward for Thailand. 

On May 29, 2026, Pita returned to Stanford for a follow-up discussion with APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui, who also serves as co-director of the Southeast Asia Program. Pita examined political developments in Thailand since the contentious 2023 election, the tensions between Thailand and Cambodia, the crisis in Myanmar, ASEAN’s role in the region, and how Thailand and other middle powers should hedge their bets amid the U.S.-China competition and a fragmenting world order. 

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Anatomy of a Defeat

Pita’s opening remarks focused on the outcome of Thailand’s recent general election, in which the People’s Party – the successor to the dissolved Move Forward Party – suffered a decisive defeat. Entering the February 8, 2026, election, the People’s Party had hoped to convert widespread calls for democratic reform into power. Instead, the conservative Bhumjaithai Party secured a clear victory and then joined forces with the third-place populist Pheu Thai Party to form a coalition government.

Pita, who had campaigned for the People’s Party ahead of the election – a political activity he remains eligible to undertake despite being barred from seeking office – offered a candid assessment of the party’s loss.

Lower voter turnout was a key determinant of the February 8 election results, he argued: at 65 percent, it was sharply down from 76 percent in the 2023 general election that he won. Many voters came to believe that the costs of participating in the political process outweighed the potential benefits, Pita said.

That is the calculus of autocrats when they manipulate elections, he argued. Recognizing that electoral participation is the linchpin of a representative democracy's legitimacy and power, and that voter turnout of upward of 70 percent would all but guarantee a People Party victory, "they want to make sure that the cost of going to an election is higher than the benefit."

Pita pointed to his experience as evidence. Despite winning the 2023 election, Thai supporters now see him, three years later, living in Boston rather than governing from Bangkok. The message to voters, he said, is clear: If you keep voting and nothing changes, then why bother?

Pita calls this "voter fatigue by design" – a tactic used by autocrats to make politics seem “dramatized, boring, or irrelevant.”

He labels this Thai establishment's effort to convince voters that political participation is futile as “constituency.” It is one element in a “five C’s framework” that explains the People’s Party’s recent election defeat, he says.

A second factor, which he names “competitive collusion,” was evident in the decision by conservative candidates to coordinate their efforts – whether by merging campaigns or stepping aside – to avoid splitting the vote and present a unified front against the reformist People’s Party.

Third, conflict – by which Pita refers to the recent flare-up of tensions between Thailand and Cambodia – rallied nationalistic sentiment, lending greater legitimacy to the military and thus benefiting the conservative parties associated with it.

The fourth element, according to Pita, is Thailand’s Constitution, under which the Election Commission – the country’s sole election management body – is effectively appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Senate. “So I felt the [February 2026] election was not fair,” Pita said. “There was no linkage to the people, and there were no checks and balances.”

Finally, Pita pointed to the People Party's own missteps, which he categorizes as “candidacy.” He described a “Brahmin left versus merchant right” dynamic, arguing that the party became overly focused on technocratic, urban-centered policies and lost touch with the rural grassroots base that had been crucial to the Move Forward Party’s 2023 electoral success.

Regional Flashpoints: Cambodia and Myanmar

On the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute, Pita called for a renewed commitment to diplomacy, arguing that lasting peace can only be achieved through dialogue. He pointed to the Joint Boundary Commission, the bilateral body the two countries established in 1997 to oversee the demarcation of their border, as the most viable mechanism for resolving the dispute.

“If we return to the table and try to negotiate that out, I think that could be a path toward durable peace between Thailand and Cambodia.”

Turning to Myanmar, Pita stressed the need for Thailand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to take a more active role in addressing the civil war that has devastated the country since the military coup of February 2021. The conflict’s spillover effects, he noted, extend well beyond Myanmar’s borders, fueling cyber scam operations, human trafficking, and illicit financial activity that directly affect Thailand.

“If the ASEAN core, especially Thailand, with its geographic proximity, doesn't do anything, it's going to keep going in a dangerous drift like that.” 

Pita noted, however, that the crisis in Myanmar has grown more complex in recent years. Beyond the struggle among ethnic armed groups and between the military and pro-democracy forces, it now encompasses resource politics as part of a broader competition over rare earths and China’s expanding strategic interests linked to trade corridors and energy infrastructure.

As China’s involvement in the region deepens through its trade routes and gas pipeline interests, the conflict in Myanmar has become much harder to resolve, he said.

As a way forward, Pita proposed a minilateral coalition comprising key ASEAN states, along with India, China, and possibly Japan and South Korea. The goal, he said, would be to work with Myanmar’s opposition forces to “turn resistance into governance” and lay the groundwork for a viable political transition toward a post-conflict Myanmar.

The Middle Power Moment and U.S.-China Rivalry

Zooming out to the global stage, Pita spoke of his interest in the prospects of a "middle power moment" taking shape, citing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent diplomatic tour of the Indo-Pacific region to urge middle power nations, including India, Australia, and Japan, to unite in response to the U.S.-China great power rivalry and the transformation of U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration.

“Thailand is still the second-largest country in ASEAN,” Pita said. “So we have agency and autonomy. Whether we use it or not, that is something that remains to be seen.”

“You realize that if you rely on the Americans for security and the Chinese for the economy, you are going to be forced to choose sides. And once you choose sides, that's the end of everything that you have.” He argued that, if nations are to avoid being forced to choose sides, they must redefine neutrality as an active capability rather than a passive position.

Here, too, he suggested, flexible, issue-based minilaterals could be beneficial. “So I think we'll see a rise of multilaterals on various issues, whether it's AI governance, semiconductors, maritime management, cybersecurity, or critical minerals.”

From Player to Coach

Forced to the sidelines of Thai politics, Pita has embraced a new role. "My calling now is to groom next-gen leaders. I used to be a player, and I did a good job. And then they stopped me. They forced me to sit down. So I decided to become a coach instead.” At Harvard Kennedy School, he now co-teaches a class on running for public office in developing countries, turning his recent, raw experiences into a textbook for the next generation.

Despite the setbacks, Pita’s message remains one of resilience and determination. When asked if he could still win, he was unequivocal. "I think I can," he stated. “I think about it every single night, to return to the arena and become a player. But I can wait. I could strategize, I could accumulate small victories until I'm strong, vigorous, and capable. And when I return, I will change Thailand for good.”.

In His Own Words: Pita's Column in Matichon Weekly

Pita contributes a regular column to the Thai-language news magazine Matichon Weekly (มติชนสุดสัปดาห์), providing analysis on topics ranging from global economic shifts and international politics to urban development and his experiences engaging with leaders in politics, technology, business, and social activism. In his column of June 12, 2026, he reflects on his May 29 visit to Stanford and APARC.

Below is an English version of the column, generated by Google Translate. It has been mildly edited for accuracy and style.

Palo Alto Annual Event

I'm back at Stanford University and Palo Alto again, after visiting last year. I was so impressed that I've decided I'd like to visit every year if I can, not just because of the good weather and pleasant atmosphere, but because this place is a hub of knowledge, conversation, and unique perspectives on the world that are hard to find elsewhere.

I spent three days as a guest of APARC, or the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University's Asia-Pacific research center, which is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), one of the world's most influential institutions in international relations and public policy, as well as the Hoover Institution, a public policy institute that brings together thinkers, historians, economists, and former policymakers from around the globe.

These three institutions set Stanford apart from typical universities, creating a space where the academic and policy worlds converge tangibly. The people you pass each day might be Larry Diamond, who has studied democratic transitions and declines for decades; Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man; Gi-Wook Shin, an expert on East Asia; or Kiyoteru Tsutsui, who studies human rights issues. On the other side of the university is a collection of former top U.S. policymakers, from Condoleezza Rice to Michael McFaul, making conversations here both academic and practical. Importantly, the questions I'm asked at Stanford are always more difficult than anywhere else.

Many conversations this year have revolved around the same question: Is the world entering an era where geopolitics and technology are increasingly intertwined? While in the past, technology companies competed to create superior products, today they face geopolitical questions similar to those governments do. From restrictions on chip exports and access to rare earth minerals to energy security and the restructuring of international supply chains, the names Nvidia, TSMC, and ASML are frequently mentioned alongside those of major powers, as the ability to design, manufacture, and control advanced technology has become an integral part of state power.

In the world of AI, the question has changed significantly this year. At Stanford and Silicon Valley, I hear less talk about frontier models than I expected, but more and more talk about inference, compute, and energy. The excitement isn't about how well the next model will perform, but about who can get these models out of the lab and into real-world economic applications first.

On the other hand, competition is shifting from the digital world to the physical world. Waymo's self-driving cars are becoming commonplace on San Francisco streets, while Amazon's Zoox is beginning to enter the fray as a major player. The development of humanoid robots is also being discussed more seriously than ever before. Many believe that the next decade will be the time when AI begins to develop its own "arms and legs," no longer confined to computer screens.

As technology has advanced to this point, the conversation has once again turned to geopolitics. This includes issues such as controls on the export of advanced chips, competition to attract leading researchers, access to energy for hyperscale data centers, and concerns about the concentration of computing power in the hands of a few companies and countries. If in the 20th century, oil was the strategic resource of superpowers, many are beginning to see that in the 21st century, computing may be heading towards a similar status. The world is therefore not just witnessing a technological competition, but a new restructuring of power through technology.

Another thing I always try to do whenever I come to Stanford and Silicon Valley is to meet Thai students, researchers, entrepreneurs, and Thais working in the technology industry. Because, if you look closely, Thais are already a part of the global competitiveness we talk about.

Over the past two years, since being disqualified from politics, I have dedicated part of my time to traveling, meeting, and systematically building a database of Thai talent abroad. This includes scientists, engineers, economists, artificial intelligence researchers, and executives in global technology companies. This trip was no exception. I had the opportunity to meet Thais working at Google, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, Nvidia, OpenAI, and many other leading technology companies. Some work in semiconductors, some develop AI models, and some manage products with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Many may not be well-known in Thailand, but they are part of the workforce driving the world's future economy today.

Every time I speak with this group of Thais, I leave feeling hopeful. Hopeful to see that Thais can stand at the forefront of industries that are shaping the future of the world, on par with anyone else. And hopeful that their knowledge, experience, and networks can connect and create even more value for Thailand in the future. I can only hope that one day I will have the opportunity to work with them for the future of our nation.

Introduction and Contribution:

Tax policy is an important means through which governments reward their (potential) supporters and disadvantage opponents. Adjusting tax rates, subsidies, or audit practices can affect which groups gain economic advantages and, in turn, political power. Yet these dynamics are not always transparent, especially in semi-democratic and authoritarian settings, where selective, ambiguous, and corrupt tax policies are common.

Observers of recent Turkish history have documented sophisticated efforts by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to deepen its authoritarian rule. These include staging politically motivated trials, spreading fake news, and surveilling its opponents. AKP has also used the tax system to empower or exclude select Turkish foundations (vakıfs). However, the scope of these tax practices, as well as the extent to which the AKP has departed from its predecessors, is unclear. Focusing on one or a few visible cases of regime-friendly vakıfs gaining tax advantages may ignore larger patterns.

In “Mechanisms of privilege,” Elise Massicard and Ayça Alemdaroğlu focus specifically on vakıfs that have received tax exemptions across Turkey’s modern history. Assembling an original dataset on over 300 such vakıfs between 1967 and 2022, the authors show that the AKP is not unique in terms of how it has used exemptions to achieve its political goals. However, and especially since Turkey became a presidential system in 2018, the process has become more centralized, nepotistic, and favorable towards Islamist-aligned vakıfs. 

The reader comes away with a sense of policy continuity across Turkish regime changes, which are sometimes characterized as dramatic “ruptures.” More generally, Massicard and Alemdaroğlu draw our attention to the important role of tax exemptions in fostering regime support. National and subnational partnerships have considerably enriched Turkish vakıfs, empowering them to advance both secular and religious goals and to substitute for state provision in the face of neoliberal policy reforms. “Mechanisms of privilege” extends our understanding of a shadowy policy lever that has been widely criticized by both the European Union and the Turkish opposition. 

Tax Exemption in Modern Turkey:

Vakıfs have provided a range of services across Turkey, including education, healthcare, and infrastructure projects. A 1967 law stipulated that foundations could gain tax exemption so long as they allocated at least 80% of their income to services included in the state budget, underscoring the law’s clear political objectives. During the 1970s, exempted vakıfs followed state-led efforts at social and economic development. Beginning in the 1980s, neoliberal policies led to an increase in Islamist-aligned vakıfs, which aimed to offset growing inequality and a shrinking state. 

The Turkish government has, on multiple occasions, altered the legal landscape of exemptions to further its interests. For example, a 2003 law excluded human rights-focused vakıfs from exemption, as these were likely to challenge the new AKP government. After 2018, Turkey’s adoption of a presidential system placed exemptions under direct presidential control, and a 2021 law removed the Ministry of Finance from the exemption process. These centralizing measures have rendered tax-exempt vakıfs increasingly unaccountable. 

Only a few hundred foundations are approved for tax exemption (out of several thousand that apply), and these are rarely revoked. This situation contrasts with, e.g., the United States, where foundations are automatically exempted upon meeting clear legal requirements.

Data and Findings:

The authors’ database includes 331 exempted vakıfs since 1967, several of which subsequently lost their status. It also contains information on each foundation’s political orientation, which is drawn from news reports, website descriptions, and original interview data. Massicard and Alemdaroğlu use this data to describe the pace and politics of exemption: Is AKP a glaring outlier in modern Turkish history? And does it, in fact, restrict exemption to a narrow set of Islamist foundations? 

The data reveal that tax exemptions have continuously and gradually expanded over time. Governments have differed considerably from one another, but AKP — at least prior to the transition to a presidential system — has not uniformly granted more exemptions. In fact, AKP governments have importantly differed from one another in this respect. (These findings also hold when considering the duration of each government, given that shorter tenures tend to generate fewer exemptions.)
 

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In terms of the politics of tax exemption, Massicard and Alemdaroğlu document a pattern of growing ambiguity and cronyism. For example, although foundations are legally required to be national in scope, strictly local vakıfs occasionally receive exemptions. Secular governments have tended to limit or reverse exemptions granted to Islamist-aligned foundations, and vice versa. One notable pattern under secular rule between 1997 and 2002 was growing exemptions to foundations representing the highly marginalized Alevi community, which Turkish Sunni leaders have tended to view as heretical. 

Interestingly, AKP’s first term in government was characterized by relatively broad exemptions, not solely to religious organizations. Since 2010, however, not only have Islamist vakıfs received an increasing number of exemptions. There is also a growing pattern of nepotism — foundations linked to Erdoğan’s family members receiving exemptions. 

Despite the growing centralization of exemption policy, AKP rivals at the subnational level have also used their power to undercut national priorities. For example, in 2019, the opposition-led Istanbul government canceled its agreements with AKP-aligned foundations. In sum, Massicard and Alemdaroğlu both deepen our understanding of five decades of Turkish politics and illustrate an overlooked item on the authoritarian “menu of manipulation.”

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

Armed Groups and Electoral Coercion

The election will use facial recognition technologies and biometric fingerprints in around half of the 125 thousand voting booths (mesas), and the certificates of the electoral counts of each of those booths (form E-14) will be digitized and transmitted electronically so that citizens are able to consult the results of the official actas of the electoral process. This means the process is likely to be conducted professionally by the National Registry (Registraduría), an independent body responsible for organizing elections. However, given that many areas of Colombia are still dominated by armed groups, the Defense Ministry has already warned that it cannot guarantee the safety of voters.

Indeed, in about 300 of Colombia's 1103 municipalities, the presence of armed groups is well documented. Those include guerrillas like the ELN that did not accept the 2016 peace agreement, dissident splinter groups from the FARC, cartels, and other criminal organizations like El Cartel del Golfo, but most prominently, around 60 paramilitary organizations with varying levels of discipline and internal cohesion.

Many civil society organizations, including those engaged by the DAL team, have already begun developing electoral observation strategies that extend beyond protecting polling stations on election day. Given the levels of violence faced by candidates, political organizers, and social activists, the central concern is not only what will occur during the congressional elections next month or the presidential vote at the end of May, but rather the broader interaction between electoral administration and democratic institutions, on the one hand, and the diverse actors and specialists in violence that continue to operate across Colombia on the other, particularly in the post-2016 Peace Agreement context.

Civil Society Responses and Local Partnerships

In Bogotá, DAL’s team met with several organizations working on issues relevant to democratic governance in Colombia, including CESJUL, Justicia Racial, DeJusticia, and PARES. The main concerns expressed by the organizations center on the integrity and safety of the 2026 electoral process, particularly in vulnerable territories. They are worried about rising risks of political and electoral violence, especially in regions with a strong presence of armed actors, as well as barriers to voter access and participation affecting Afro-descendant communities. There is also a clear need for stronger data analysis and monitoring capacities to identify risks, support early warning efforts, and inform advocacy. Finally, the organizations are concerned with ensuring the legitimacy and visibility of democratic processes in conflict-affected areas, including the transparency of peace-related representation mechanisms such as the special congressional seats (curules de paz).

The team was particularly impacted by the work of the Victims Unit, led by Gloria Cuartas, in its efforts to secure reparations for victims of the conflict. The Victims Unit (Unidad para las Víctimas) is the Colombian government agency responsible for implementing policies for the comprehensive reparation of victims of the armed conflict, adopting a territorial and victim-centered approach. Its mandate focuses on overcoming conditions of vulnerability, restoring rights, and supporting victims’ active role in rebuilding their life projects and contributing to sustainable peace.

DAL will continue to engage with Colombian organizations through its Democracy Garage, a new model for interacting with democracy practitioners. The Garage seeks to bridge the gap between practitioners and scholars by identifying specific challenges that organizations face in their day-to-day work in support of democracy, which may require the use of political science analytic tools to support their efforts to defend democracy. The coming election in Colombia exhibits some of the most complex challenges the Garage wants to address, related to political polarization, the need to facilitate dialogues across the political spectrum, and the threat posed by violent actors and criminal organizations to the power of citizens to use their voice, vote, and organization in the defense of democracy.

Journalism and Democratic Resilience

DAL is closely following developments in Colombia’s upcoming electoral process and their implications for the resilience of democracy in Latin America. In this context, our team recognizes the value of community journalism on two levels. First, it serves to strengthen journalism itself, advancing freedom of expression, access to information, and the capacity of local actors to document and report on their realities. Second, it functions as a critical tool for enriching research and deepening understanding of social phenomena, particularly in environments marked by violence, territorial inequality, and institutional fragility. Strengthening locally grounded information ecosystems is therefore not only a democratic objective in its own right, but also central to understanding how democratic practices are sustained under conditions of pressure and uncertainty.

To advance this objective, and in line with the Democracy Garage methodology, DAL will support the analysis of media coverage of Colombia’s elections through Terra 360, a bilingual digital communications platform focused on dialogue, democracy, human rights, Buen Vivir (collective well-being), and international cooperation. Terra 360 is an initiative co-developed by DAL, POY Latam, and Social Focus, and in alliance with media organizations, academic institutions, and community-based organizations, including Fundación Gabo. Together, DAL, Terra 360, Fundación Gabo, and Justicia Racial will provide support to enable reporting by journalists working in high-risk regions such as Montes de María, Cauca, and Chocó, where access to reliable information is both most constrained and most consequential for democratic participation.

A Critical Test for Colombia’s Democracy

The convergence of violent actors and deep polarization already presents formidable challenges to the Colombian political process. Yet the politics of the upcoming presidential race add an additional layer of complexity. With many candidates prepared to enter the first round, the election is poised to be highly uncertain and competitive — two conditions that amplify existing vulnerabilities and concerns. It remains to be seen whether Colombia will see continuity in the executive or instead follow the pendular swing exhibited in other parts of the region. In this context of existing vulnerabilities and heightened uncertainty, the work of civil society organizations is critical to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process and to contain the potential incidence of bad actors. These elections are yet another test of the resilience of Colombia’s democratic institutions and the strength of its powerful civil society.