Cooperation, Cooptation, Alienation, Amalgamation, and Non-alignment? 
How democratic backsliding has shaped movement-party relationships in Thailand

Democratic backsliding is the state-led phenomenon that debilitates and malfunctions political institutions, thereby posing a threat to the regime. It inevitably brings about asymmetrical relationships between democratic actors, including social movements and political parties that play supportive roles for representative democracy. Research has suggested that political junctures can incentivise parties to develop cooperative relationships, with or without cooptation, with social movements to counteract any form of regime challengers. On the one hand, a crisis of representation can open opportunities for the emergence of new parties and the transformation of existing political parties. I argue that democratic backsliding is more complex and goes beyond a crisis of representation. On that basis, the dynamic of movement-party interactions has not yet been clarified, particularly in the process of democratic backsliding. Therefore, this paper proposes conceptual clarification of movement-party relationships following the Levitsky & Ziblatt (2018)'s three-stage model of the backsliding. Thailand provides excellent terrain on which to study the effect of three different stages of democratic backsliding on movement-party connections. I examine movement-party relationships emerged while democratic backsliding has taken place in Thailand since 2006. Drawing on empirical data collected through insightful interviews with leaders of social movements and politicians affiliated with four mainstream parties in Thailand, it suggests that the dynamic of movement-party relationships have varied across three stages of backsliding. It produces a cumulative effect on the movement-party relationships, beginning from cooperation and cooptation at the early stage and developing to alienation at the middle. At the late stage, the movement-party relationships become indefinite.