Observing the observers [1]: Recent articles on Thai politics (1)

MHN, 15 July 2025

The five articles summarized below deal with several phenomena.

First, ideational resources belong to the political system’s internal societal environment that individual action domains can draw on. Which resources are selected depends on the action domain that we are looking at, the way it uses and changes these resources, its internal structure and dynamics, the course of time, and factors in the external environment of the respective action domain. Chambers exemplifies this with reference to the military.

The second article is still about ideational resources, though it moves away from a specific action domain, instead turning to the forms that governmental regimes can assume, and specifically the place that “the people” might take in the overall ideational set-up of the “nativist” Thai conception of democracy. Like Chambers, this article also includes a strong time component, starting with Phibun’s “leaderism” and ending with the 2014 coup and its leaders’ intention to create “quality citizens.”

The third article turns to the action domain of civic actors, especially the protest movement of 2020/21, including its internal dynamics. It became known for drawing—with critical intention—on a sensitive ideational resource supported by a different action domain, the state apparatus: monarchism. The protest movement even called for both ideational and structural “monarchy reforms.” McCargo suggests that the protests pointed to another component of the political system’s internal societal environment, that is, generational issues.

The fourth article, by Nishizaki Yoshinori, concentrates on a specific element of the internal societal environment of the political system: the role of families. It is not concerned with the issue of provincial-level political families but with the formal and informal roles that high-level traditional upper-class families play in the operations of the monarchy, the military, or the civil bureaucracy. These families are seen as a non-monolithic aristocratic-bureaucratic elite bloc.

The final article is about yet another element of the internal societal environment of politics, namely general socio-cultural issues, here concentrating on the “idea of power.” The author distinguishes barami (moral prestige) and amnat (administrative power). Though Thaksin Shinawatra had started his premiership on borrowed barami, he was soon dependent on amnat alone, complemented by popular support. The author, then, seems to add a third type of power, that is, “popular representation.”

Chambers, Paul W. 2020. “Thailand’s Military: Ideology and Sense of Mission.” In Praetorians, Profiteers or Professionals? Studies on the Militaries of Myanmar and Thailand, ed. by Michael J. Montesano, Terence Chong, and Prajak Kongkirati, Chapter 70-96. Singapore: ISEAS.

The author summarizes ten instances of military ideology from 1852 to 2006 and extends this to the present. (1) Since the first phase was the time of the absolute monarchy, it is not surprising to read that the military “remained tightly incorporated under monarchized absolutism” (p. 72). In other words, there was a “royal-centric military ideology” (ibid.). (2) After the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932, by 1944, the military had developed a self-perception “as autonomous from elected civilian administrations and entitled to interfere in civilian politics” (p. 73). The key ideological point of reference changed from “monarchy” to “nation.” The military also assumed a significant role in the economic sphere; Chambers calls this “developmental militarism” (ibid.). By this time, “the military [had] become the most powerful actor in Thai political history” (p. 74). (3) Starting with Phibun Songkhram’s fall from power, the years 1944-47 “witnessed a short-lived democracy by civilian elites” (ibid.). (4) This period ended with Phin Choonhavan’s military coup in 1947. Civilian politicians became to be seen as threats to the state-sector official ideology of “Nation, Religion, King.” However, the key ideological points of reference were still anti-communism and developmentalism, not so much monarchism. (5) By 1951, officers from the time of 1932 had become annoyed by the “monarchy’s growing assertiveness” (p. 75), which played part in the “Radio Coup” of 1951. The time after this coup “saw a drastic weakening of monarchization in Thai military discourse” (ibid.). This period ended with the coup of 1957 (6). It brought Sarit Thanarat to power and with him a strong come-back of monarchization. The king became “central to the ideology uniting Thai soldiers” (ibid.). Yet, the military remained the senior partner in this relationship, using the king as a tool of its own legitimization. In addition, the Cold War created an alliance between military, king, and the United States since all three had a strong interest in anti-communism. Development projects played an important role in this respect. This orientation “lasted for more than three decades, from Sarit’s putsch until the end of the Cold War in 1991” (p. 76). With Sarit’s successors toppled in 1973, a period of military factionalism resulted (7). This included younger officers in two groups, the “Young Turks” and the “Democratic Soldiers.” Overall, however, the military mindset remained to be dominated by anti-communism, developmental militarism, and monarchism. (8) With Prem Tinsulanonda becoming prime minister in 1980, unity returned (though Prem was threatened by coups several times during his eight years in power). “Under Prem, monarchization became the most important part of military ideology at any time since 1932” (p. 77). Moreover, the military became the junior partner in this relationship. When, after the “Black May” of 1992, politicians became important players in Thai politics, military ideology entered phase (9). Monarchization still remained, but security sector reform and support for democracy were added. Thaksin Shinawatra, who became prime minister in 2001, emphasized civilian supremacy over the military. Period number (10) started with the coup against Thaksin in 2006. The military’s ideology focused on monarchization and developmental militarism. [One wonders what meaning a concept such as “developmental militarism” can have in present times of Thai socio-economic development, compared to the 1960s and 1970s.] Interestingly, Chambers writes that, “Democracy became an extremely worrisome concept for the military, since governance on the part of the winners of elections appeared inimical to military interests” (p. 79). This seems to indicate that the military does have a corporate identity quite separate to the talk of “monarchization.” The author even adds, “This is why, in its search for an alternative credo to democracy, the armed forces increasingly prioritized defense of monarchy” (ibid.). In other words, the military was not really “monarchized” but merely used the monarchy as an instrument to hide its very own corporate interests, making a joke of what is said to be its “ideology of virulent royalism” (p. 82) and with it the label of “monarchized military” (p. 84). Moreover, the military does not refer to a unified monarchy but distinguishes between those that belong to the “King’s Guard” (Wongthewan) and those belonging to the “Queen’s Tiger Guard” (Buraphaphayak). In addition, there is also the Royal Guard 904, the Royal Guards Security Command. This is now under the direct control of King Vajiralongkorn. In sum, while all soldiers prioritize the defense of the monarchy, ideology “is in general only minimally valued in the factional politics of the military establishment” (p. 89). Nevertheless, Chambers states that, “Since the May 2014 putsch, ‘democracy’ has become … anathema within Thai military ideology [democracy had to be stopped to prevent Thaksin’s continued influence in Thai politics]. By 2018, more than perhaps at any time since 1988, Thailand’s armed forces were a ‘monarchized military,’ acting as a guardian and tool of palace interests” (p. 90). At the same time, it also still thinks that it must “protect Thai national security and development” (ibid.). As far as the time after the ascension of King Vajiralongkorn to the throne is concerned, “one subtle change is that … the military has appeared to become more visibly subservient to the monarch” (p. 91), which is different from the time of the aging King Bhumibol and Prem, when the military was “more proactive” (ibid.).

Connors, Michael K. 2019. “The Two Faces of Democracy.” In Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Thailand, ed. by Pavin Chachavalpongpun, pp. 55-70. London and New York: Routledge.

The author reiterates the common distinction between a “nativist” Thai-style democracy and a universalistic (Western) conception of democracy. A key point of contention is the position of the people who, since the 1932 revolution, were assigned sovereign status in the country’s political order. However, this has long remained a legal-normative aspiration rather than a political reality. In the nativist logic of what has become known as “Thai-style democracy,” the people are seen as not yet ready for democracy. Accordingly, this variety includes a strong hierarchical component from state to people—a form of “native guided democracy” (p. 56). In fact, this approach was already adopted after 1932 and became especially prominent under Prem Tinsulanonda’s tenure as prime minister of a “semi-bureaucratic authoritarian regime” (p. 55) from 1980 to 1988. In this arrangement, “effective sovereignty [was granted] to the dominant definers of the desirable route to national moral and economic development” (p. 58). Thus, “Displacement of popular sovereignty has been the characteristic mode of elite democratic politics in Thailand” (ibid.).

Connors then distinguishes three kinds of the “will of the people.”

1) Under Phibun Songkhram, the government was semi-fascist, claiming that his strong “leaderism” (ibid.) expressed the will of the people. Phibun’s “state preferences” (rathaniyom) were the form this took. “Which was to say that the locus of sovereignty and its prerogatives has shifted [from the king] to the people and was expressed through the state” (p. 59). While Phibun was strong on guidance during his first term, “he self-rehabilitated as a constitutional democrat” (ibid.) in his second term.

2) With Sarit Thanarat, a period of blunt military dictatorship began. It lasted from 1957 to 1973. “In this period, classic Thai-style democracy discourse emerged, mixing military rule, royalist moral guardianship and culture” (ibid.).

3) It emerged, but it could not be sustained for long, because Sarit also embarked on a course of economic development. Moreover, counterinsurgency strategy required winning the “hearts and minds” of the people. In this situation, the shaping of citizens aimed to create people who would voluntarily align “with the regime’s statist aspirations. This superseded traditional forms of Thai-style democracy in which the active citizen was neither desired nor imagined” (p. 60). The 1973 student protests put an end to this period, opening the possibility of an expansion of political participation. Yet, the initial promise did not hold long since the next military coup followed in October 1976, which led to one year under a hyper-royalist prime minister, Thanin Kraivichien. His time in office ended by means of yet another military coup in October 1977 and the establishment of a somewhat more moderate military regime. During this regime, “a more robust national ideology centered on DWKHS [Democracy with the king as head of state]” (ibid.) developed.

This period lasted until 1980, as mentioned above. DWKHS was complemented by the slogan “Nation, Religion, King,” the earlier official ideology of the state apparatus. Yet, there remained room for interpretation regarding the meaning of DWKHS. Interpretations ranged from strictly statist-bureaucratic to more communitarian. In any case, DWKHS in its formulaic form has continued to serve as the mandatory constitutionalized definition of the Thai political order. When Thaksin came to power in 2001, he was soon suspected of not being fully loyal to this order—or more precisely, to its abbreviated version, meaning loyalty to the king. Under Prayuth Chan-ocha, military dictator since his 2014 coup, “the state quickly returned to a time-failed pedagogy to nurture ‘quality citizens’” (pf. 64).

Connors calls Eugenie Mérièau’s use of “deep state” “powerful,” but points out that it “misses both the contingency of political events and identity, the ambivalence of the Thai state and significant divisions among those designated as deep state agents” (ibid.). The concept of DWKHS was closely associated with the reign of King Bhumibol. His successor, King Vajiralongkorn, interprets kingship and his reign differently (see Supalak 2022). Moreover, the new generation of Thais appear to no longer require a concept such as DWKHS. It remains to be seen what these changes will mean for the future course of Thai politics.

McCargo, Duncan. 2021. “Disruptors’ Dilemma? Thailand’s 2020 Gen Z Protests.” Critical Asian Studies 53 (2):175-191.

In this “preliminary analysis” of the 2020 protests, McCargo notes that, after the dissolution of the Future Forward Party by the Constitutional Court, “the baton of disruption [referring to the existing political order and, especially, its ideological superstructure] was taken up by students across Thailand,” beginning on 22 February at Thammasat, Chiang Mai, and Naresuan universities. Though the dissolution helped to crystallize the protests, their demands were broader. They included, (1) the dissolution of parliament, (2) a re-writing of the 2017 Constitution [which had served as a key tool of the 2014 coup plotters to perpetuate their power in a “legitimate” way], and (3) “stop harassing people for protesting peacefully.” The “vexed question of the monarchy was directly raised for the first time” at a gathering on 3 August at the Democracy Monument. Anon Nampa, a human rights lawyer [and a long-time member of the Red Shirts], proposed a number of reforms to the monarchy. This issue became even more serious at a protest held on 10 August at Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus. On that occasion, Panusaya “Rung” Sithijirawattanakul, who belonged to the “radical ‘Revolutionary Dome’” [the Dome building being the symbol of Thammasat University] group, read an announcement of ten demands directed at the monarchy. This was a “major turning point in the demonstrations,” and an “unprecedented public proclamation.” This approach was reinforced at a protest at Sanam Luang on 19 September, especially by the “laying of a commemorative plaque to replace a People’s Party plaque that had been removed from the Royal Plaza in 2017.” Not surprisingly, many Thais would now perceive the protests as being anti-monarchist. However, this did not mean that the protesters had any clear anti-monarchist—or any other clear—agenda for change, much less a strategy of how to achieve their goals. Moreover, they were not united in terms of leadership and organization (main groups included Free Youth and the United Front for Thammasat and Demonstration-UFTD), and neither did they pursue a path of creating alliances with other change-oriented groups. Yet, they succeeded in prompting King Vajiralongkorn to return from his German domicile to undertake a royalist public relations campaign. McCargo closes with an optimistic view of the future, saying that the authoritarian Thai political system “has been fatally wounded, and looks destined to die a lingering death.” One might wonder whether the protests really reflected a “generational divide,” given that the overwhelming majority of “Gen Z” did not seem to pay much attention to the protests. One might also wonder whether the death of King Bhumibol on 13 October 2016 and his succession by King Vajiralongkorn should not deserve being listed as part of the “specific political context” of the protests. Finally, saying that, “Since the 1970s, Thai politics has oscillated between two modes: party mode and rally mode” seems in need of the addition of a third element, namely the “military mode.”

This is the first in a series of four articles on the 2020 protests that appeared in the same journal issue. See also Aim Sinpeng, Kanokrat Lertchoosakul, and Saowanee Alexander.

Nishizaki Yoshinori. 2020. “Birds of a Feather: Anand Panyarachun, Elite Families and Network Monarchy in Thailand.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 51 (1-2):197-242.

The author takes Duncan McCargo’s “network monarchy” approach as his starting point, criticizing it for its lack of historical depths, especially about the role played by a social stratum composed of kinship and intermarriage ties that goes back to before the 1932 coup, and even explains why the coup plotters did not perform a proper “revolution”: They had stakes in the aristocratic-bureaucratic networks they were supposed to abolish. Nishizaki writes, “It is my contention that many of Bhumibol’s clients [I am not sure whether this is the right concept here.] hail from the well-entrenched old-guard families aligned historically with the Chakri dynasty since the pre-1932 period of absolute monarchy” (p. 199). Though these families—taken together—constitute an aristocratic-bureaucratic elite bloc, it is not necessarily monolithic. When Chris Baker (2016) writes about the Thai political system being dominated by an oligarchy made up of monarchy, military, and bureaucracy, one might say, as Nishizaki indeed does, that “we can view their family networks as the building blocks of the Thai state” (p. 239); they constitute the “informal family basis of the Thai state” (ibid.). Thus, the point is that, until today, “Siam’s upper class” (p. 201) has played a fundamental role [as the social-class basis of the oligarchy] in the Thai political order. Most prominently, this could be seen in “two military coups and a spate of court decisions (dubbed ‘legal coups’)—to safeguard its interests and promote ‘hyper-royalism’ anchored in Thai citizens’ unquestioning and unconditional allegiance to the monarchy” (p. 203). Thus, the link between the oligarchy and the people is assumed to be an imposed royalist ideology. The citizens subject themselves to the oligarchic rule because they have been ideologically indoctrinated with the belief that oligarchy acts in the name of the king. The author notes that Anand Panyarachun, while disliking the concept of “network monarchy,” “actually does not deny the presence of a huge network revolving around Bhumibol itself; he only disputes the idea that Bhumibol directly commanded and mobilized his network as ‘a planned thing’” (ibid.; reference here is made to Dominic Faulder’s 2019 biography of Anand). Denying the existence of such a network would be silly indeed, because, most obviously, King Bhumibol knew and interacted with a great number of people and quite systematically included people (mostly commoner bureaucrats, not at all mainly members of elite families) who had helped him with his various projects. [“Network” is merely the summary term popular in the social sciences to denote and measure all those people a person knows and interacts with.] Although Nishizaki quotes Joseph Wright on other things, he oddly ignores his statement about King Bhumibol starting to create his network from the time when Phibun Songkhram was the prime minister (Wright 1991, pp. 193-4). Moreover, since the king’s network was so huge, the kin and intermarriage connections so complex, and his ”involvement in these people’s actions different from case to case” (p. 204), while members of this social class “endeavoured ultimately to uphold Bhumibol’s status and power” (p. 204), it is precisely not necessary “to view them as having composed one network as a whole” (ibid.). [Whether an observer “view” them as a “network” is sociologically less important than the question of whether this network, as a social relationship, actually existed and reproduced itself by performing respective meaningful actions on a regular basis.] From this perspective, Serhat Ünaldi’s approach of seeing individuals from this class acting alone or in small groups, or in empirically real but small social networks, as “working towards the monarchy”—without needing direct or indirect input from the king— would seem to have been an empirically more realistic approach. It seems odd that Nishizaki does refer to Ünaldi’s 2016 book but fails to contrast his approach with that presented by McCargo. The body of the text comprises detailed and exhaustive descriptions of family’s kin and marriage networks (complete with charts) spanning several decades. The families covered are Panyarachun, Jatikavanit, Sawadiwat, Ketuthat, Sujaritkul, Disakul-Pirompakdee, and Krairerk. These descriptions cover pages 204-237. After reading a few pages from this section, most readers will probably know what Nishizaki’s point is. They might then move to the conclusion on pp. 237 to 240. Here, he criticizes Mérieau’s concept of the “deep state” as being “too institutional” (p. 239) and ignoring relevant informal family ties. He sees her concept not as antagonistic but complementary to the “network monarchy.” Interestingly, at the end, Nishizaki refers to Joseph Harris “recent insightful work” (Harris 2015) and adds that several members of the “Dusit 99” group that Harris describes belonged to a number of well-known elite-class families. He writes, “There is much reason to believe that the Dusit 99, like other political networks, derives much of its unity from the family ties, not just from its members’ shared ideological convictions” (p. 240). On the other hand, one might argue that this unity is not primarily derived from a consciousness about family ties, but rather a consciousness of belonging to Thailand’s class of high-society families. That is, not family ties and neither “ideological convictions” but class consciousness would be the mechanism that contributed to the unity of Dusit 99, including the possibility that those members had already earlier cooperated in different contexts. Finally, when the author states that the elite families “have thus far helped sustain the political influence of the monarchy. King Bhumibol’s political influence during his long reign, especially in the 1990s-2000s, was dependent, in good part, on these networks” (ibid.), one imagines that such influence was not mainly due to the king’s direct or indirect communications with the members of such families (that is, “networks”), but rather based on innumerable acts of what Ünaldi, following Kershaw, called “working towards the monarchy.” After all, according to this logic, the members of oligarchic families must have been subjected to the same royalist indoctrination that supposedly made the general population acquiesce to oligarchic rule. It would surely be interesting to disentangle the determining factors of these family members’ actions and their motivations: class consciousness, royalist ideology, ideological convictions, policy ideas, network connections, family ties, pre-existing interpersonal relations, organizational (“institutional”) contexts.

Sopranzetti, Claudio. 2020. “Thai Ideas of Power: The Challenge of Legitimacy in Contemporary Thailand.” In Coup, King, Crisis: A Critical Interregnum in Thailand. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, ed. by Pavin Chachavalpongpun, pp. 57-80. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies.

It has long been known that there is no “linear progression” (p. 60) from a royalist model of legitimacy to a popular model. Thus, contemporary Thai politics is not in a state of being an “‘interregnum’” (ibid.). [MN: More generally, one might add that conventional assumptions about “transition to democracy” have long been discredited.] Sopranzetti then contrasts two Thai conceptions of power—barami (“moral charisma,” or moral prestige) and amnat, which denotes the power of office holders working in governmental institutions. He adds another conception—“popular support”—that is said to be helpful in the case of barami. However, the author also connects amnat to popular support (p. 63). Thaksin Shinawatra is said to have “mobilized both barami and amnat” (p. 67), though it is indicated that it was not Thaksin’s own barami, but was borrowed, so to speak, from palace-related personnel that initially supported his government. Without that barami, he was left only with amnat [here meaning the constitutional framework of power] and popular support. It is said that it was this popular support, Thaksin’s leadership style, and his emphasis on political-legal equality that brought him into conflict with those forces that still thought that “society had to be organized in a moral hierarchy with the king at the top as the Buddha-to-be” (p. 68). From this perspective, Thaksin, “had failed miserably to convert his power into the Buddhist ideal of moral and political authority” (Pattana, as quoted on p. 68). [MN: In other words, he had failed to integrate his government into the moral-royalist framework promoted by the palace and its key supporters.] When Sopranzetti states that, “The 2006 coup was a result of this weakness” (p. 69), he discounts the concrete political processes that led to his downfall. As for the citizens, “many” of his voters insisted that even a prime minister without barami should be able to govern the country if he had won the elections. On the other hand, however, were those who “were willing to sacrifice one-person-one-vote electoralism on the altar of moral governance” (ibid.). When the author says that “popular representation” could trump moral hierarchy and that this was a “model of power” (ibid.), he seems to add a third model to his previous two concepts of barami and amnat. These latter two, Sopranzetti states, “need to coexist,” and “To govern Thailand one needs to have both amnat and barami” (p. 70). [MN: But not necessarily public support, or a basis in popular representation?] Unfortunately, he does not explain why there is such a “need,” only to add that, “Since 2006 no political figure has been able” to command both elements” (ibid.). This is followed by a section on “ultra-royalism, anti-corruption and good governance” (p. 75). Faced with a “fading monarchy” (p. 73), the middle class translated its “anxiety over losing Thai identity” (ibid.) [MN: One would like to know what this is empirically supposed to refer to.] into “ultra-royalism,” in opposition to democracy. [MN: This seems to be another case of the middle classes’ “withdrawal symptoms” that Anderson had written about in 1977.] In addition, they expanded the concept of corruption to include “immoral, unpatriotic and disloyal behaviour” (p. 74), [MN: No evidence is provided for this empirical claim.] equating “populism with electoral bribery” (p. 75).