nge that directly impacted upon macroeconomic policymaking. Thitinan Pongsudhirak takes the position that the post-1988 democratization process in Thailand melted the insulated autonomy of the country's technocracy which "was eroded by the politicization that had arisen from the process of democratization."
This analyst sees Thailand at the time of the crisis as a bifurcated state, with the World Bank having identified this condition in 1993 while characterizing the state as divided between a centralized and efficient set of macroeconomic agencies on the one hand and more politicized, fragmented agencies on the other. This situation positioned various technocratic agencies such as the National Economic Social Development Board and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) as the institutions charged with managing the country's exchange rate and begging the baht to the dollar.
The baht, says Pongsudhirak, was "the anchor of the technocracy by the early 1990s" and was "the macroeconomic institutional lynchpin tasked with and empowered to enact the necessary adjustment and stabilization policies." Earlier, the BOT had devalued the baht in 1984, which did not negatively impact upon the country's strong economic performance in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The 1997 adjustment proved to have a different impact. Between 1995 and 1996, the Thai economy experienced an 8 percent current account deficit and had flat export growth in 1996. Financial liberalization, the pegging of the baht to a dollar dominated basket of currency, the rising value of the dollar, and the insolvency of the Bangkok Bank of Commerce were elements in the crisis of 1997.
...