Democratization In Thailand

1.1 Background

Thailand is a developing country in Southeast Asia region that has long witnessed the military’s politically dominant role, which prevented the democratization of Thailand. Since 1932 Thailand has shifted from an absolute monarchy to a democratic regime, the military has been dominantly involved in politics and democratization process and staged the semi-democratic regimes during various periods. Scott N. McKay argues that Thailand has endured 25 elections, 19 attempted military coups, some bloodless and some bloody, and 12 of these coups were successful in transitioning power from 1932 to 2014 . Over the past 80 years, the power struggle between the civilian politicians and the military personnel in Thai politics has been reflected

While the economic growth was increasing under Chatichai Choonhaven's regime, he was arrested in a coup d' etat on 23 February 1991 by justifying the corruption and incompetence of government. The military junta initiated to restore the bureaucratic polity by military-back party so this led to massive demonstrations in the streets. Moreover, as a result of economic development, the emergence of socio-economic class led to improve the democratization process, and public protests to diminish the role of military in politics. After the events of significant violence in May 1992, the reformers and the military agreed to amend the constitution to be democratic and to minimize the role of the military in politics due to King intervention. After taking a long time for drafting and promulgating the new constitution between 1992 and 1997, a so-called democratic constitution was promulgated in 1997 and Thailand was well on the pathway toward the democratic consolidation. However, the military staged another coup d' etat to topple down the democratically elected government on 19 September 2006 by claiming to protect the democracy and the monarchy. Furthermore, the military intervened in politics on 22 May 2014 by justifying that the military coup was a last resort to save the country from tragedy from political

the degree of national unity, the level of political institutionalization, economic development, and political culture) and sometimes the more intimately political factors (e.g. the nature of civil-military relations, the cracks within the ruling blocs, and the relative weights of the costs of suppression and toleration)". Thailand's politics has suffered from structural problems so political reform was necessary to establish because the politics cannot be improved by changing the regime only. Thailand's democratization process has been generally analyzed by these factors while Thai politics could be viewed as bureaucratic politics up to the 1980s because of the military appointed member in parliament, representatives of military and civil bureaucrats in the cabinet. Tamada Yoshifumi argues the bureaucratic politics theory based on three principle