Political Ideology of Pheu Thai Party Leaders and Determinants of Their Decision to Support Party Candidates in Sukhothai Province
Keywords:
Political Ideology, Pheu Thai Party, Sukhothai ProvinceAbstract
The independent study Political Ideology of Pheu Thai PartyLeaders and Determinants of Their Decision to Support Party Candidates in Sukhothai Province by qualitative method that individual interview for people inresearch criteria with snowball sampling method such as village headman, subdistrict headman and assistant secretary Pheu Thai Party Member of parliament that aimed to examine the relationship between the political ideology ofPheu Thai Party leaders and their decisions to support Pheu Thai Party candidates in Sukhothai Province.
The findings reveal that political ideology is closely related to decision-making in candidate support. This is because the target group’s decision-making process reflects the theory of non-conscious cognitivemachinery, in which respondents provided answers containing internal inconsistencies and attempted to rationalize their own decisions. Such a decision-making pattern is characterized as a state of moral paralysis. For instance,interviewees claimed that the current policies of the Pheu Thai Party benefit the people most, referring to past policies such as the 30-baht universal healthcare scheme. The researcher agreed that this was a constructive welfare-state approach to addressing structural problems. However, at present, the Pheu Thai Party no longer pursues such welfare-based policies, relying instead on capitalist and populist measures in its campaigns. In contrast, the Move Forward Party presents policies that best address structural problems. Yet, according to respondents, even while defining the “best policies” as those of the Move Forward Party, they still expressed negative sentiments toward this party. These contradictions highlight the internal inconsistencies in respondents’ reasoning as they attempted to justify their continued support for the Pheu Thai Party in the 2023 general election, despite the conflicting rationales underlying their decisions.
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