POLI7012 Chap.6 Thailand: Paternalism, Thaksin and the Military
Thailand: Paternalism, Thaksin and the Military
One arrangement seen from three decades
This week sets Thailand beside the other cases in the course as a kingdom where elections, coups and royal authority coexist rather than replace one another. The readings approach that puzzle from three moments.
Thak Chaloemtiarana studies the regime of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat from 1957 to 1963. Kasian Tejapira dissects the fall of the elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. Paul Chambers and Napisa Waitoolkiat follow the army from 1991 to the junta that seized power in 2014. Read together, they describe how the throne became the source of legitimacy that every other actor has to borrow.
Sarit and despotic paternalism
Chaloemtiarana argues that Sarit governed as a phokhun, the fatherly ruler of the Sukhothai inscriptions, and that this image did real political work.
It licensed small, visible favours for ordinary households and it licensed harsh punishment of anyone cast as a disobedient child, from arsonists and opium sellers to alleged communists and a village messiah. The Interim Constitution of 1959 gave him a clause, Article 17, that turned this role into law.
The book insists that paternal care and despotic force are hard to separate, since a ruler who believes himself a good father will rarely see his own severity as tyranny.
The sixth chapter adds the institutions. Sarit centralised the civil service under his own office, schooled senior officials at the National Defense College into accepting military leadership, and, above all, gave the young King Bhumibol a public stage.
Royal tours abroad, revived court rituals and a charity channel for private donations served the regime, yet they also let the crown grow strong enough to stand on its own once Sarit died in 1963.
Thaksin, electocracy and the 2006 crisis
Tejapira places Thaksin inside a longer story.
After 1980, parliamentary politics was run by provincial businessmen he calls electocrats, resting on vote buying through local canvassers and on factions that traded seats for cabinet posts. The 1997 financial crash and the Reform Constitution of that year gave a cash-rich telecom owner the chance to build a disciplined party with a rural base. Thai Rak Thai then won three national elections.
The article explains why these victories could not protect him: a fractured opposition of urban middle classes, unions, activists and old elites converged on the king, and a royal audience in April 2006 ended his premiership within a day of his latest win.
The monarchised military
Chambers and Waitoolkiat ask why the army keeps returning. Their answer is that material interest explains only part of it.
The officer corps defines its highest duty as protecting the monarchy, and an informal nexus of palace, Privy Council and senior generals operates as a parallel state beside the elected one. General Prem Tinsulanonda, first as prime minister and later as head of the Privy Council, managed that link for decades.
The authors trace how the 2014 coup leaders sidelined him and made the army a more senior partner of the palace.
Using the week in your own work
For seminar discussion and the group term paper, the useful move is to ask where a Thai government claims its authority from and who can revoke it.
That question travels well to court rulings, party dissolutions and constitutional drafting in other Southeast Asian states covered later in the course, and it keeps an argument from treating Thai coups as random breakdowns.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Sukhothai pho-luk ideal and the three-tier social pyramid
- 02
Sarit's pattiwat and the advice of Luang Wichit
- 03
Article 17 and the executions of 1958 to 1963
- 04
How Sarit revived royal ceremony and sent the king abroad
- 05
Electocracy: voters, canvassers, factions and cabinet
- 06
The 1997 crash, the Reform Constitution and Thai Rak Thai
- 07
From the Shin Corporation sale to the whisper from heaven
- 08
Monarchised military and the parallel state
- 09
Prem, the Privy Council and the coups of 2006 and 2014
Worked example · free
Explaining why an election winner fell in Thailand in 2006
- 2State the puzzle with numbers: 16 million of 29 million votes on 2 April, resignation on 4 April after an audience with the king.
- 2Identify the source of authority that outranked the ballot, using Thongchai's upper and lower tiers as reported by Tejapira.
- 2Trace the historical origin of that royal authority to Sarit's alliance with the throne after 1957, from Chaloemtiarana.
- 2Explain why the opposition converged on the king: a diffuse coalition plus the Privy Council's anti-corruption campaign.
- 2Add the coercive backstop from Chambers and Waitoolkiat: an army that sees guarding the monarchy as its first duty, as the September coup showed.
Key terms
- Despotic Paternalism
- Despotic paternalism is Chaloemtiarana's label for Sarit's rule, in which fatherly care and harsh coercion flow from one claim to lead the national family. It explains why cheap coffee and summary executions could come from the same leader.
- Phokhun
- Phokhun is the Sukhothai title for a king who rules as father of his people. Sarit presented himself as a working phokhun while leaving the actual king as the symbolic head of the nation.
- Article 17
- Article 17 was the clause of the 1959 Interim Constitution that let the prime minister order any step he judged necessary against threats to security or the throne. Sarit used it for eleven executions.
- Electocracy
- Electocracy is Tejapira's name for Thai parliamentary rule from the late 1980s to 1997, built on vote buying, local canvassers and factions trading seats for cabinet posts. It lacked policy and legitimacy.
- Royal Prerogative
- The Royal Prerogative is the reserve authority of the Thai king. In 2006 anti-Thaksin protesters asked him to use it to appoint a new prime minister, which Tejapira treats as a call for an unconstitutional coup.
- Parallel State
- A parallel state is an informal power structure tied to the formal state but pursuing its own interests, which elected leaders must accept. Chambers and Waitoolkiat borrow the idea from Briscoe.
- Monarchised Military
- Monarchised military describes an army whose legitimacy, rituals and self-image rest on serving the monarchy. Chambers and Waitoolkiat use it to explain why Thai coups recur and why civilians fail to control the armed forces.
Thailand: Paternalism, Thaksin and the Military FAQ
Why did Sarit promote the Thai monarchy instead of sidelining it?
His coup group had no claim to have founded constitutional rule, unlike the men of 1932, so it needed borrowed legitimacy. Chaloemtiarana records that Sarit displayed a royal letter of support, moved the national day to the king's birthday and funded royal tours, while Phibun had refused to pay for further trips after the king drew crowds in the Northeast.
What was the Thai Rak Thai party and why was it so successful?
Thaksin founded it in July 1998 as leader and financier. Tejapira attributes its rise to the collapse of rival capital in the 1997 crash, a constitution that strengthened the prime minister, and programmes such as a fund of one million baht for each village. It won 11 million votes in 2001 and 19 million in 2005.
What does network monarchy mean in writing on Thai politics?
It is Duncan McCargo's term, cited by Chambers and Waitoolkiat, for political interventions by the king and his proxies, including Privy Councillors and trusted generals. Tejapira adds that the palace once kept a card index of about 6,000 contacts built during royal trips, which shows how personal the network was.
How is the Thai military different from Indonesia's under Soeharto?
Chambers and Waitoolkiat contrast them directly. Soeharto's doctrine of Dwifungsi imagined a bond between the army and the people, as Kemalism did in Turkey. The Thai army instead grounds its standing in service to the throne, so its interventions are framed as protecting the king rather than representing the nation.
Assessment move
Build a three-column timeline for this week: Sarit years, Thaksin years, coup years. For each row, write the date, the actor who gained or lost office, and the source of authority invoked, whether throne, ballot or army. Then mark every row where royal approval decided the outcome. Bring the sheet to your weekly reading group and check one claim from each reading against it.
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