Politics in the Land of Smiles

This is an excerpt of an essay which covers Thai political history since the rise of Thai-Chinese businessman turned politician, Thaksin Shinawatra. We encourage you to read the cited works for more detailed explanations.

Sunday, March 24th, elections will be held in Thailand for the first time since the military seized power in 2014. The military coup was a result of a political crisis which gripped the country for months, a crisis that has its roots in deep in the polarized center of Thai politics. A fundamental question which hasn’t achieved any real consensus in the country since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932: how should Thailand be governed?