The King And Political Change

Since the coup in1932, Thailand have been suffering from political turmoil. This paper considers that the king has played an important role in Thailand’s political change. By comparing the4social movements after1970s, similarities were found in cause of every movements but the king’s acts of interference appears huge different. To interpret this phenomenon, the paper will explore relation of the modern Thai kingdom and the state’s political modernization by analyzing the behavior of the king and state-society relations.The main idea of the paper is that:during the modernization, the Thailand society constantly proposes demands to the state, which includes limiting state’s power and participating the state management. The state tries to ease this discontent and demand by economic and traditional culture methods. But the confrontation is inevitable because of the different discourse.Due to the lag in the development of political institution, the confrontation between state and society tend to evolve into violent conflict. The king will then cease the conflict by his dominate authority and traditional political philosophy in order to further enhance his prestige.But ceasing conflict does not improve the political institution. Depends on the meditation of the king, the political expression mechanism cannot be institutionalized, which sowed the seeds for the next conflict.This paper argues that:a mature modern society relies on sound political system and law to maintain its stability. There is still a long way to go for Thailand politics. Also to other countries in the same stage, to maintain stability while complete the political transformation is always a daunting task.