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The 2013-14 People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC)–a mass protest movement that occupied a number of major Bangkok traffic intersections–bears a significant degree of responsibility for the fact that Thailand remains under a hybrid form of military rule today. Nevertheless, close scrutiny of the PDRC reveals that the movement was more diverse and wide-ranging than previously understood. Like the earlier People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which staged anti-Thaksin rallies in 2006 and 2008, the PDRC was actually a broad church of factions and individuals, united by little more than a shared disdain for the then government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Drawing on 48 interviews conducted with PDRC protesters in 2014, this article examines the diverse motives and circumstances that explained individual participation in these important protests.

This article explores the rise and fall of the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) in Thailand, using it as a case study to illustrate the challenges that transitional military regimes face in retaining power through electoral means. The PPRP's initial success at the ballot was heavily dependent on patronage politics, which, while effective in the short term, ultimately contributed to its downfall. Local elites who managed these patronage networks were not merely passive allies; they actively leveraged their affiliation with the PPRP to solidify their own local power bases instead of the party's institutional capacity. Their loyalty was not to the party but to the resources and opportunities the party provided. This dynamic weakened the PPRP's ability to consolidate power at the national level, leading to internal divisions that eroded its effectiveness in maintaining the military regime's political dominance amid pressures for democratization. The article concludes that the organizational weaknesses of parties such as the PPRP undermine both authoritarian resilience and the prospects for democratic consolidation, compelling regime stakeholders to adopt strategies that, in Thailand's case, further destabilize political institutions.

Following the epochal funeral of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej in October 2017, Thailand stands at a difficult crossroads. A new constitution was ratified in April, and the military junta is running out of reasons to stick around. Yet Thailand remains deeply polarized politically, while King Vajiralongkorn is untested and lacks popular legitimacy.

In the aftermath of the 2006 and 2014 Thai coups, observers declared the resurrection of the bureaucratic polity. Bureaucrats, though, remained influential even during the period of 1992–2006, when elected politicians were thought to command the Thai state. Bureaucratic involvement in politics poses a challenge for dominant political science theories of politician–bureaucrat relationships, which draw heavily from principal–agent frameworks. I apply agency theory to Thailand, testing three different hypotheses derived from the theory. Examining legislative productivity and control over bureaucratic career trajectories, I find that elected politicians increasingly acted as principals of the Thai state from 1992 through 2006, and to a lesser degree from 2008 to 2013. Thai bureaucrats, though, have frequently engaged in the political sphere, blunting political oversight and expanding their independence vis-à-vis politicians. This suggests that the principal–agent model overlooks the range of resources that bureaucracies can bring to bear in developing countries, granting them greater autonomy than anticipated. As such, theories of the politician–bureaucrat relationship in developing states need to better account for the mechanisms through which bureaucrats exercise policy discretion and political influence.

Thailand's elections on March 24, 2019, were supposed to restore the country to parliamentary democracy following a military coup detat in May 2014. The junta repeatedly delayed holding the elections, and the new 2017 constitution deployed an unusual voting system combined with interim provisions that allowed the appointed Senate to share in selecting the prime minister, changes that favored the ruling military clique. An important opposition party, Thai Raksa Chart, was dissolved by the Election Commission during the campaign on highly dubious legal grounds. The pro-military Palang Pracharat Party was created as a vehicle to allow junta members to continue in office beyond the elections, and succeeded in taking away millions of votes from the long-standing conservative and royalist Democrat Party. Meanwhile, the previously dominant Pheu Thai Party-closely associated with former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra-was challenged by the upstart Future Forward Party, which attracted huge numbers of younger voters with its anti-junta stance. Ultimately, the Democrats entered a fractious multi-party coalition with Palang Pracharat, made possible only when the Election Commission controversially changed the rules for calculating the allocation of party-list seats. As a result, coup leader General Prayuth Chan-ocha was reappointed as prime minister. The palpably unfair election outcome has effectively perpetuated military rule and left those who had supported opposition parties intensely frustrated.

Despite the stereotypical, outsider view of Thailand as a thriving hub of international sex tourism, traditional and local constructions of Thainess instead privilege the position of the 'good' Thai woman—a model of sexual propriety, demure physicality and aesthetic perfection. This is the image of femininity that is heralded by Thailand's Tourist Authority and by government agencies alike as a marketable symbol of cultural refinement and national pride. But this disturbing 'utopian' construction of femininity might for some be considered a dystopia shaped by forms of power centred on elite urban rule. In mainstream definitions of Thainess, the monstrous and grotesque inverses of 'good' womanhood are located in the 'dystopian' visions of rural-based folk traditions that abound with malevolent female spirits and demons, and in the contemporary Thai horror films that draw on these tropes. Adopted by Thai feminists and by street protestors in Bangkok at times of recent political unrest, portrayals of a 'monstrous-feminine' have been adopted as central to a carnivalesque strategy of response and resistance to elite discourses of control. Such forces serve to symbolically disturb and destabilise middle-class constructions of a Utopian vision of Thainess with Bangkok as its cultural core. This paper examines instances of how and why the counter-strategy of primitivism and monstrosity has developed, and the extent to which it translates 'dystopian' expressions of female sexuality in new imaginaries of 'dystopia' as a space of liberation from stultifying cultural and political norms.

On May 22, 2014, Thai army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha staged a military coup -- two days earlier he had declared martial law for the entire territory of the kingdom. The junta, renamed the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), abolished the 2007 constitution and replaced it with an interim constitution banning political parties and elections. In April 2015 it lifted martial law only to replace it with NCPO Order 3/2015 prohibiting gatherings of more than five people.

The existing literature on foreign policy formulation suggests that individual leaders in small and politically unstable states exert a disproportionate impact on foreign policy-making. Some analysts further contend that personalized foreign policy decision-making is more likely to suffer from discontinuities. This article, however, argues that the foreign policies of small and politically unstable states exhibit considerable variation in terms of constancy. It does so by offering a comparative study of the foreign policies of the Philippines and Thailand towards China. It demonstrates that the Philippines' policy towards China underwent significant changes in the last few years of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and that bilateral relations deteriorated rapidly after Benigno Aquino III came to power in 2010. In contrast, Thailand has maintained a cordial relationship with China despite domestic political turmoil since 2006. This article suggests that neither the shift in the distribution of capabilities nor the presence or absence of territorial disputes sufficiently explains this variation. It argues that the personalization of foreign policy and economic dependence are two important factors that determine constancy and change in the foreign policies of small states towards major powers.

In May 2014 the Thai army seized power from the elected government led by Yingluck Shinawatra. The military coup promised to restore peace and harmony in the country and to allow political elections within one or two years. However, in 2018 Thailand was still under military rule and elections were expected only for early 2019. Before returning the power to a civilian government, the army tried to complete a comprehensive reform of Thai politics and the economy, thus enforcing a new constitution, creating new parties and promoting a long-term economic strategy. These reforms had the objective of allowing pro-junta political forces to win elections or, in any case, to constrain the action of future governments. Two initiatives in the economic sphere were expected to create consensus for the junta-sponsored political party: the launch of the Eastern Economic Corridor, promoting infrastructural development in the national key industrial area to increase FDI attraction; and the adhesion of Thailand to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (the trade agreement that replaced the TPP after the US withdrawal).

A growing body of scholarship on Buddhism is exploring the historical role of warfare and militarism. Buddhist polities have generally exempted monastic communities from military conscription and taxation. Although the monk Khruubaa Srivichai (1878–1938) is revered as a saint in northern Thailand today, during his lifetime he was detained under temple arrest on multiple occasions. He was sent to Bangkok in 1920 and 1935 to face charges that ranged from conducting unauthorized ordinations to treason. For the controversies he generated, the media of the day called him “that puzzling monk.” Prevailing scholarship has explained the controversies as the result of conflicts internal to the Thai monastic order. In this essay, I argue that the puzzle posed by Srivichai is solved by recognizing the importance of changing policies regarding military conscription, changes which sought to restrict the traditional rights of the northern population to ordain and expanded state access to manpower.