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This chapter tries to answer the question of persistent inequality under a democratic regime by looking at the Indonesian case. The author assumes that one of the reasons that the government has failed to allocate sufficient budgets to effective poverty eradication programs is the lack of mass-based political parties in Indonesia’s party system and representation of the lower class. The author analyzed parties’ indifference to poverty and inequality by looking at legislative deliberations on annual budgets in the parliament. In addition, the author noted that the popularly elected president has an incentive to reallocate state resources to the lower class because he/she seeks to acquire political support from the majority of the population to win elections. The introduction of the popularly elected presidential system has created an opportunity for Indonesia to establish a government more concerned with people’s welfare, especially the social and economic conditions of the lower class. Notwithstanding, the parliament is still occupied by political parties that lack the capabilities and incentives to organize a political support base at the lower strata of society, resulting in prevalence of clientelistic politics and corruption.

Recent debate on the emerging states has focused largely on the challenges that confront the countries’ political leaders in making policies to accelerate economic development in conjunction with efforts to improve socio-economic equality and environmental governance in the age of a global economy and regional integration. Political economists claim that a serious challenge for the emerging states involves avoiding a middle-income trap (MIT) that requires policy initiatives for structural change regarding economy and business. There appears to be little space in such a discussion for political scientists, especially the students of comparative security studies and civil-military relations, to actively participate because the debate rarely addresses issues related to national security. However, it does not mean that security sector governance has no significance in understanding the problem of emerging states. Rather, many—if not all—of these states share a common agenda of building stable civil-military relations aimed at consolidating a political regime based on democracy. If a country’s civil-military relationship is evidently unstable, then democratic political leadership may hardly be consolidated. There is no doubt that such a political condition easily invites a conservative turn to authoritarianism or populism that attempts to mobilize popular support by provoking anti-globalism; a development that is unfavorable for emerging states.

Thailand has faced political turmoil in the last two decades, characterized by political conflict between pro-democracy forces and anti-democracy forces. This conflict derived from the process of political democratization that began in the 1990s and accelerated since 2001. There are two major factors responsible for this advance in democratization. First are the rapid socio-economic changes that have occurred since the latter half of the 1980s. Enormous investment from foreign countries after the Plaza Accord in 1985 was a decisive triggering device in this process. The changes have broadened the size of the middle class occupied by the lower middle class in rural areas and increased the size of the lower class in urban areas. Lower-middle-class people, who comprise a majority of the electorate, have shifted from loyal subjects to citizens with increasing political awareness. The second factor is the 1997 constitution, which drastically changed the electoral system and had profound effects on Thailand’s political system. The nation had a political leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, who utilized the new rule and changed the political consciousness and attitudes of the majority of the people. An increasing number of citizens came to think that democracy should be the only political system.