Image source: www.vietnamgateway.org
The present Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has made some huge political blunders both internally and internationally such as bringing Thailand close to combating with Cambodia over the border line close to the Preah Vihear temple which was established in 1962 by the World Court. The Thai People always felt embittered about this and PM Samak had “solved” the problem in a one day meeting with the Cambodian leader about six months ago. There has been a military assemble up on the border near this temple in the last few months…
So … between the conviction and some actions and decisions that are not particularly cared for by the general population many Thai People are not pleased with the current Prime Minister. The opposition party is staging protests and has been for the past 3 or more months. Peaceful protesting is a healthy appearance of democracy, when the government allows people to express themselves in the open.
Politics have always been about power: the one who owns the power is the one who rules. Anyone who’s in political position is always powerful. More often than not, they can do as much as they want. That is why you can notice that politicians have great circle of alliance. Also, people, usually those who are rich and famous, develop allegiance to politicians. As an American labor union leader Samuel Gompers said,
Reward your friends and punish your enemies.
Social psychologists identified five types of power. The two was given out in the quote above: incentive power and coercive power. Incentive power is the power to give rewards; coercive power is the power to give out punishments. And from this two types of power, there grow out three other types.
*continued from previous post
The three other types of power aside from incentive power and coercive power are legitimate power, referent power and expert power.
Legitimate power is the power held by a police officer or a referee. This is a kind of power that is given to some individual by an established authority to impose principles and standards of behavior.
Referent power is the power given to individual as a merit of attitude or accomplishment. This is similar to being a hero or a celebrity. This is incentive power as one rewards himself.
Expert power is the power one can get from experience. For example, when you have health problems, an advice from a medical doctor is more reliable than an advice from a college Linguist professor.
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